Gambling that he could take the adult-education curriculum that San Jose State had rejected and make it succeed elsewhere, Sperling set about putting his ideas to work. He sought out the vice president of development at Stanford University, a man named Frank Newman, who threw a dash of reality onto his ambitions. Newman warned that educational bureaucracies innovate only out of fiscal desperation. In a letter, he advised Sperling to "find a school in financial trouble and convince the people running it that your program will generate a profit." Sperling found the University of San Francisco, a cash-strapped, Jesuit-run institution that became his first client.
Newman's advice was appealing. For starters, Sperling was itching to test his vision in the marketplace. "Either we'd grow or we'd die," he says. "The market is a jungle, and I love it." But there was an equally compelling motivator for making his enterprise a for-profit effort. After losing control of the United Professors of California, the union that he had built almost single-handedly, he vowed that he would never again lead a nonprofit, "which some board could yank away from me." By launching a corporation -- the forerunner of his Apollo Group -- he would control his own destiny. At age 53, Sperling became the thing that he had cursed for so many years: a businessman.
His program at USF proved to be an "immediate financial success." His biggest challenge was handling the growth. But soon, a larger problem loomed. As he signed up other schools, word spread among California's regulators that Sperling had committed the ultimate blasphemy: He had dragged the profit motive into the ivory tower. His assault on academic orthodoxy, recalls Sperling, "was met with hostility bordering on rage. If they could have killed me, they would have."
Sperling had sparked a culture war that pitted his notion of a radically different learning system against California's higher-education establishment. In many academic circles, his vision of a stripped down, utilitarian curriculum that provided working adults with real-world tools and information was viewed as a naked attempt to dethrone the professorate.
Although he was a tenured professor at San Jose State, Sperling forbade tenure in his own programs. (Even now, the faculty consists primarily of 8,000 professionals who teach at night what they do for work by day.) He banned lectures and developed standardized courses. The University of Phoenix's curriculum is built around peer-based learning groups where the instructor isn't exactly viewed as a fount of knowledge. "The faculty member is an equal in the classroom," says Sperling. "His job isn't to expound wisdom, it's to serve a learning group."
Bureaucrats and politicians branded Sperling's operation a diploma mill, and after a futile five-year battle to win accreditation, he abandoned California and decamped to Phoenix, where he thought regulators would be more receptive. But his struggles in Arizona proved to be just as vicious as they were in California. It wasn't until 1979 -- after an all-out campaign waged in the media, the Arizona state legislature, and the conference rooms of higher-education regulators -- that Sperling's newly named University of Phoenix was finally accredited. Still, the fights continue. Today, the Apollo Group retains an army of 30 political lobbyists to help Sperling further his dream of building a for-profit, global university.
The University of Phoenix's main campus sits on a side road just off of Interstate 10. Three red-brick buildings, which house classrooms and administrative offices, cluster around a courtyard that's ringed with conifers. And that's it. There's no student center, no fine-arts buildings, no athletic center. In a school that offers undergraduate and graduate-degree programs in business, information technology, accounting, management, marketing, and the like, ivy-covered quads are deemed superfluous. At least, that's one explanation. But in a larger sense, this spartan campus is simply the physical manifestation of Sperling's assault on the traditional college experience. It is the embodiment of his notion of how a university for working adults should look, feel, and function.
In mid-afternoon, when many colleges are bustling with students, the university's courtyard is deserted. All of that changes as night falls and students begin to arrive from their day jobs. As the classrooms fill with thirtysomething and fortysomething professionals dressed for work, the place takes on its true character: that of a corporate campus. The average student is 34 years old and earns between $50,000 and $60,000 a year. About 60% of students receive some tuition reimbursement from their employers, which include such blue-chip behemoths as AT&T, Boeing, IBM, Intel, Lockheed Martin, and Motorola -- not to mention the U.S. military.
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