By Laurie Davies

Mention the name John Sperling and the reaction is visceral. Traditional academics condemn him a firebrand and Wall Street crowns him a genius. Despised by those he rankles and revered by those he employs, Sperling is like the eye of a storm—calm and focused despite the controversy surrounding the innovation he inspires.

About him there is no lukewarm—fitting for a man who would sooner have plunged himself into financial ruin by taking a risk than settle for a safe, unsatisfying middle ground. Legions of students love him. And even his harshest critics credit him with what is true: He forever changed the landscape of higher education in America.

In founding University of Phoenix, Sperling ignited a revolution that gave working adults access to higher education during a time when opportunities were limited. Because of him, thousands of students hold college degrees who otherwise would not. It’s not that he made degrees easy to get—he simply changed the rules by which adults earned them.

University of Phoenix students did coursework on schedules that worked for them. They learned from faculty and fellow students who discussed at night what they did during the day. The tenured “sage on the stage” was gone. The benefits of group learning were uncovered.

Forced to rethink its failure to educate working adults, traditional academia followed Sperling’s suit—albeit kicking and screaming. Today, most major colleges and universities offer degree programs based in some fashion on the University of Phoenix model.

This year, University of Phoenix celebrates its 30th anniversary. It’s an amazing story—one that can hardly be separated from the life of its never-say-die founder.

Like many of his students, Sperling was nearly 40 by the time he dug into his career. At 53, an age when some take early retirement, he became an entrepreneur. And now, at 85, Father Time seems hardly to have slowed him.

Back at the helm as University of Phoenix Chairman, he insists there’s little time to bask in the glow of three decades of success. In fact, he gets bored stiff sitting still. So, fasten your seat belt and get ready for a look into what made the man what he is—a master innovator, a wildly successful CEO and a staunch defender of unpopular causes.

A bumpy beginning

In some ways, the story of University of Phoenix unfolds as did Sperling’s life. Both had to bite and scratch simply for survival. Indeed, before the university’s story can be told, a glimpse into the years that shaped its founder may give uncommon perspective.

The story begins just as Hollywood would script it. Sperling was born—no kidding—in a Missouri log cabin in 1921. His family ate mostly what came from the garden, the henhouse and two milk cows. His almost-always-workless father inspired his mother to her daily refrain, “We’re all going to starve to death.” Add constant sibling quarreling to the mix, and that was the music of their home.

A forward-thinking man, Sperling finds it tedious to look back. “My childhood was hard only in retrospect,” he says, understating the fact that his years spent in poverty underpin his desire to help working adults improve their lots in life today through education.

Perhaps, he opines, in the moments when fear set in, an entrepreneur was born. Spunk and tenacity broke the pattern set before him. He had fight.

“A middle-class kid grows up, gets tutored, is taken to soccer games and is prepped for college. Poverty forced me to work hard because I didn’t have anything to start with,” Sperling says. “In fact, it forced me to work my ass off the rest of my life.”

First, that meant catching up academically and socially.

Sperling escaped high school in 1939 barely able to read and with no self-esteem—hardly promising qualities for a young graduate during the Great Depression. He joined the Merchant Marine, where he learned to read and regained some social self-confidence. He enrolled in college, and, with four years in the Armed Forces punctuating his higher education, he graduated from Reed College in 1948.

He went on to University of California at Berkeley, earned a three-year studentship at King’s College Cambridge, and by 1955, he was John Sperling, Ph.D., Cantab.

Having attained academic success and having caught the eye of women—although he admits that he has been a much better ex-husband than he ever was a husband—Sperling was out of his shell.

The birth of an idea

That University of Phoenix is somewhat a reflection of Sperling’s personality may seem too broad an interpretation for some. Yet, both the man and his mission required years to unfold.

It was during a 12-year professorship at San Jose State University in California that Sperling unknowingly began laying groundwork for the university. His work as a teachers’ union organizer imparted political skill. His backing of a controversial student-led car burial on Earth Day proved he could handle serious scrutiny. Various grant-funded projects gave him a testing ground for educational ideas that would prove to be revolutionary.

“The first phase of my life provided the raw material from which character is made,” Sperling says of his upbringing. “The second phase—gaining an education—provided a route out of that hardship.”

In 1972, at the age of 51, he got a federal grant to lower the juvenile delinquency rate in Sunnyvale, Calif. “We got teachers and cops into a series of seminars to figure out what to do,” he says. Classes were divided into small groups that had to design, conduct and evaluate a specific project relating to juvenile delinquency. Learning was fun, and their appetite for it grew. The students asked Sperling to develop a degree program for them.

“I thought, ‘That’s not a bad idea,’” he says. After all, in the 1970s, higher-education opportunities for working adults were few. Yet these adults really wanted to learn and earn degrees.

“Adults could go to school at night for years, sit with 18-year-olds and try to pass classes. With great persistence, they might obtain a degree in six to 10 years,” Sperling says. “But this didn’t fit their needs. These adults had families, years of on-the-job experience and even corporate training, but academia ignored all that.”

Still, no sooner had Sperling pitched his idea than it was squashed. “San Jose State’s academic V.P. said, ‘Forget it John. It will never happen.’”

The word “never” inspired Sperling to seek a second opinion and do it anyway. “I had a colleague at Stanford. He told me that no financially healthy institution would innovate. They didn’t have to,” Sperling recalls. “So, he helped me find a private school in financial difficulty that would.”

Stalemate

Sperling left San Jose State and formed a company devoted to making education available to the working community. “Obviously this was needed. The question was how to do it within the constraints of adults’ work and personal lives. How could I get across all the material they would need to learn, but compress it?”

Sperling pitched Bachelor of Arts in Public Service and Master of Arts in Education programs to the president of University of San Francisco. He predicted he could add between 500 and 600 adult students to University of San Francisco’s rolls—big money for a school on the verge of financial ruin.

The president signed a contract, yet no dean would house the programs. Thus, students could not enroll. This pitted Sperling, a willing president and eager students—who, by the way, had made $40,000 worth of checks out to the struggling university—against traditionalist deans.

A man of lesser spirit might have folded, but Sperling did what comes hard for him. He waited. He knew that the university needed his students and their money.

Finally, by October, University of San Francisco could not make payroll. And the cops and teachers were on their way to degrees.

Early scrutiny

Sperling’s model took off. Other schools signed contracts with his company, the Institute for Professional Development (IPD). In its first year, IPD had $210,297 in revenue. In the second year, revenue was $2.8 million.

With success, however, came scrutiny and envy. From the start, Sperling’s educational ideas challenged academia, and they closed ranks. “Skepticism was total in the academic community,” he says. “Critics said I was letting people cheat their way to a quick degree.” Competitors refused to recognize IPD credits. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), the accrediting agency for California schools, mounted a campaign to shut IPD down. The press almost uniformly charged Sperling with running a diploma mill. State education officials began a campaign of regulatory harassment.

Yet at every turn, Sperling could demonstrate that the group model he espoused was leading students to measurable learning outcomes.

“The bottom line really was that I was challenging sacred principles,” Sperling says. “Students worked in groups, and we accommodated their needs rather than faculty needs. We had an untenured faculty of working professionals who taught at night what they did during the day. They were not gods, the fount of all wisdom. They were there to learn with students,” Sperling says.

Doing battle

Sperling calls the period between 1976 and 1978 a time of brutal struggle between the higher education establishment and an idea.

His idea.

Playing the accreditation trump card, the WASC ultimately muscled IPD out of California. So Sperling took flight to Phoenix, determined to deliver his educational model. He applied for accreditation for University of Phoenix with the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges. This move only added Phoenix city leaders to his list of enemies. They were shocked that Sperling’s upstart group would usurp their city’s name.

Just as in California, the university’s battle for survival in Phoenix would eventually go through the regional accrediting agency, university leaders, educational bureaucracies and the Arizona legislature.

But Sperling did not cower. In fact, he met attacks with equal intensity.

“I must confess, I sort of like a fight,” Sperling says. “It’s thrilling. I’m never at my best as much as when I’m in a fight.” He bluntly recalls not “taking any crap” from critics. “I’m not the most polite person in the world. When I get rankled, I’m even less polite than I am normally.”

Yet after 20 minutes of being plied and pried, he finally admits the substance beneath his bravado. “The spark that started the fight was that students desperately wanted to improve their lot in life,” he says. “I am an idealist and for the underdog—having been one. And so I fought for it because I was passionate about it.”

Ultimately, in 1978, University of Phoenix earned accreditation on appeal—something no other university in America had ever done. Now, rather than operating strictly as a contractor with other schools, University of Phoenix began to offer its learning model under its own roof. It controlled its own destiny.

Settling in

In those early years, Sperling’s company was never more than an inch away from death by regulation. Still, he created an environment where his employees could flourish while he did the fighting.

“He fought all those battles behind the scenes. We didn’t have any idea of the battles he was fighting on our behalf. He kept our path clear so we could create,” says Debra Abbott Pain, senior vice president and a university employee since 1978. “He inspired us. He really did. We knew we were in the process of reinventing higher education.”

His early decision to establish the university as for-profit rather than nonprofit continues to raise hackles in academe. But as a man schooled in economic history, his decision was driven by a sincere conviction that a profit structure would impose strict accountabilities which would impact his organization far beyond the financial statements and which he found lacking in public colleges. This “culture of accountability” is evidenced by the university’s robust performance-based environment, which extends from the unapologetic recruitment of students to the rigorous measurement of learning outcomes, which is among the most comprehensive of any college or university in the nation.

Sperling remembered back to his days in college, when he once bought class notes from a professional note-taking service and then spent days in cafés, showing up in class only to take mid-terms and finals. There would be none of that at his university.

In fact, at University of Phoenix, there were rigorous academic expectations. Students worked in learning teams, replicating the way work is done in the real world. They had to conceive, design, execute and report on major projects. In order to graduate, they had to communicate orally and on paper—there were no multiple-choice questions to fall back on.

The results were twofold: graduates whose careers and livelihoods were enhanced, and a university that could stand on its own record. “In my study group we had a finance person, a banker, an insurer and a small business owner. I didn’t have to pay experts. I was going to school with them,” says Kathy Abbott, a 40-year-old small business owner who earned her Master of Business Administration degree in 2003.

In fact, her study group used Abbott’s female athletic apparel company as part of their class project. The result? Marketing and business strategies that have landed her products in retail stores nationwide.

Second, Sperling’s emphasis on measuring learning outcomes helped University of Phoenix answer nagging critics.

“John has never tried to fly under the radar,” says longtime employee Abbott Pain. “He created an educational model that is scrutinized by more organizations and industries than any other. We are evaluated and assessed by everyone, but he has made sure we pass every test. He welcomes the scrutiny.”

Lasting legacy

In 30 years, Sperling has never ceased to innovate. He single-handedly changed the way higher education treats adult learners. He launched online education years before the advent of the World Wide Web.

Even today, as a change in demographics to a younger, working population is driving demand, Sperling innovates. His university’s new two-year program, Axia College of University of Phoenix, is tailored to “echo boom” or Gen-Y learners. “These younger students are working at the Gap or flipping hamburgers and going to school. Unlike the original group we dealt with—the older adult—they haven’t figured out how to be responsible for their own learning. So we’ll teach them how to be students, then we’ll provide plenty of support while they’re earning their degrees,” he says.

This spirit of innovation—along with a refreshing lack of founder’s syndrome that frees him to delegate the day-to-day management—has undoubtedly driven the university’s success.

Today, Sperling’s Apollo Group employs more than 32,000 faculty and staff and educates 310,000 classroom and online students in 39 states and more than 130 countries. It offers 27 associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in a variety of specialties including nursing, criminal justice, business administration, management and marketing. In 30 years, it has graduated more than 250,000 adults.

If imitation is the best form of flattery, Sperling should be pleased. Today, most educational institutions offer programs tailored to adult higher education. Yet this backside of the reform he inspired draws a wry, even counterintuitive response.

“I don’t like it,” Sperling quips. “I wish they would all go back to their traditional way of doing things.”

As for being labeled the man who redefined higher education in America, Sperling simply says, “I don’t mind it.”

Maybe he has a hard time talking about himself. Maybe all cylinders are clicking forward, making it nearly impossible to reflect on the past. Whatever it is, when asked of his legacy, he simply says, “Legacy schmegacy.”

Others are more willing to fill in the blanks.

“He absolutely redefined higher education in America,” says Abbott Pain. “Even the naysayers credit him for that. They may credit him in a positive voice or a negative voice, but they credit him.”

In fact, Nina Omelchenko, Senior Vice President for University services and an employee since 1979, says his one-man mission inspired nothing short of a revolution. “He shows the power of one. One man’s vision truly revolutionized a very static industry,” she says.

What comes next?

Certainly, over time, Sperling’s legacy will be multifaceted. In 1994, he took University of Phoenix’s parent company, the Apollo Group, public—reaping an enormous fortune and becoming a Wall Street phenom. While some might have been content to retire, he combined his windfall with purpose.

As a strong supporter of environmental research and reform, Sperling supports research into crop nitrogen efficiency and salt tolerance which holds the promise of reducing toxic fertilizer runoff as well as bringing millions of acres of land back into useful farmland production. His interests in healthy living have driven his investments into Alzheimer’s research, women’s health and cancer, as well as the development of a popular health maintenance company based in Phoenix.

And, perhaps to further indulge his self-professed passion for conflict, Sperling adopted his own war on the War on Drugs. Convinced by data that indicated the “drug wars” were an economic and social failure which led to increased racism and crime, he supported, battled and won 17 state drug law reform initiatives that focus on education and treatment over incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders. “There weren’t many politicians willing to take on this issue, but it turned out that it had broad support among citizens. You don’t change the world by staying in the safety zone,” he says.

“I think people think he is eccentric,” says Omelchenko. “That is the farthest from the truth. He is incredibly bright, innovative and passionate. Because he is willing to take risks, people fear him.”

That he grew up in fear but now inspires it seems ironic. But then again, former union organizer and billionaire hardly fit together like hand in glove.

And for those who look to him for a how-to-succeed-in-business type of model, Sperling doesn’t offer it. He learned more about business from Tom Jones, Emma and The Great Gatsby than from business books. And he encourages no one to follow his path—challenging authority, indifference to the advice of experts, and lack of concern for your reputation—unless he or she is tough and skilled enough to carry it off.

In the end, his recipe for success may have been tailored to a unique man at a unique point in time. But no sooner do such musings take flight than it’s time to move on to the next order of business.

“All right, you’ve got enough now,” he says, rising to leave.

And with that, the interview is done. After all, Sperling gets antsy sitting still. And he has a university to run.

One Man’s Milestones

Highlights from John Sperling’s extraordinary life.

• 1921 Begins life in a log cabin in the Missouri Ozarks.
• 1928 Fights numerous bouts of pneumonia, resulting in six months’ forced bed rest.
• 1939 Graduates from high school barely able to read.
• 1939 Joins the Merchant Marine.
• 1948 Receives undergraduate degree from Reed College.
• 1955 Earns doctorate from King’s College Cambridge.
• 1960 Begins 12-year stint as a professor at San Jose State University.
• 1972 Develops new theories on academic benefits of group learning after receiving a federal grant to prevent juvenile delinquency.
• 1974 Turns ideas into reality by founding Institute for Professional Development.
• 1976 Meets resistance in California, moves to Arizona and creates University of Phoenix.
• 1978 Gains accreditation for University of Phoenix.
• 1989 Establishes Online Campus of University of Phoenix.
• 1994 Takes Apollo Group, parent company of University of Phoenix, public.
• 2004 Launches Axia College, an online program for young adults.
• 2006 Returns to helm of University of Phoenix as chairman.

A Profit or Not?

Want to make a traditional academic squirm? Mention “for-profit education.”

Never mind that it takes money to have solid curricula, great faculty and innovative ideas. Never mind that universities must operate in the black.

Still, from John Sperling’s early decision to launch University of Phoenix as a for-profit university, people have wondered why.

The short answer is control and accountability. The longer answer has unfolded over the years.

While teaching at San Jose State in the 1960s, Sperling led a faculty union that exploded from a couple hundred members to 9,000. Despite his success, members ousted him and he watched 10 years of masterful organizing go down the drain.

“I vowed to never, ever again devote myself to a nonprofit entity, which it is impossible to control completely,” he says.

He has never regretted the decision.

He says that managing University of Phoenix as a business has led to greater accountability, both internally and to stockholders, the SEC and the IRS.

Additionally, for-profit universities—of which University of Phoenix is the largest— have an established history of providing access to higher education, employing a strong social mission and introducing innovation that improves education.

“The motives of the for-profits are often over-simplified as having no further interests past making a buck,” Sperling says. “The truth is, University of Phoenix is much more. It’s what education looks like in the 21st century: efficient, accountable, responsive, portable and very effective.”