University of Phoenix co-founder John D. Murphy's inside account of the nearly twenty-year struggle to overcome opposition by many in traditional higher education to a for-profit nontraditional institution that integrated higher education into the lives of its students rather than students integrating their lives into higher education. Mission Forsaken chronicles what transpired as the result of its holding company, Apollo Group, going public, including the forsaking of its founding mission of solely meeting the educational needs of working adult learners to accept virtually anyone for enrollment holding a high school diploma or GED. Mission Forsaken concludes with a call for the establishment of a "gainful education" standard to replace admission to an accredited institution as the qualification for the receipt of federally guaranteed student loans and grants. Murphy argues that the requirement of a gainful education standard--all student loan recipients must evidence the capacity to benefit gainfully from all tax supported postsecondary education--together with a prohibition of the expenditure of tax dollars for remediation for persons admitted to accredited postsecondary institutions is the only way public K-12 education will ever be reformed.