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Howard Tullman has been one of Chicago's most successful serial entrepreneurs, starting or taking charge of a dozen companies over the past 25 years. At 63, he's showing no signs of slacking off. Indeed, he opened his latest business just a year ago: Flashpoint, the Academy of Media Arts & Sciences. The early numbers suggest he's got another hit. The two-year vocational college, which focuses on digital media and design, has a fall enrollment of 360, three times last year's class, and Chief Executive Tullman predicts it'll double in 2009. Meantime, he expects revenue to reach $7 million this year, up from $2 million in 2007.
The for-profit school is tailor-made for the Facebook generation. It features 75,000 square feet of soundproof recording studios, movie sets, and computer labs. Tullman and investors spent $16 million to get it up and running. "We teach our students to understand multiple disciplines and to work collaboratively," he says. "Let's say they're going into film. They have to understand animation; they have to understand sound; they have to understand visual effects. This doesn't happen at other schools that offer only some of these disciplines." It isn't cheap, however: Tuition and fees run $25,000 a year.
Tullman has a history in for-profit education. He rejuvenated Kendall College by turning it into a state-of-the-art culinary school. While still Kendall's president, he founded Experiencia, an outfit that introduces school kids from poor neighborhoods to real-life jobs. He won a Chicago Innovation Award in 2007 for that startup.
