How to be an early-riser?

In nursery I read a line "early to bed, early to rise; makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Is that true? I do not know. Never got a chance. I am one who to go to bed at early in the morning and rise late in the day. I am like the late-city edition of the newspaper which comes out late so that all the news of the previous day can be included.
In my school day I was forced to rise early. Then also I used to sleep till the time after which it would become impossible to attend school. That too after mom and dad used to bug me for about an hour.
Then came the hostel days in college (SRK Hostel @ JMI, New Delhi). I do not remember a single day when I had breakfast at hostel mess. Me and my roomie were equally good at rising late (but I think I was a bit better). But we used to have four different alarms set, still earliest time was 10:00am.
I improved on that at NCST, B'lore. Due to that appearing for the quizzes was a big headache. But there I had a genuine reason; we used to sleep really late there. How can you expect one to rise early the next day?
But after that, this habit of mine became a serious problem. Now joined a job and all the freedoms of a student life were gone. I was supposed to report at 9'o'clock in morning. It has been more than a year here but I m still struggling to do it.

I wish to consciously improve (on the early-riser side) on this. But I am at my wits' end. If someone has any innovative ideas, you are most welcome to post them in the comments. Looking forward for some helpful comments ...