Is GCU accredited, and is it still for-profit?

Accreditation

For a nurse, CCNE is the accreditation that matters. It is what state boards and employers look for, and what graduate programmes expect to see when you apply onward. It is in place across the nursing portfolio, not merely at one level.

The for-profit question, with a date on it

If you have read that GCU is for-profit, or that its nonprofit status was disputed, that was accurate when it was written and is now out of date.

GCU's nonprofit status had already been recognised by the IRS, the Higher Learning Commission, the State of Arizona, the Arizona Board for Private Postsecondary Education and the NCAA. The US Department of Education was the outlier, and that dispute ran for years.

We flag this because search results are slow to catch up. Someone looking into GCU today will surface years of coverage of an active dispute and reasonably conclude it is ongoing. It is not.

What this does and does not tell you

• It does not, on its own, make a programme good or bad - plenty of excellent nursing education has been delivered under both statuses
• It does resolve a question that was legitimately open, and that many people were told to weigh
• It changes nothing about the CCNE accreditation, which was never in question

Accreditation status can change. If you are relying on it for licensure or for onward study, verify the current position with GCU and with your own state board before you enrol.