National Radio Institute

The National Radio Institute-McGraw Hill Continuing Education Center was a private, postsecondary, for-profit correspondence school based in Washington, D.C., from 1914 to 2002.

With enthusiastic support from Mr. Haas, who was then Assistant Publicity Director for Keith's Theater in Washington, D.C., a small classroom was set up for four students inside the U.S. Savings Bank Building at 14th and U Street NW, now the site of the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center.

Edward L. Degener (1898–1974) joined to oversee advertising and organization in Haas' temporary absence, but stayed on to eventually become General Manager and Treasurer, retiring in 1960.

In 1923, the business was relocated to Connecticut Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and classroom instruction was discontinued entirely so the school could focus solely on its home-study model.

Established that same year was NRI's technical advisory board, which eventually included among its members, Lee de Forest, the American inventor of the Audion triode vacuum tube, and prominent radio engineer Cyril M. Jansky Jr., and Maj. Gen. George Owen Squier.

In 1942, NRI contracted him for one dollar per year to the National Bureau of Standards, where he worked with Harry Diamond to develop the radio proximity fuse.

In December 1956, James E. Smith turned 75 years of age and stepped down from the presidency, handing the role over to his son, while remaining active in the school as founder and chairman of the board.

The following year, planning commenced for a 59,000 square foot building designed specifically for NRI at 3939 Wisconsin Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.

By the second half of the 1960s, NRI recognized that its limited resources would preclude company from maintaining a dominant market position in the coming decade, spurring James Morrison Smith to seek a partner/buyer.

In 1968, McGraw-Hill Education agreed to purchase NRI after acquiring a 20 percent stake in the correspondence division of Capitol Radio Engineering Institute in 1964.

Radio-television-electronics servicing (the school's primary focus) reached a point where it was no longer a lucrative career path, as consumers had come to see electronic goods as disposable items.

Consequently, McGraw-Hill concluded that NRI's future business prospects and growth opportunities were too limited despite improving profits and operations (such as the implementation of updated computer repair courses).

By the next decade, the digital revolution, VLSI, and miniaturization were rapidly developing, which helped set the stage for the school's eventual closing.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, increasing offshoring activities of American companies with the rise of globalization resulted in lower production costs.

Market share and revenues of American television and radio manufacturers began to fall in the wake of the cost-effective strategies of foreign competitors.

By the 1980s, imported radio and television receivers (particularly those from Japan) dominated the American market, as foreign electronics tended to be of higher quality at lower prices (making the items more likely to be replaced rather than repaired after breakage or malfunction).

With the exception of display technologies, the newer television and radio receivers generally had fewer internal components that were smaller in size, and thus cheaper to produce.

(Ironically, the opposite is true today, as flat screen television receivers are actually more difficult to repair than the old CRT TV's, and replacement parts are harder to obtain from the manufacturer, due to longer lead times).

However, several NRI competitors in the home-study business (see below) survived these turbulent times by offering a wider variety of subjects, including nontechnical training courses relevant to the current demand.

[14] The school stopped accepting new enrollment applications on April 1, 1999, and discontinued operations on March 31, 2002, after a respectable 88 years in the distance education business.

Over its lifetime, NRI administered 1.5 million correspondence courses and adapted its coursework to major technical transformations in the radio-television-electronics industry from vacuum tubes to solid-state devices (first to discrete transistors and then to integrated circuits), from CRTs to flat panel displays.

After the school shut down, the Wisconsin Avenue property was purchased and occupied by 'Fannie Mae' (Federal National Mortgage Association), whose headquarters were directly across the street.