In a radio interview posted today, University of Idaho president C. Scott Green appeared to indicate that the proposed deal for his school to acquire the for-profit giant University of Phoenix is not going to happen.

While Green said the action “is still in Phoenix’s court,” he admitted his school “never got the green light” from the state legislature to proceed. 

The two sides last year set a deadline of June 10, 2025, to conclude the purchase, but it didn’t seem likely it would happen without some action from the legislature. And there was none this year. The legislature adjourned on April 4. 

Green referenced a recent Bloomberg report that Phoenix’s current private equity owners, led by Apollo Global Management, are now considering a public stock offering for the school, which unnamed sources told Bloomberg might raise $1.5 to $1.7 billion. Describing Idaho’s purchase offer as $550 million (other calculations pegged it at $685), Green said, “you can understand why they might go that route.”

“We’re still watching and talking to ’em and hopeful that in the long run there’s still a role with the University of Phoenix,” Green said. But he admitted,”Right now it looks like they’re trying to go public.” He added, “My guess is they will probably be successful” with a public offering.

Green noted that if Phoenix’s owners ended talks with Idaho, the state school would get breakup money. The arrangement provided that, if negotiations failed, Phoenix’s owners would give Green’s school up to $20 million to help cover the high-priced legal and consulting fees Green incurred for advice on the deal.

Theoretically, Phoenix’s owners could be interested in an extension past the June deadline to make other potential buyers believe they are competing with Idaho. But if Apollo is really pursuing the IPO option, that seems less relevant.

Asked about an Idaho Education News report noting that the 2025 Idaho state legislative session had ended without any legislation or hearing addressing the Phoenix deal, Green said, “In fairness, we never submitted legislation to get the ball rolling again.”

Questioned on what he might have done differently to make the Idaho-Phoenix deal happen, Green said he wasn’t sure if he could have done anything, because “politics doesn’t always make sense to us.” So, he said, “You move on.”

The proposed deal, announced in 2023, has been thwarted again and again by Idahoans, with negative votes in the legislature during its 2024 session, a successful court challenge by the state’s attorney general, criticism from the state treasurer, and sharp scrutiny from news outlets in the state.

Critics noted numerous uncertainties regarding the deal, which Green touted as a big potential moneymaker for his school. Some stressed, as we have, that the University of Phoenix has repeatedly gotten in trouble with law enforcement for deceiving students and that Phoenix’s buyer might end up assuming massive liability for student loan debt the government has cancelled for past abuses at the school. 

Apollo Global Management may feel more confident in an IPO than it did a year ago. Investor interest in for-profit college operations has increased some — as reflected in stock prices of the few remaining public companies in the sector — since Donald Trump was elected for a second term.

In Trump’s first term, education secretary Betsy DeVos stocked her team with former for-profit college executives and terminated regulations and enforcement efforts aimed at curbing predatory college abuses. A likely repeat of that approach, coupled with the DOGE gutting of the Department of Education, and the general corrupt, transactional nature of Trump II (some key for-profit college executives have donated big to Trump and the GOP), suggests a wild west environment where for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix can return to deceiving students and fleecing taxpayers for billions every year, without consequence. 

But state attorneys general, who have curbed and even slayed a number of for-profit giants over a decade, are watching; the media understands this issue, as it did not in the last wild west era fifteen years ago; and more potential students are wary after a generation of abuses. So it may end up being much tougher to thrive in the predatory college business than some might think. And although many for-profit barons have escaped from the industry’s scandals with billions, a good number of them have faced public condemnation for their awful misconduct. A similar deal through which the University of Arizona acquired another big predatory for-profit college has proved disastrous for the University of Arizona and its now-former president.

C. Scott Green may never admit it, but in the long term he may have lucked out here.