The rise of John Sperling and the U. of Phoenix

When John Sperling, the founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix, was a child, his father used to beat him. The beatings stopped when Sperling was 10, after the boy threatened to kill his father in his sleep if the abuse continued.

When Sperling was 15, his father died of natural causes. "I raced outside, rolled in the grass squealing with delight …" Sperling has written. "I realized this was the happiest day of my life. It still is."

Sperling is now 88, and among the richest people in the world, having built the University of Phoenix, which is looked down upon by traditional academics, into a financial behemoth. Unsurprisingly, observes Thomas Bartlett in a thorough profile of the entrepreneur in the Chronicle of Higher Education [subscribers only], he is a fan of Dickens.

(One recent setback: Christopher Heward, a biologist whom Sperling hired to run the Kronos Longevity Research Institute, "whose original purpose was to treat well-to-do patients interested in not dying" but whose "only real patient" turned out to be Sperling himself, died this year.)

(Photo credit: Inc. magazine)