The Trump Blog

I’m always talking about how important it is to get a good education. I’m a big believer in going to a great college and getting a good degree because of all that it will do for your career.

Well here’s another reason to get a good education. Researchers at Harvard University found a stunning correlation between how long people live and how long they go to school.

Over the past decade, people with at least one year of college increased their lifespan by at least a year and a half. But those with a high school diploma or less gained only six months.

It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, white or black. The better educated you are, the longer you live.

The reason is because education changes the way we see the world and ourselves. The more educated you are, the less likely you are to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior...such as heavy drinking, smoking, doing drugs, even wearing a seatbelt or having a smoke detector in your house.

Obviously there are people with doctorate degrees who are overweight and drink and smoke too much and may end up dying way too young. Sometimes even a good education can’t stop people from doing stupid things. But hopefully, those people are the exception.

In general, if you want to live a long life, stay in school.

We wonder why there are so many education problems in our country. Well, maybe it’s because administrators spend way too much time with issues that have nothing to do with actual education.

Recently, a school policy at Shepherd Junior High School in Mesa, Arizona, made national headlines...and not for good reasons.

The school has banned hugs between students that last longer than two seconds. Students who are caught hugging for any longer than that are punished with detention. So many students - and even parents - were upset by the policy that they staged a public protest across the street from the school. Dozens of students gathered together for a 20-minute hug-a-thon with their parents’ support.

Administrators said the reason the “no-hugging” rule was instituted in the first place was that some students and teachers were concerned about public hugging and kissing in the hallways.

I understand that behavior doesn’t belong in schools, but - more importantly - I think schools need to spend their time and effort on actual education, not on issues like this.

Kids need to learn and they also need to get along. Who cares if they hug once in awhile? If educators are wasting their time worrying about hugging in the halls, then the students lose out.

The most awaited issue of U.S. News & World Report has hit the newsstands. You know - the one that ranks top American colleges and universities. It’s being snapped up by eager parents and kids who are looking for the college that’s right for them.

And did you know that Trump University is not listed among the top schools? In fact, Trump University is not listed at all. We didn’t expect to be, because we are not a degree-granting institution. (Not yet, at any rate.) Our name should not appear alongside Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Let’s be realistic, we are a very different kind of institution.

But as I spent time digging through all the facts and figures in U.S. News, I found some interesting statistics.  I learned that at Atlantic Union College in Massachusetts, 69 percent of graduating students have an average of $35,790 in debt. And at Bennett College in North Carolina, 100 percent of the graduates owe money after getting their diplomas - an average of $32,508, in fact.

Now, there are reasons for incurring that much debt to get a diploma. A college degree is an important credential. But when you look at education from a value point of view, it becomes clear that lots of students are paying for a lot of classes on topics that they will probably never use again in their working lives.  

In contrast, a growing number of Trump University students have invested only a few hundred dollars and have used what they learned to start companies, buy companies and make millions in real estate.  They’re not paying for classes about anthropology, sociology or the Dialogues  of Plato, just the topics they need to achieve the life goals they want to reach.

So I leave it to you to decide which educational option serves your needs better. And it’s not up to me to say which is right for you.

But a let me close this morning’s post with one more thought. I invite the editors of U.S. News & World Report to add another category, online education, to their college rankings.

Isn't it time? As the face of American higher education changes, their listings should change too.