Sperling launched the University of Phoenix in 1972 to provide working adults with academic degrees through an accelerated program. However, traditional colleges and accrediting agencies opposed this innovation and sought to eliminate the new venture. Sperling fought off attacks from educational bureaucracies that wanted to suppress reform in higher education. The document discusses Sperling's experience and how it illustrates the irony of agencies approving for-profit divisions of traditional non-profits but opposing independent for-profit programs.

1. Though San Jose State included a
community outreach/economic devel-
opment component in its mission, the
A Handsome History
college was unable to embrace some of
John O. Harney
Sperling’s academic initiatives. He
The College on the Hill: A Browser’s History for the Bicentennial,
turned to other regional institutions in
David Haward Bain, Middlebury College Press, 1999, $35
the hope they would accept his adult
education program called the Institute
for Professional Development. In this, I’ll admit it was the Middlebury pub-
he ran square into the constraints of lic affairs office’s pitch of more than
departmental control and academic in- 600 pictures that initially attracted
fighting. me to The College on the Hill—and it
In 1972, with $26,000 in savings, is the rich images that help make
the merchant marine-turned-professor David Haward Bain’s 464-page his-
launched a company dedicated to pro- tory accessible to people who have
viding working adults with the oppor- no connection with Middlebury.
tunity to earn academic degrees in the Following the format of “a print
same time it takes full-time students to version of a documentary movie,”
do so. Today, his Apollo Group, with Bain skillfully juxtaposes archival
its University of Phoenix subsidiary, is materials from the college’s original
a $500 million public company. charter through colorful 1920s cov-
Rebel with a Cause is Sperling’s ers of The Blue Baboon magazine to
exciting account of how far accrediting the oddly penetrating, black and
agencies and other entrenched organi- white full-page photo of former
zations will go to suppress innovation President Olin Robison.
and reform in higher education. High The only visual disappointment
drama unfolds in the collision between comes in the sections on the 1990s a handsomely illustrated coffee
reform and tradition, as regional which settle for college catalog-style table book.
accreditation and state regulatory agen- fall foliage shots and mortarboards This is the history of a campus as
cies move to eliminate Sperling’s new flying heavenward. quirky and independent as Vermont
venture. Only his understanding of aca- Still, The College on the Hill, itself. Here in 1879, President Calvin B.
demic politics and his experiences as a tracing Middlebury’s evolution from Hulbert forbade students to kick a
social activist enable him to fend off the its founding in 1800 to its upcom- football among the college buildings
vicious attacks and collusion of educa- ing bicentennial year, is more than and issued 25 demerits to C.G.
tional bureaucracies. Leavenworth when he violated the
The account is directly pertinent to rule. Here in the later 1950s, frat
the current tendency of some state brothers accepted national expulsion
commissions to impede the introduc- to ensure the participation of future
tion of for-profit programs and to the U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron
attack by the American Association of Brown, an African-American, in the
University Professors on initiatives that white-only Sigma Phi Epsilon, then
utilize technology-based means of voted overwhelmingly for Richard
delivering educational programming. Nixon over John F. Kennedy in a
Sperling’s experience illustrates the 1960 mock presidential election.
irony of accreditation and regulatory Bain, who has taught at Middle-
agencies that for decades have bury for nearly 15 years, writes for a
approved the for-profit continuing variety of magazines and is the author
education divisions of traditional non- of several books including the new
profit colleges. Thus, a for-profit com- Empire Express: Building the First
ponent is legitimate as long as it Transcontinental Railroad and 1993’s
subsidizes a “pure academic” endeav- Whose Woods These Are: A History of
or. But if the for-profit undertaking the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
stands on its own base, as in the case
of the University of Phoenix, it is John O. Harney is executive editor
viewed as undermining the perceived of CONNECTION.
Continued on page 42
CONNECTION FALL/WINTER 1999 41