A once-struggling private college with just a few hundred students in Clinton, Iowa, is now part of a rapidly growing, predominantly online education company that boasts more than 45,000 students, the recently released earnings report for Bridgepoint Education says.

Ashford University, formerly Mount St. Clare College, is one of two campuses for the publicly traded Bridgepoint. The company doubled its enrollment in the past year. It is expecting almost 50,000 students by December.

Ninety-nine percent of Bridgepoint students take their classes entirely online. Forty percent are minorities, said Chief Executive Officer Andrew Clark in a recent conference call discussing the company's earnings.

The campus in Clinton has 637 students who take traditional classes at the school, which is almost double the on-campus enrollment when Bridgepoint bought Ashford for $9 million in 2005. At the time, 20 of the school's 332 students were enrolled in its new online program.

University of the Rockies, bought in 2007, has 137 students at its campus and about 60 enrolled online.

"These long-established campuses serve as an important recruitment and retention tool ... as well as a competitive differentiator," Clark said in the earnings conference call. "The feedback we receive through our student satisfaction surveys show that taking online classes from a traditional college with a strong heritage is one of the top reasons they choose to pursue a degree from Ashford University."

Bridgepoint went public in April. Since then, its share price has almost doubled.

Its competitors include the University of Phoenix, which has more than 400,000 students, Davenport-based Kaplan University, which has 68,000 students, and DeVry, which enrolls about the same number of students as Bridgepoint.

There are several other reasons for the growth, including Bridgepoint's reaching out to military families and displaced auto workers, Clark said. A recent alumni survey indicated that they recommend Bridgepoint to others and that they earn on average $41,000 to $51,000 a year.

And since the beginning of the year, Ashford has added two majors, seven minors and 17 specializations, officials said.

The company expects to hire an additional 150 "enrollment advisers" this year, in addition to the 275 already hired in 2009, Clark said. As of December, Bridgepoint had almost 3,000 employees at its bases in California, Iowa and Colorado.

Five nuns from the founding order continue to work at Ashford, officials said. The Sisters of St. Francis founded the school in 1918.

Since last year, almost $4 million in renovations have been made to the Ashford campus, officials said. Improvements included changes to the residence halls, the bookstore, classrooms and student gathering areas.

Keith Caldwell, a senior majoring in criminal justice, said the changes have made the campus a more comfortable place to be.

Caldwell arrived at Ashford three years ago as a transfer student. When he started college, he thought he would earn an associate's degree and then enter the work force. He now plans to go to law school.

Ashford provided him several opportunities to be involved in leadership. For example, he is the president of the Student Government Association and a resident assistant in one of the dorms.

He's noticed the increase of students at Ashford. The number of students living in the dorms, he noted, has doubled in his time there. Yet, it retains its small-school feel, he said.

"I know every single person here by name," he said. "Having that makes you feel at home."