"We now believe it is in the best interest of our students, faculty, and staff, the community, and our investors that we pursue a not-for-profit model," the company's president, Brian Mueller, said on the company's earnings call Wednesday. Grand Canyon's stock jumped 16% after the call. In some ways, Grand Canyon, which bills itself as a "private Christian school," already looks a lot like a nonprofit college. It was in fact founded as one, but when the nonprofit was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was bought out by investors and turned into a for-profit. It has no history of investigations by states or the federal government, a relative rarity in the industry. It doesn't offer the technical or career-education programs that have typically gotten for-profits in trouble with the government, and that would subject it to regulation under the Obama administration's new gainful employment rules, which were set to cripple some other for-profits unless they stripped away many of their offerings.