Pros
Really good people in San Francisco office who bring a wealth of experience (marketing, creative, strategic, digital) to the table. Good downtown office location close to all public transportation. The new Phoenix offices are nice and overall the employees there are a close knit group who support each other. It is one of the few large employers in Arizona to offer domestic partner benefits, so there is a good diversity of employees.
Cons
At the heart of the issue, this is a company divided between corporate and education foci and goals. Corporate and the myriad educational campuses/offices across the country see things differently and they clash. The company is mired in its 1980s mindset when University of Phoenix was a leader and game changer in online higher ed for working adults. Now it's an also-ran locked in battle with the federal government for bad business practices, using an outdated learning platform and refusing to change longstanding practices (e.g. Learning Teams) that are causing students to leave. Well-respected brick & mortar universities are offering many of the same distance learning options that University of Phoenix pioneered, and offering a good reputation and state of the art online tools. Rather than focus on core business issues, the execs create chaos by changing out key positions every year or two (3 CMOs in 3 years, firing the very well-respected University President). With each change, there are cascading effects such as reorgs and changes in employee policy (eg. work from home suddenly not allowed). HR in Phoenix is housed behind a locked door with a single land line phone placed outside the door, on which an employee has to dial an exact extension to receive an answer. As of 2014 there were no guidelines for titles and salaries so a Director might be someone with a few years experience and no direct reports, or might be someone with decades of experience managing a team of people. There have been years of lay offs with very little communication from the top, so there is an overriding feel of paranoia and waiting for the next round of lay offs. It's a work situation guaranteed to bring out the worst in people.
