Wednesday, 8 Jan 2003 |    Middle Tennessee Business News & Information

Oliver's career takes twist

By JEANNE A. NAUJECK
Staff Writer

Rick Oliver has been a corporate executive and a Vanderbilt professor. He's a grandfather and a patron of the arts and has direct lines to Tennessee's top government and business leaders.

In short, he's made it. And now, at an age when many men are contemplating the golf course, he's starting his third career.

Oliver, 56, has re-entered the business world as an entrepreneur in online for-profit education, an idea that struck him while he was teaching students about e-commerce at the Owen Graduate School of Management a few years back.

''I started thinking about how technology was changing education, and education was changing technology, and I thought, 'This is gonna be fun. I want to be there,' '' Oliver said.

''I couldn't just think about it and talk about it without going out and doing it.''

So Oliver, who frequently uses hockey metaphors to illustrate the rapidity of change in the business world, got Vanderbilt's financial support to found the American Graduate School of Management. The online dual degree program grants a master's of management degree along with an MBA through its Canadian affiliate, Lansbridge University.

And Oliver, a persuasive personality and indefatigable networker, cold-called Lamar Alexander on the theory that the former U.S. secretary of education might be interested in his project. Alexander signed on as a partner, though he ended his association after his election to the U.S. Senate in November.

AGSM is similar to the University of Phoenix Online, the nation's largest and fastest-growing online degree program with 57,000 students and a 70% increase in enrollment over last year.

Parent company Apollo Group Inc., which enrolls an additional 100,000 students at 180 sites, including one near Nashville's airport, just replaced WorldCom on the S&P 500.

''It's an absolutely awesome company. They're the HCA of education,'' Oliver said.

The market for postsecondary online education was $438 million last year and is projected to be $4.5 billion by 2006, according to Jeff Silber, senior research analyst for Gerard Klauer Mattison & Co. in New York. The University of Phoenix has more than half the market share, he said.

''They're the 800-pound gorilla. The numbers they're putting up are nothing less than phenomenal,'' Silber said. ''Apparently there are a lot of people who love learning online. They can do it at night in their underwear.''

Oliver isn't trying to create another Phoenix. His goal is to make AGSM more nimble and specialized, offering concentrations like sports and entertainment, health care and nonprofit management — options he says are largely ignored on traditional campuses.

''If you're a bedside nurse who wants to move into management, or a hockey player who wants a second career in business, does it matter if you went to Harvard?'' Oliver asks.

The market for nontraditional students is huge, he says, citing a survey that counted 2 million Web searches for some variant of ''online education'' in September alone.

''That's a tremendous market, and that's only the U.S. Think of all the people who can't get to the U.S. who want the benefit of an American degree. We haven't even tapped that market.''

The school, in its third year, offers virtual classes for about 20 students at a time. Discussions are held in real time, but they're also archived online so students never have to miss a class.

Oliver predicts for-profit education will become big business as corporations use online programs to train far-flung employees.

In the past, he said, a company's value lay in such tangibles as trucks, warehouses, distribution systems and labor agreements. In the future, education will be the new capital, and employees will be judged on their capacity to learn.

''The only competitive advantage that companies have today is how fast they learn and how quickly they can adjust to the market,'' Oliver said. ''Thirty years from now, your job will be defined by how fast you learn.''

Being a quick study was Oliver's ticket to the life he now enjoys. He's a true believer in American meritocracy — the idea that a kid who's born into poverty but has smarts, dreams and drive can make it. It's his own story.

Oliver grew up poor in St. Catharine's, Ontario, a training ground for many NHL players. An older brother was the first in the family to go to college, recruited to play hockey at Cornell University. Oliver followed his brother to Cornell, an upstate New York Ivy League school known for its rigorous academics, diverse student body and ferocious hockey team.

Oliver's still grateful for the door-opening opportunities afforded by a Cornell degree — he sent both his daughters there, donates heavily and still wears his Class of '69 ring.

Oliver spent most of his business career with Northern Telecom, moving to Nashville from Toronto 22 years ago as vice president for marketing. Following that, he set on an academic career, taking a professorship at Owen, consulting for corporations and penning such futuristic books as The Shape of Things to Come and The Coming Biotech Age.

And he indulged his passion for hockey, supporting the NHL expansion team and writing Hockey Tonk: The Amazing Story of the Nashville Predators with owner Craig Leipold.

His up-by-the-bootstraps life experience is a point of pride, and one that defines his populist mission for the online school.

''I feel so good about this because we are giving a chance to people who, for whatever reason, are not in a position to go to Harvard or Cornell or Vanderbilt,'' Oliver said.

''We're offering an alternative, with more options. Do I think it's as good? I think it's different.''

Oliver is now an adjunct professor at Owen while he focuses on growing AGSM from his office at the Fall School on Eighth Avenue South, from where Alexander ran his winning campaign.

His sunny office is filled with family pictures and hockey memorabilia — pucks for paperweights, a pair of sticks mounted on the wall, a Predators team photo and jersey in his line of sight. A circuit board, a holdover from the Nortel days, suggests another new interest — wireless technology.

As he tours the renovated schoolhouse, it's clear Oliver relishes the irony of running a virtual university from an old classroom. When he tires of it, he's already thinking about his next career. It'll be something you can't learn in school, or even on the Web.

''I'll be a cowboy, or a gentleman farmer,'' he says, grinning.

''Or maybe a sportswriter.''