Trump University Was Not A University. Stop Calling It That.
Donald 国产视频 defunct business of real estate seminars, known as 鈥淭rump University鈥, is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud. The media are, thankfully, writing about 国产视频 predatory scheme. But some outlets are misleading readers about the nature of 国产视频 聽business by referring to it as a 鈥渦niversity.鈥 It is not. At best, Trump University was a seminar, and calling it a university makes 国产视频 scam sound more legitimate than it ever was.
Take Business Insider. The outlet that Kent Moyer, who claims in 国产视频 new promotional 聽video that Trump University helped him start his own business, was probably lying. That is worthwhile reporting. But then, writer Abby Jackson states that 鈥淭rump and his lawyers, however, have continually defended the for-profit university.鈥 That鈥檚 a problem in Business Insider鈥檚 style guide, and they鈥檙e not the only ones: , the , , and the have all done the same thing.
But if it鈥檚 called Trump University, what else can we call it besides a university? Try: business, enterprise, seminar, class, failure, place where people get pressured into paying tens of thousands of dollars to be taught how to flip houses by instructors who have no background in real estate and lie about having personally met Trump. There are a lot of options. Just don鈥檛 call it a university.
Two years ago, news organizations what to call the terrorist organization controlling territory in Syria and Iraq. Should it be ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State, or Daesh? But no major newspaper considered calling the Islamic State a 鈥渟tate,鈥 or anything besides a group of terrorists or militants. That鈥檚 because they aren鈥檛 a state: no other state recognizes them as such, and they are currently within two existing states. Likewise, no institution of higher education, their accreditors, or the United States Department of Education recognized Trump University as a university.
To be sure, the word 鈥渦niversity鈥 has . Traditionally, universities were large, selective institutions of research and teaching. They taught both undergraduate and doctoral candidates. Now, some are little more than federally accredited diploma mills. But those diploma mills at least occasionally turn out students with bachelor鈥檚 degrees. They are still, in some limited sense, universities.
Not Trump University. No one would call Robert Kiyosaki鈥檚 real estate seminars a university. Nor would they consider a university to be those seminars in Florida my great uncle goes to for a free lunch in return for enduring an hour of a man trying to sell him timeshares.
Trump University preyed on everyone from high school students to the elderly, convincing them to hand over much of their savings in return for nothing. The instructors . They tricked the attendees into that allowed instructors to know exactly how much they could steal from them. To get even more money out of them, instructors told 聽participants that they should call their credit card companies to increase their credit lines during the lunch hour. All to enrich Donald Trump.
There are many for-profit universities that should be punished for lying to students about employment outcomes, and other abuses. But even those schools are, sort of, universities. They can be called universities, even as they are prosecuted. Trump University can make no such claim. It doesn鈥檛 even deserve that small dignity.