Talk:University of Phoenix

Should University of Phoenix be recognized for its name in popular culture? Saturday Night Live recently had a sketch with Keenan Thompson as a fictitious President of the University of Phoenix. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/arts/television/saturday-night-live-adam-driver-olivia-rodrigo.html Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 21:16, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

We need much more than one popular press source to support adding a section to an article. ElKevbo (talk) 21:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I understand. There are several pop culture references over the years, including White Collar (2011), John Oliver (2014), the Simpsons (2017), and Family Guy (2020), but I would have to take time dredging them up. The recent SNL sketch, by the way, was mentioned in the NY Times, LA Times, NY Post, Rolling Stone, The Hill, and the Daily Beast. Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 01:03, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

What makes the University of Phoenix a private entity if it is part of a publicly traded company and it receives most of its money from the federal government? For the purpose of editing Wikipedia articles, is there a definition of what a private university is?

https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/2013/01/what-public-university-what-private-university

Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

The short answer is that we follow the lead of reliable sources in this area, particularly materials published by scholars and experts. The US Department of Education classifies this institution as private and we generally use that as the deciding factor (in part, I think, because there are rarely disputes on this topic and everyone agrees with everyone else). The only exceptions in Wikipedia that I know about are the "state-related" institutions in Pennsylvania which were the subject of a long discussion a few years ago and the University of Delaware which makes claims about having a unique governance structure and relation to the state of Delaware. Cornell University also has some additional language in its article on this topic as part of the university is public (the agricultural school and other units associated with the university's land-grant status) while most of it is private. There has sometimes been a dispute about Grand Canyon University but my recollection is that has been solely about whether it's for-profit or nonprofit.

A longer answer is that public institutions in the U.S. are those that are directly controlled and governed by the state or federal government. Nearly all private institutions accept some kinds of state funding, including federal financial aid, which means that they must comply with many government laws and policies (a handful of institutions explicitly refuse to accept state funding so they don't have to comply with those laws and policies, especially those with extreme political or religious views whose practices would otherwise be unlawful). But they still have their own privately-appointed or -selected governing bodies so they're not public institutions. ElKevbo (talk) 20:56, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 21:03, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Should we keep the data that the University of Phoenix is self reporting if it is significantly different than what appears in the NCES College Navigator? Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 01:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we need a section on the University of Phoenix and student loan debt. The number of University of Phoenix debtors is in the many hundreds of thousands. Collegemeltdown2 (talk) 21:43, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

I propose that material found in the article about Phoenix's lawsuits and controversies be split into a separate page called Litigation and controversies of the University of Phoenix. The content within the article is large and well-sourced enough to make its own page, lowering byte count on the main article. Additionally, there appear to be more pieces to expand the proposed page with. I started a draft to compile each sourced piece that could make up it's own article. 30Four (talk) 05:24, 27 March 2026 (UTC)