What do former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have in common?
They have gotten behind Campus, an accredited, two-year, for-profit college that is trying to change how community college works in the U.S. Atlanta is a key part of that vision, with the company slated to create hundreds of jobs in the city.
Campus was founded by Atlanta-born entrepreneur Tade Oyerinde with a goal of making online learning social and engaging. Campus offers associate degrees in business and classes are taught live online by professors who are also adjuncts at universities such as Princeton, Howard and Stanford.
Students receive a laptop, Wi-Fi access, tutoring in math and writing and a coach to help keep them on track. Oyerinde said students need what his mom provided for him when he was in school.
“They need a success coach, you know, who basically can play the role that my Nigerian mother played,” Oyerinde, who also serves as the school’s chancellor, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Whenever I was slacking, she’d kick my ass. And whenever I was, like, questioning myself, she’d be a shoulder to cry on and supportive person and keep me going.”
The startup is headquartered in New York and has about 270 employees. It opened an office in Atlanta this week that will serve as its student impact hub, meaning most of Campus’ student success coaches and other student support staff will be located in the city.
There are 71 employees in the Atlanta office, but Campus plans to hire about 200 more by the end of 2026.
“You are redefining the college experience, and after today, Atlanta will really play a key role in your journey going forward,” Mayor Andre Dickens said Tuesday evening at the ribbon cutting for Campus’ office in Buckhead.
Oyerinde founded the first iteration of Campus in 2016 when he started building live, online learning software. But he quickly saw there were deeper problems in higher education.
He met an adjunct professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who lived out of his office five days a week because he couldn’t afford to live near the campus. That encounter changed the trajectory of Oyerinde’s company.
“I thought, ‘Man, there’s got to be a better way,’ … and so what if we, you know, could get a lot of people to get to learn from these amazing faculty?” he said.
So he pivoted to creating a different kind of online, two-year degree program. Campus acquired an accredited community college in California in 2022 and later that year started offering online associate degrees.
If a student enrolls full time in four quarters a year, tuition costs just shy of $10,000. Campus has about 2,000 active students, Oyerinde said.
In March, Campus announced it had raised $46 million from investors, which brought its total investment to more than $100 million over the past six years. Former Morehouse College President John Wilson is the chair of Campus’ board, which is filled with other former higher education leaders.
Since winter 2022, about 50 students have graduated with associate degrees, according to Oyerinde. The graduation rate has ranged between 42% to 44% for cohorts that have finished the program, he said — a number similar to national averages but one Campus wants to bring to greater than 50%.
Students have gone on to be accepted to colleges like New York University and the University of California system.
There is a certain irony in a company that offers online classes not being fully remote itself. Oyerinde said, “When you’re trying to do something really difficult that’s never been done before, that’s extremely stressful and requires a lot of collaborative innovation.”
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