The largest group was from the business community - old economy businesses as well as a bewildering variety of cutely named dot coms. By contrast, corporate universities are the in-house training arms of corporations not otherwise in the education business. Both numbers are rising. In Australia they are mainly represented through multinationals such as the major consultancy firms, although there are some locals. Qantas College, for example, provides online courses for Qantas staff.
Purists deny they are universities at all.
Strictly speaking the purists are right. Most do not award degrees or diplomas that are other than self-accredited. They are managed quite separately from the corporation's research and development department, and in that sense do no research. Often there are no classrooms or campus, with tuition instead via the workplace desktop. Nor do they provide structured time and space to reflect on fundamental questions of meaning and reality, or to indulge the love of learning for its own sake.