"Rebel With A Cause is the tale of how a man born into poverty went on to establish the for-profit Institute for Professional Development, the University of Phoenix, and Apollo Group, America's largest higher education company. Here, Sperling tells his remarkable story for the first time. He was ostracized by his peers for debasing higher education and faced an unrelenting effort by the defenders of traditional education to destroy him by regulation.

He recounts his successful battles to defend his vision of adult higher education from enemies in the academy, in the accrediting associations, in state and federal bureaucracies, and in the press.".

"This book offers a look at a man whose radical behavior - challenging authority, ignoring the advice of experts - could have been his undoing, but instead enabled him to rap into the skyrocketing market of adult education and turn it into an innovative, for-profit industry. It explores how he grew the University and its subsidiaries into what is now known as Apollo Group, which boasts over 125,000 students, an annual growth rate of 25 percent, and 1999 revenues of $500 million.".

"Rebel With A Cause also provides a glimpse of the intersection of business and education policy, examining Sperling's contrarian view of running higher education like a business - and, in the process, keeping America competitive. His cost-effective model, developed during the birth of the University of Phoenix, shows how the nation must adapt its education policy in order to produce skilled employees capable of competing in today's information economy."--BOOK JACKET.