John Glen Sperling (January 9, 1921 – August 22, 2014) was an American billionaire businessman who is credited with having led the contemporary
for-profit education
For-profit education (also known as the education services industry or proprietary education) refers to educational institutions operated by private, profit-seeking businesses. For-profit education is common in many parts of the world, making up ...
movement in the United States The fortune he amassed was based on his founding of the for-profit
University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix (UoPX) is a private for-profit university headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1976, the university confers certificates and degrees at the certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree lev ...
for working adults in 1976, which became part of the publicly traded
Apollo Group
Apollo Education Group, Inc. is an American corporation based in the South Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona, with an additional corporate office in Chicago, Illinois.
The company owns and operates several higher-learning institutions, including ...
. Sperling brought the
business model
A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-published, 2010 in economic, social, ...
of higher education to the forefront, a model that employed the scientific management of higher education to the forefront: diminishing the power and importance of labor, increasing the importance of technology, marketing and advertising, and as University of Phoenix cofounder John D. Murphy explained, maximizing profit. For ventures ranging from pet cloning to green energy, he has widely been described as an "eccentric"
self-made man
"Self-made man" is a classic phrase coined on February 2, 1842 by Henry Clay in the United States Senate, to describe individuals whose success lay within the individuals themselves, not with outside conditions. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Foun ...
by ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' and other media.
Early life and education
Sperling was born to a poor
sharecropper
Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land.
Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...
family in the
Missouri
Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...
Ozarks
The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant port ...
. His father worked for the railroad and his mother was a
fundamentalist Christian
Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a religious movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and ...
. He spent several years as a sailor in the
merchant marine, and even as a wandering 1950s
beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.
History
In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the undergr ...
. He received his undergraduate education at
Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
,
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
,
a master's degree from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
under the
G.I. Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
, and then went on to read for a
PhD in economic history at
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...
. His doctorate thesis examined 18th-century English
mercantile history.
Entrepreneurship
Apollo Group
Apollo Group () was an
S&P 500
The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of D ...
corporation based in the
South Phoenix
South Phoenix is a region of Phoenix, Arizona. By one definition it encompasses an area south of the Salt River, north of Roeser Road, east of 24th Street, and west of 32nd Street.
History
The first land purchase recorded in South Phoenix occu ...
area of
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...
. Apollo Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owned several for-profit educational institutions before it was acquired by
Apollo Global Management
Apollo Global Management, Inc. is an American global private-equity firm. It provides investment management and invests in credit, private equity, and real assets. As of March 31, 2022, the company had $512 billion of assets under management, ...
and two other companies.
Apollo was founded by John Sperling in 1973. Sperling founded the University of Phoenix in his 50s with no investors and no track record in businesses while facing what he described in his biography as "mean-spirited" opposition from accreditation agencies, competitors, and the press.
The company owned and operated four higher-learning institutions: the
University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix (UoPX) is a private for-profit university headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1976, the university confers certificates and degrees at the certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree lev ...
,
Western International University
Apollo Education Group, Inc. is an American corporation based in the South Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona, with an additional corporate office in Chicago, Illinois.
The company owns and operates several higher-learning institutions, including ...
,
Axia College, the College for Financial Planning, the
Institute for Professional Development. It also owned
Insight Schools (Online Public High Schools for Washington, Wisconsin, and other locations), and
Olympus High School
Olympus High School is a public high school in the Granite School District in Holladay, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City.
Description
The school opened on September 1, 1953, with an original enrollment of 1028 students. In the fall of 1960, th ...
. As of November 2005, the combined enrollment of the four U.S. domestic universities (UOPX, WIU, Axia, CFFP) was approximately 315,350 students. Of these, nearly 90% attended the University of Phoenix, which Apollo Group described as "the nation’s largest regionally accredited
private university
Private universities and private colleges are institutions of higher education, not operated, owned, or institutionally funded by governments. They may (and often do) receive from governments tax breaks, public student loans, and grant (money ...
".
Additionally, Apollo Group, Inc. was the owner of
BPP University
BPP University is a private university in the United Kingdom.
History Name
The university takes its name from the founders Alan Brierley, Richard Price and Charles Prior, who in 1975 set up Brierley Price Prior to train accountancy students. ...
in the United Kingdom. It joined forces with
Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group is a multinational private equity, alternative asset management and financial services corporation based in the United States with $376 billion of assets under management. It specializes in private equity, real assets, and pri ...
to create Apollo Global for investing in education abroad. Apollo Global also purchased UNIACC college in Santiago, Chile and ULA college in Mexico.
University of Phoenix
The University of Phoenix was a
for-profit institution of higher learning. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of
Apollo Group
Apollo Education Group, Inc. is an American corporation based in the South Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona, with an additional corporate office in Chicago, Illinois.
The company owns and operates several higher-learning institutions, including ...
Inc. which was a publicly traded () S&P 500 corporation based in Phoenix, Arizona. The University of Phoenix was founded by John Sperling, who felt that "working adult students were often invisible on traditional campuses and treated as second-class citizens."
[New Models For Higher Education: Creating an Adult-Centered Institution](_blank)
Craig Swenson. Retrieved 18 Sept, 2008. Sperling is also quoted as saying "We are not trying to develop
tudents'value systems or go in for that 'expand their minds' bullshit." In 1976, it began in Phoenix, with the first class consisted of eight students.
[Andrew Farrel]
Forbes (hosted on CBCNews), ''The Web Billionaires'', September 19, 2008
/ref> In 1980, the school expanded to San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
, and in 1989, the university launched its online program.
The school formerly had an enrollment of 420,700 undergraduate students and 78,000 graduate students, or 224,880 full-time equivalent students. The university had more than 200 campuses worldwide and conferred degrees in over 100 degree programs at the associate, bachelor's
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ye ...
, master's
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. and doctoral
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...
levels.[University of Phoenix provides growth opportunities for working adults](_blank)
Lee Allen. Retrieved 18 September 2008. University of Phoenix has an open enrollment admission policy, requiring only a high-school diploma, GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
, or its equivalent. The school also provides associate or bachelor's degree applicants opportunity for advanced placement through its prior learning assessment, which, aside from previous coursework, college credit can come from experiential learning essays, corporate training, and certificates or licenses.
Activism
Before becoming an entrepreneur at age 53, Sperling was a tenured professor at San Jose State University
San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...
. He was an activist for several liberal causes during the 1960s, such as building a powerful new California faculty union, and was part of several conflicts with authorities and university leaders regarding his experimental adult education schemes.
John Sperling was also an opponent of drug prohibition
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the ...
and was financing initiatives to decriminalize medical marijuana
Medical cannabis, or medical marijuana (MMJ), is cannabis and cannabinoids that are prescribed by physicians for their patients. The use of cannabis as medicine has not been rigorously tested due to production and governmental restrictions ...
in the United States. According to ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine, Sperling used marijuana to combat pain caused by the cancer he fought during the 1960s. Together with George Soros
George Soros ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...
, and Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance
The Progressive Corporation is an American insurance company, the third largest insurance carrier and the No. 1 commercial auto insurer in the United States. The company was co-founded in 1937 by Jack Green and Joseph M. Lewis, and is headquar ...
, Sperling raised considerable amounts of money for drug and other related causes, especially during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Bio-medical projects
Longevity research
Sperling directed significant amounts of his attention and financial resources toward extending the life span of human beings—research into life extension
Life extension is the concept of extending the human life expectancy, lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled oldest people, limit of 125 years.
S ...
technology or "biological immortality
Biological immortality (sometimes referred to as bio-indefinite mortality) is a state in which the rate of mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing, thus decoupling it from chronological age. Various unicellular and multicellular species, ...
". ''Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
'' magazine reported in their February 2004 article "John Sperling Wants You to Live Forever" that his fortune was quickly approaching US$3 billion, and that he had plans to donate it to human biology research if and when he died. It was to be the biggest private program ever devoted to human biology. Sperling since indicated that his fortune would go primarily to environmental causes.
Cloning
Sperling provided financing to Genetic Savings & Clone Genetic Savings & Clone, Inc. was a company headquartered in Sausalito, California that offered commercial pet gene banking and cloning services, between 2004 and 2006.
History
The company was founded as a result of the efforts to clone Lou Hawtho ...
(GS&C), of Sausalito, California
Sausalito (Spanish language, Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, California, Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, California ...
, which closed in 2006. He spent seven years and $20 million trying to clone a dog named Missy in a project called Missyplicity
The Missyplicity Project was a project devoted to cloning Joan Hawthorne and John Sperling's dog, a border collie and husky mix. Missy died on July 6, 2002 at the age of 15 years.
History
In 1997, news that Dolly the sheep had been cloned ins ...
. Clones of Missy were produced in December 2007. A subproject of Missyplicity was called Operation CopyCat
Copycat refers to a person who copies some aspect of some thing or somebody else.
Copycat may also refer to:
Intellectual property rights
* Copyright infringement, use of another’s ideas or words without permission
* Patent infringement, a v ...
, which successfully created the first cat clone, named CC.
Writing
''For-profit Higher Education''
In 1997 Sperling and Robert W Tucker published a book, ''For-profit Higher Education: Developing a World-class Workforce''.
Most of the content of this book was derived from a series of internal position papers written by Sperling & Tucker (Tucker was a Senior Vice President). The papers, some 47 in all, were written from 1992 through 1997 to guide the development of the institution to serve the adult-centered market effectively.
Perhaps the most controversial argument made in this book was its analysis of taxpayer costs associated to the three basic models of higher education: public, private (non-profit), and private (for-profit). By accounting not only for direct taxpayer funding associated to the three models, but also for government support to non-profits and, especially, forgone revenue in the non-profit models (including: taxes on endowments; property, sales, use, taxes; federal and state taxes on profit or surplus revenue), Sperling & Tucker's model showed that taxpayers realized a profit of several hundred dollars per student per year from a successful for-profit university. The model also showed that taxpayers underwrite costs amounting to several thousand dollars per student per year for students attending public and non-profit institutions. Sperling & Tucker's model showed that taxpayers underwrite the highest dollar value for students attending a small number of highly elite institutions, largely because of their very large tax-free endowments.
There are criticisms of Sperling & Tucker's economic and financial arguments. At the time this book was published, the student loan default rate for University of Phoenix students was at or below the average for state 4-year institutions. This parity eliminated loan default costs as a significant factor in the analysis. (Although the model included default rates by institution.) Today, the default rate for-profit institutions is above the average for public and non-profit institutions, leading critics to argue that the difference in the level of taxpayer support required under the three models is not so large and perhaps does not exist. Considerable disagreement centers on this point. Some of the disagreement rests on which economic and financial variables to consider in the taxpayer cost equation; some disagreement rests on uncertainties and disputes surrounding true taxpayer costs in loan defaults.
Other themes in the 1997 book include an argument that regional accrediting bodies play an inconsistent and restrictive role in innovation and an overview of the integrated assessment, academic decision-support, and quality management system developed and implemented by Tucker.
''Rebel with a Cause''
In 2000, Sperling published an autobiography called ''Rebel with a Cause''.
After reviewing Sperling's autobiography Alex Lightman wrote, "Sperling's unflinching honesty in recounting his childhood of poverty and illiteracy in the Ozarks
The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant port ...
; his battles over academic accreditation
Educational accreditation is a quality assurance process under which services and operations of educational institutions or programs are evaluated and verified by an external body to determine whether applicable and recognized standards are met ...
and 'the war on drugs;' his investments in cloning
Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical or virtually identical DNA, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction. In the field of biotechnology, cl ...
, anti-aging
The anti-aging movement is a social movement devoted to eliminating or reversing aging, or reducing the effects of it. A substantial portion of the attention of the movement is on the possibilities for life extension, but there is also interest in ...
, and in crops that can grow amidst salt and sand; and, especially, his founding of a big, profitable public university that will probably generate more MBA holders than any other, all add up to a CEO whose life will echo, even thunder, for decades to come." Lightman also wrote, "Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
bookies
A bookmaker, bookie, or turf accountant is an organization or a person that accepts and pays off bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds.
History
The first bookmaker, Ogden, stood at Newmarket in 1795.
Range of events
Bookma ...
probably would have given Sperling 100-to-1 odds against his business, but he not only survived, he grew the Apollo Group--parent of University of Phoenix and related interests--into a public company
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (l ...
with a market capitalization
Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders.
Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by t ...
(as of May 2001) of almost $7 billion, making it roughly as successful as many vastly more publicized dot-com champions." Expressing his final opinion of the book Lightman wrote, "A book Like ''Rebel with a Cause'' is dangerous, because it sets new CEO standards for both searing self-reflection and for what constitutes success."
''The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America''
In August 2004, he co-authored ''The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America,'' released by his newly created publishing firm, PoliPoint Press
PoliPoint Press (or P3Books) was a San Francisco Bay Area publishing company that was founded to print the writings of University of Phoenix founder John Sperling.
In 2004 it published its first book, Sperling's ''The Great Divide'', a book of e ...
. It was a sociological treatise attempting to explain the Red America/Blue America cultural and political divisions of the United States.
Despite a $2 million[ advertising campaign, the book was not widely embraced by its intended progressive audience. ]Thomas Frank
Thomas may refer to:
People
* List of people with given name Thomas
* Thomas (name)
* Thomas (surname)
* Saint Thomas (disambiguation)
* Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church
* Thomas the Ap ...
, author of ''What's The Matter With Kansas?'', ridiculed Sperling's view of American society:
The book, however, did succeed in causing controversy in conservative media. Gary Gregg of ''National Review Online'' called the book the work of a " metropolitan elite who disdain the cultures and values of middle America." R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, called it a work of "hate, cultural condescension, and bizarre proposals backed up with hare-brained analysis."[R. Albert Mohler piece at Christianity.com, http://www.christianity.com/blogs/mohler/1280648/print/
]
The Great Divide is a blueprint for the Democratic Party to control the presidency and both houses of congress. Sperling and his co-authors claim that the United States has seldom been truly united and that there currently exists such a wide gap that the country is effectively two nations: "one traditional and rooted in the past, and one modern and focused on the future." Sperling and his co-authors say these two nations are divided along racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, political, and geographic lines. They claim that political conflict in American is not really about left-wing or right-wing ideology but about the differences between what they call Metro America and Retro America; Metro America consists of the two coasts and the Great Lakes states. The authors argue that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are national parties, so there is no point in behaving as such. They recommend that the Democrats concede the Retro states and focus entirely on the Metro states. This would allow the party to develop a coherent message that would connect with voters and to take advantage of the fact that Metro states account for 65 percent of the population. Then, once a strong base is built, the Democrats can work on unifying America.
Works authored
*
*
*
*
See also
* Biological immortality
Biological immortality (sometimes referred to as bio-indefinite mortality) is a state in which the rate of mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing, thus decoupling it from chronological age. Various unicellular and multicellular species, ...
* For-profit higher education in the United States
For-profit higher education in the United States refers to the commercialization and privatization of American higher education institutions. For-profit colleges have been the most recognizable for-profit institutions, but commercialization has ...
* Futures studies
Futures studies, futures research, futurism or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will li ...
* Life extension
Life extension is the concept of extending the human life expectancy, lifespan, either modestly through improvements in medicine or dramatically by increasing the maximum lifespan beyond its generally-settled oldest people, limit of 125 years.
S ...
* Longevity
The word " longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term ''longevity'' is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is always d ...
* University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix (UoPX) is a private for-profit university headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1976, the university confers certificates and degrees at the certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree lev ...
References
External links
Executive Officers of Apollo Group
Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People
* ttp://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/68/sperling.html Fast Company magazine, 'The Hard Life and Restless Mind of America's Education Billionaire'br>Utah Initiative B Contribution Details
;News articles
* ttps://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-08-18-metro-retro-usat_x.htm USATODAY.com - Independent voices rising in ads
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sperling, John
1921 births
2014 deaths
American billionaires
American cannabis activists
American education businesspeople
Reed College alumni
University and college founders
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of Phoenix
Businesspeople from Phoenix, Arizona
Apollo Education Group
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
20th-century American businesspeople
United States Merchant Mariners of World War II