Grand Canyon Education Acquires Orbis: We have new segment of OPM market

Nine months ago we wrote about the new movement for the companies formerly know as “for-profits” in the education space to convert the actual schools into non-profit entities and declare their intent for parent companies to become a new form of Online Program Management (OPM) providers. Kaplan University, Grand Canyon University, Ashford University (Bridgepoint Education) all made similar declarations, but the problem was that each one was a single-client OPM – serving only their supposedly independent non-profit schools. That’s not much of a new market segment.

Today the movement became real as Grand Canyon Education announced their agreement to buy Orbis Education Services for more than $362 million.