Rebel with a Cause: The Entrepreneur Who Created the University of Phoenix and the For-Profit Revolution in Higher Education - Hardcover

by Sperling (Author)

Born to a Missouri sharecropping couple, John Sperling discovered books at sea as a merchant marine. He returned to college and earned a doctorate from Cambridge, but found academic life too stifling. Driven by a vision of a new for-profit university that would offer adults a second chance at higher education, he returned to America and, aged 52, created the University of Phoenix. Less than 25 years later, Phoenix is the largest university in America. This book tells the story of Sperling's astounding success. It relates a dramatic personal success story, from merchant marine to academic professor and business entrepreneur, and offers insights into the unique strategies that have made the University of Phoenix an academic and stock market success. Sperling expounds his erudite views on self-funding universities, examining the intersection of business and education policy.

Front Jacket

The three behaviors that have served me bestin my career as union organizer and entrepreneur are implacable opportunism, joy in conflict, and getting a thrill from taking risks-none of them a safe ride.-John Sperling
A little over twenty years ago, professor John Sperling designed a program that would allow working adults to earn a college degree in the same time it took full-time students on campus. This venture not only challenged many of the sacred tenets of academe, it also provoked a hostile opposition that bordered on rage.
Realizing that a new, independent structure was necessary for his revolutionary ideas to survive, Sperling abandoned his academic career to found what would become the nation's largest and fastest-growing private university-making him, at age fifty-three, a very late-blooming entrepreneur and, at age seventy-three, an IPO megamillionaire.
Rebel With A Cause is the dramatic tale of how a man born into poverty went on to establish the for-profit Institute for Professional Development, the University of Phoenix, and Apollo Group, America's largest higher education company. Here, Sperling tells his remarkable story for the first time. He was ostracized by his peers for debasing higher education and faced an unrelenting effort by the defenders of traditional education to destroy him by regulation. He recounts his successful battles to defend his vision of adult higher education from enemies in the academy, in the accrediting associations, in state and federal bureaucracies, and in the press.
This book offers a revealing look at a man whose radical behavior-challenging authority, ignoring the advice of experts-could have been his undoing, but instead enabled him to tap into the skyrocketing market of adult education and turn it into an innovative, for-profit industry. It explores how he grew the University and its subsidiaries into what is now known as Apollo Group, which boasts over 125,000 students, an annual growth rate of 25 percent, and 1999 revenues of $500 million.
Rebel With A Cause also provides an enlightening glimpse of the intersection of business and education policy, examining Sperling's contrarian view of running higher education like a business-and, in the process, keeping America competitive. His cost-effective model, developed during the birth of the University of Phoenix, shows how the nation must adapt its education policy in order to produce skilled employees capable of competing in today's information economy.
The unforgettable story of the man who redefined American higher education, Rebel With A Cause offers wisdom and inspiration, teaching lessons all business professionals and educators would do well to heed.

Back Jacket

A great life and a great read . . .-George Soros
"A remarkably cogent story of a most remarkable man. Sperling's openness about problems and failures inspires and informs the entrepreneurial spirit. Sperling describes the extraordinary power and potential of focused human intensity. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in starting or building a business."-Peter Lewis, Chairman and CEO, The Progressive Corporation
"The University of Phoenix is the largest private university in the United States. It is fully accredited and traded on NASDAQ. Mere mention of its name produces anger, fear, and envy on the nation's college campuses. In the private sector, it has inspired scores of companies to enter the education market. This is the story of the entrepreneur who launched a revolution in higher education."-Arthur Levine, President, Teacher's College, Columbia University
"Education will be one of the key growth sectors of our knowledge-based economy over the next ten years. John Sperling, founder and Chairman of Apollo Group, has been one of the visionary driving forces behind this growth. By developing a unique customer-focused model of higher education, Dr. Sperling has helped to build the largest private university in the United States that continues to be one of the best growth opportunities in education today."-Thomas Weisel, President & CEO, Thomas Weisel Partners, LLC