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 movement in the United States[1] The fortune he amassed was based on his founding of the for-profit University of Phoenix for working adults in 1976, which became part of the publicly traded Apollo Group. Sperling brought the business model 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.[2] For ventures ranging from pet cloning to green energy, he has widely been described as an "eccentric" self-made man by The Washington Post and other media.[3][4]
- ^ Barton, Randall S. "Obituaries: John Sperling: The Henry Ford of higher de". www.reed.edu. Reed College. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
- ^ Murphy, John (June 26, 2013). Mission Forsaken--The University of Phoenix Affair With Wall Street (1st ed.). Proving Ground Education. ISBN 9780966968316.
- ^ Rosin, Hanna (October 26, 2004). "Red, Blue and Lots of Green; John Sperling Divides America Into 'Metro' And 'Retro.' His Money's on 'Metro.'". The Washington Post. p. C1.
- ^ Bartlett, Thomas (July 6, 2009). "Phoenix Risen". The Chronicle of Higher Education.