The Cure for Educational Sticker Shock

Students are returning to college classrooms all across America this month - and paying some very big dollars to be there.

Just what are they getting for their money? That’s a tough question to answer, but here are some stories that shed a little light on the question.

$50,000 Buys Fast Food

Barry Lenson, our editor, has taken his kid to visit about 20 colleges in the last six months. “Some of them seem to represent good value,” he tells me. “But others give you so little for your money that I’m amazed they’re still in business. We visited one well-known inner-city university that charges $50,000 a year for tuition, room and board. For that sum, kids get no student center, no campus, and no meal plan except some coupons they use to buy crummy-looking food in a dirty food court. When I asked the tour guide about that, she assured me that 'every dorm room has a microwave.’ Plus dorm facilities were so overcrowded that kids are packed into tiny rooms like sardines.”

$80,000 Buys Three Courses

 For another perspective on educational value, visit Gawker.com and read the results of the recent contest, “Vote for America’s Most Annoying Liberal Arts College.” Sure, the people who commented on their colleges for the survey are trying to be funny. But comments like the following should make any sane person wonder where American higher education is headed:

"I went there for two and a half years. I had to leave because, after wasting $80,000 of my parents’ money, I managed to only finish three courses although I was never put on academic probation, had my room explode and dorm burn down due to faulty wiring and managed to make my way up to selling 20 pounds of weed and 50 pills of ecstasy a week . . . I felt I should quit while ahead."

Enough Said

Of course, many students do emerge from American colleges and universities with the skills they need to become successful in the world. But if students graduate and still lack success skills, what to they do then?

Many of them are coming to us. Did you know that as many as 80% of the students who enroll in courses at Trump University are college graduates who come back to us to learn the skills they need to become successful in the real world - the skills they never got in college? They hang their sheepskins on the wall, but come to us to learn how to become successful entrepreneurs or real estate investors. 

That makes me think - and it hope it makes you think too.