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TRUMP: Creates fake university to scam students, pays $25 million fine for fraud
LEBRON: Creates top-notch public high school for low-income students, pays college tuition for every graduate
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 4, 2018
To expand on the point a little, Trump’s fake “university” (yes fake AND scare quotes because it’s just that fake) charged thousands of dollars for real estate tips you could learn from a pamphlet.
Trump University (also known as the Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC) was an American for-profit education company that ran a real estate training program from 2005 until 2010. It was owned and operated by The Trump Organization. (A separate organization, Trump Institute, was licensed by Trump University but not owned by the Trump Organization.) After multiple lawsuits, it is now defunct. It was founded by Donald Trump and his associates, Michael Sexton and Jonathan Spitalny, in 2004. The company offered courses in real estate, asset management, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation.[2]
The organization was not an accredited university or college. It did not confer college credit, grant degrees, or grade its students.[3]
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Typically the instruction began with an introductory seminar in rented space such as a hotel ballroom. At the introductory seminar, students were urged to sign up for additional classes, ranging from $1495 seminars to a $35,000 “Gold Elite” program.[9] Records produced indicate 7611 tickets in total were sold to customers attending courses.[10] Approximately 6000 of these tickets were for a $1,500 3-day course and 1000 tickets were for silver, gold or elite mentored courses ranging in price from $10,000 to $35,000.[11][10]
Trump has also opened a school. But in a class-action complaint filed against Trump in 2013, Trump University students alleged that the for-profit organization ripped them off. Among other things, the unaccredited “university” misrepresented Trump’s personal involvement and mischaracterized itself as an elite school with professors, they said.
Says one complaint:
Defendant uniformly misled Plaintiff and the Class that they would learn Donald Trump’s real estate secrets through him and his handpicked professors at his elite “University.” The misleading nature of the enterprise is embodied by its very name. That is because, though Defendant promised “Trump University,” he delivered neither Donald Trump nor a University.
The same complaint quotes marketing material from Trump:
We’re going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific. Terrific people. Terrific brains. Successful. The best. We are going to have the best of the best. And, honestly, if you don’t learn from them, if you don’t learn from me, if you don’t learn from the people that we’re going to be putting forward, and these are all people that are handpicked by me, then, you’re just not gonna make it in terms of the world of success. And that’s okay, but you’re not gonna make it in terms of success.
The New York State Education Department rebuked the now-defunct company for its misleading use of “university,” and the Better Business Bureau has never accredited the organization.
Now what about LeBron James’s school?
LeBron James returned to Ohio this week—but not to play for his former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.
This time, he was back to welcome the inaugural class of the I Promise school, a public, non-charter school for at-risk kids in Akron, Ohio. James helped create the school via his foundation, the LeBron James Family Foundation, in partnership with Akron Public Schools. The school opened earlier this week to a group of 240 third- and fourth-grade students; by 2022, it is expected to accommodate children in first through eighth grades.
James was motivated to launch the school thanks to his own experience growing up as an inner-city kid in Ohio. As James told ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, part of the reason the school is beginning with kids in third- and fourth-grade is because that’s when he believes kids begin to succumb to chronic absenteeism and outside pressures. “In the fourth grade, I missed 80 days of school,” he told Nichols.
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At the I Promise school, tuition is free for all students, who were randomly selected among all Akron public school students between one to two years behind their peers in reading. Students get free uniforms, free meals and snacks during the school day, and free transportation to school. Every kid also gets a free bicycle and helmet, as James has said that having access to his own set of wheels gave him a way to escape from dangerous parts of his neighborhood and the freedom to explore during his childhood. And in a nod to the realities of the way schoolwork gets done in the digital age, every kid gets a free Chromebook, too.
And there’s a food pantry, there’s help for parents looking for housing, there’s support for teachers, and more.
Looks like Trump wrote the marketing material himself. How could anyone read that, and think that person was qualified to run a university? None, not even the worst, of the professors I have known would have spoken like that. Terrific brains – terrific people – absolutely terrific – the best of the best.
Most academically minded people would at least have the sense to hide their ignorance of the language by renting a thesaurus somewhere and coming up with some high-falutin’ words that mean the same thing.
I’m guessing that some people assume that this is how a businessman talks. He’s got street smarts; he gets to the point; he doesn’t waste his or anyone’s time with a bunch of words. No, he’s far too busy getting stuff done — important, terrific stuff that makes money. Hot dog!
It’s like something quoted by a Man of Success in a movie from the 1930’s. Frank Capra, maybe. Read it again and imagine it spewed out by an overexcited, almost tearful, Jimmy Stewart in closeup.
The aspect of the entire squalid affair that amazes me is why a real billionaire would bother running such a scam. There are always sheep to be fleeced, perhaps he couldn’t resist temptation. Trump’s ‘university’ was just a clumsy version of the ‘wealth creation’ seminars that attract the financially ignorant. If capitalists really have the formula for success they’re definitely not going to share it with the plebs.
“The aspect of the entire squalid affair that amazes me is why a real billionaire would bother running such a scam.”
Some time ago, Ophelia wrote a post about Trump not getting the respect from the “real” elite which he feels he deserves but will never earn because he’s a shallow boor with no taste and less class. Maybe in this case it’s not only the money he wanted but the patina of respect that having a “university” named after you would presumably garner, were it an actual university instead of a cardboard cut-out one. It’s an “elite” thing to do or have. He knows this much, but has no awareness of the substance, effort or details required to launch such an endeavour in actuality and not enough of a details man to hire anyone who would, or even care. He thinks everyone else is impressed with gold-smothered surfaces as he is: all surface, no substance. Or, perhaps more appropriately, all sizzle, no steak.
Just a guess.
Hmm, interesting – are there actually that many universities named after individual tycoons?
*consults top of head* There’s Stanford, that’s a biggy. I think there’s a Rockefeller? Or is that just the funding of Chicago. I’m not sure, but I think usually it’s more a matter of naming bits of universities after rich donors – Bill Gates has names lots of pieces of the U of Washington (right here in Seattle) after his relatives. Carnegie has all those libraries, but they have their own local names too. The branch of the Seattle library near me (just three blocks away, so lucky) is a Carnegie but nobody calls it that.
Anyway, whether there are or not, that does sound like Trump – instant gravitas via pasting the word “university” onto a scam.
He also has his eponymous “foundation,” just like the Gates Foundation except that he spends its money on himself, which is illegal as well as fraudulent.
I know this one because I like trains: Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was known for building the New York Central railroad and for his $1M endowment to start Vanderbilt University (1873).
From Wikipedia
Ahhh how could I forget Vanderbilt – my high school best friend’s father moved there from Princeton, and persuaded his friend Kingsley Amis to go there for a semester. Amis hated it and hated Nashville – unlike Princeton, both town and university, where he had spent a year.
And there’s Duke. Renamed in 1924 after a rich guy who gave it $$$.
I withdraw my question, there are that many.
@4
“Just a guess”
Very interesting indeed. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client is such a complete ignoramus that he has no idea of what a real university is”.
Stanford is not named after the tycoon, but rather his son, Leland Stanford Jr., who died as a teenager. So the name actually demonstrates Stanford’s compassion, and desire to remember his son, something we know T. is incapable of. (I happen to know this because I went to Berkeley, and we used to refer to Stanford as ‘the Junior university’.)