Grand Canyon Education Inc., the privately held parent company of Grand Canyon University, plans to go public with an initial public offering of $230-million in stock, according to a filing on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a memorandum to employees, Brent Richardson, the company’s chief executive officer, said the university would become a publicly traded entity on the Nasdaq stock market. Backers of the IPO include Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch.

A group of investors purchased the financially struggling Grand Canyon University in 2004, creating the first for-profit Christian college. Since then, enrollment has increased by 10,000, most of them online, and the university’s finances have stabilized, the Phoenix Business Journal reported. —Hurley Goodall