Arizona State creates another subsidiary, called Cintana Education and led by the founder of Laureate Education, to work with universities in other countries to expand online and campus programs.
Arizona State University is creating another unusually structured subsidiary, this time a “global university network” designed to help foreign universities expand their online and campus-based programs.
The new Cintana Education, which was publicly unveiled today, will be headed by Douglas Becker, a big name in internationally focused higher education.
Becker is the founder and former CEO of Laureate Education, who stepped down as CEO at the end of 2017. The Baltimore-based Laureate is a large for-profit university campus network, currently enrolling roughly 875,000 students at 25 institutions and more than 150 campuses around the world.
Like Laureate, Cintana will be a public benefit corporation. That status, which several for-profits have sought and secured in recent years, is a legal distinction that allows companies to focus less on generating profits for shareholders and to instead emphasize strategies aimed at benefiting the public — such as pursuing social justice or environmental goals.