Online university moving headquarters to Chandler

PHOENIX – A for-profit online university’s parent company will move its headquarters to metro Phoenix, after a name change and in the middle of legal wranglings.

Education technology services company Zovio, formerly known as Bridgepoint Education, said the building in Chandler near Loop 202 and Cooper Road was designed for more than 800 employees.

They will begin moving in during the summer.

Zovio operates Ashford University in San Diego, California.

There has been a staff of 200 working out of a temporary office in Tempe for a while. The group is first in line to set up at the new site. The rest will make the move in waves over the next two years.

“We decided to move our headquarters to Arizona and the greater Phoenix area because it enables us to tap into local talent, enjoy a favorable business environment, and provide a more reasonable cost of living for our transferring employees with opportunities for transferring spouses to find employment,” CEO Andrew Clark said in a statement.

It hasn’t been all happy news for ownership and staff.

Last month, investors filed a class action lawsuit against Bridgepoint, citing it had committed “material accounting errors related to revenue,” and made false and misleading public statements.

The lawsuit followed the company’s admission that two financial statements from 2018 were unreliable.

The Securities and Exchange Commission served two subpoenas in 2016 and the state of California filed a lawsuit against Ashford and Bridgepoint in late 2017, accusing them of making false promises to lure more students to its online programs.

Inside Higher Ed reported in summer 2015 that the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also was investigating the school over private student loans.

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