University of Phoenix - #1 Provider of Online Education

Apollo, founded in 1973, was a conglomerate of for-profit educational companies, which included, in addition to UoP and UoP Online, The Institute for Professional Development, The College for Financial Planning Institutes Corporation, and Western International University, Inc.

Apollo's USP was higher education for working adults and most of its constituent institutions provided this service. UoP Online helped Apollo capture a major portion of the market for distance education (which most working adults preferred).

In the early-2000s, UoP Online was a major player in the e-learning industry and held about 13 percent market share in it.

UoP was founded in 1976, by John G Sperling (Sperling), a keen researcher of adult education systems. Sperling had a doctorate in Economics from Cambridge University (UK) and had spent considerable time conducting field research in adult education at the San Jose State University in San Jose, California, where he was a professor of Humanities in the 1960s.

In the course of his research, Sperling found that there were few universities that offered courses suitable for working professionals. Most universities catered to regular fresh-out-of-school college-goers, and their commitment to advanced education was limited to a few night courses...