So we know there’s a little bit of a risk involved there but we are very bullish on what goes on here and its impact on students and families and the economy.
Daniel Bachus: Do you have any — Brian, I think he was asking, do you have any thoughts on why Discover visits are up so much? Is the university brand growing nationally?
Brian Mueller: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. The value proposition that we have here is — people are responding to that given inflation. And if you’re doubting the return on investment for going to college, it’s becoming really — it’s becoming more well known that you can get involved here, graduate in 3 years, graduate with less debt than the average state university students. Our parent loan amounts are 50% of the parent loan amounts for in-state, our in-state institutions. And so if you’re at all questioning the value of going into $100,000 or $150,000 worth of debt or go to college, you don’t have to do that going here. And so the interest — that’s what’s primarily driving the interest and the willingness of people to take the time to come here and visit.
Unidentified Analyst: No, that makes sense. I appreciate the color. And then, Brian, I think you said start on a fifth pillar in terms of traditional age students being a program online, I guess — did I hear that correctly? And then b, how would that be different than your GCU Online program?
Brian Mueller: We — right now, the students that are 18 years old or 19 years old and want to earn a degree in business or earn a degree in education and they want to do it from home, they really start in the same program that our 35-year-old started, our working adult students. There’s not much difference in those things. What we’re working on is eventually a fifth platform that would take into consideration the students are younger, they have lesser work experience, they bring less to the classroom in terms of that work experience. And so over time, we might differentiate those 2 groups a little bit more than we do today. Today, we basically put them in the same program that, for example, a 32-year-old would go into if they were to return to college, they want to earn a degree in one of those areas.
So there’s not much difference today. But the fact that we are able to do it in the way that we do it differentiates us. If you’re living in wherever state in the country, and you’re thinking, I want to go to college, but I’m okay staying home. I’ve got a network of friends. I’ve got a good part-time job, I’m making $20 an hour. I can do this from home, at least for a year or maybe longer. There’s not a lot of institutions that give you the ability to do that. And so as we look at traditional age students, we want to grow our ground campus to 50,000 students. But for those students that are that age that want to stay home, we have an opportunity to serve them as well, whereas most institutions don’t. So we’ll work on both those lines.
Unidentified Analyst: Thank you very much.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Alex Paris with Barrington Research. Your line is now open.
Alex Paris: Thank you for taking my question. I just had a follow-up on the hybrid campus, a lot of information. I was writing as fast as I could. So hybrid, you had a 3.3% decline in total enrollment during the fourth quarter but fall, new student was up in the high single digits. You’re expecting, and I’m just trying to get some clarification. New student enrollment growth in the spring and the summer are expected to be up over 20% and you expect total student enrollment to inflect positive in the first quarter among the hybrid campus.
Brian Mueller: Correct.
Daniel Bachus: You got it right, Alex.
Alex Paris: All right. Thank you. And then with regard to the site closures. Of your 24 partnerships, only two have not responded to the advanced standing students’ proposition, and that led to the closure of these two sites and the discontinuing of business with these two institutions, right?
Brian Mueller: That’s correct.
Alex Paris: And then you had one other that you were closing just because it was below expectations, which then led to you discontinuing business with that. So you’ve gone from 24 partners to 21 partners within the hybrid pillar.
Daniel Bachus: One point of clarification. The last one is a partner that had multiple locations and the decision was made this quarter to close one of their multiple locations. So we are only decreasing our partners — a number of partners by two.
Alex Paris: Okay. Good. Thank you for that. Now your goal is to have 80 site locations, 40 of which will be GCE locations with 25 partners. So you expect to add based on that target, three net new university partners in the hybrid pillar.
Brian Mueller: That’s an approximate number. There are areas of the country and states where it’s easier to operate with an existing institution in that state than for GCU to get in that state. And for those states, we will add an additional partner. The difference is this time, as we add additional partners, it will be with the common understanding that the place we really need to focus is on those 19-, 20- and 21-year old students who’ve earned 30 college credits. They don’t have a lot of debt accumulated from a previous degree program. And so they’re very open to doing their pre-requisite work online and then pay what they need to pay in order to earn the degree in nursing. And so we won’t sign another partner who doesn’t come with that understanding, in that agreement that they will admit those students.
