Penn Foster Revenue and Competitors

In 1890, a newspaperman named Thomas J. Foster was the first to recognize that working adults with ambition needed a more convenient way to learn advanced skills. He developed the distance-learning method as a way of helping anthracite coal miners become mine superintendents and foremen. This was the solution hard-working people around the country had been searching for! Miners would work a twelve-hour shift, then return home to study by candlelight, so they could gain the engineering knowledge they needed to earn promotions.