Online Education

Online degree programs are everywhere. We’ve started to take them for granted, and it feels as if they’ve been here forever. Nursing students are among those who have taken advantage of opportunities for online education. Some are taking an online LPN to RN degree while others are obtaining advanced nursing degrees via online programs.

But while online education may now be considered mainstream, the truth is online degree programs have only began to flourish in the last fifteen years or so.

And one of the earliest innovators in the online education field is a Cambridge-educated professor turned entrepreneur named Dr. John Sperling.

Sperling, now a billionaire, was first known as the founder of the University of Phoenix in 1976. It was then, and still is, a private, for-profit college developed to serve the needs of non-traditional students.

Sperling realized that students fresh out of high school who had the financial support of their parents were already served by the regular colleges around, but what of those who were already holding jobs to support themselves or their families? Or those who already had degrees, worked full time, yet felt they still needed a career change? They would need classes that were scheduled differently than traditional schooling.

To fill this need of working adults, night classes and other non-traditional educational solutions were made available at the University of Phoenix. And with the advent and eventually, the growing popularity of the internet and the advancement of its technology, Sperling discovered an added way of bringing education to individuals who needed to work and advance their careers at the same time.

And in 1989 one of the very first online campuses in the world was created through the University of Phoenix and in 1991, the Online Campus graduated its first class.After almost two decades, there are now literally hundreds of thousands of students attending the University of Phoenix online. The online programs offered include those for Licensed Vocational Nurse (LPN/LVN) to Registered Nurse, LPN to BSN, RN to BSN, and many other healthcare classes.

To date, there are already many other online schools offering various degrees in nursing. But these schools, and online students for that matter, should remember that it was the visionary Dr. John Sperling that made all this possible for them.

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