During Apollo’s 12-year quest to enter the third-biggest state, founder John Sperling raised money for Eliot Spitzer’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, and the company hired Mel Miller, former speaker of the New York Assembly, as a lobbyist.
New York has blocked Phoenix’s bid for a Manhattan campus, questioning its academic quality, its dropout rate, how it compensates recruiters, and even its right to call itself a university, according to interviews and documents obtained under a state Freedom of Information Law request. One state review said introductory algebra was less demanding than a high school course. Phoenix has 455,600 undergraduate and graduate students, slightly less than the State University of New York’s 464,981 enrollment.