Dive Summary:
- Grand Canyon University became the first for-profit to sport a Division I athletics program Tuesday when it accepted an invitation to join the Western Athletic Conference.
- The school, which has a physical campus in Phoenix, spent $9.5 million on sports last year and had the nation's most successful Division II program this year despite not having a football team.
- Grand Canyon will be its sixth member when the school begins competing in the conference next fall, and the third new member of the "rebuilding" WAC along with California State University Bakersfield and Utah State University.
From the article:
For-profit higher education has its first Division I athletics program. Grand Canyon University on Tuesday announced that it has accepted an invitation to join the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), an NCAA Division I conference. The publicly traded for-profit, which sports a growing, 6,500-student physical campus in Phoenix as well as an online enrollment of 42,000, will be the slowly reloading conference's sixth member when Grand Canyon begins competing in it next fall. ...