By Victoria Barenetsky and Brian Clark Howard

A former student of Donald Trump hopes to beat the mogul at his own game. The name Trump is synonymous with glamorous success and the ravenous pursuit of financial gain, but Victory Darwin believes he can do “The Donald” one better in the field of online education. In particular, education for people who want to make lots of money.

In May 2005, the publicity-savvy Trump launched the for-profit, online-only Trump University as a way to pass down his self-proclaimed wisdom on how to succeed in business. Students pay $145 to sign up for a 12-hour course they complete via Internet assignments at their own pace. “Premium” classes, typically 20 hours, offer individual feedback from instructors for $595. Some audio-only lessons are also available for $24.95. Course topics include entrepreneurship, marketing, real estate investing and office and interpersonal skills.

The lessons are designed by Trump and his assembled team of experts, which according to the school’s website includes Fortune 500 senior executives, experienced entrepreneurs and college professors. One Trump U. faculty member, Don Sexton, has been a professor at Columbia University’s business school for nearly four decades. Another instructor, Paul Wimer, is a chief partner at Topspin Partners, a $213 million venture capital and private equity firm. In true Trump form, “The Donald” himself  wrote six of Trump U.’s top 10 recommended texts for entrepreneurs.

Trump University is non-accredited and offers no degrees or credits. Graduates receive a “certificate of entrepreneurship mastery,” signed by the school’s namesake. Still, Ray Schroeder, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois and director of UI’s office of technology-enhanced learning, said that such non-traditional, online programs “may provide solid training in applied areas.”

According to Michael Sexton, president of the online school, “Trump U. is not about credentials or a sheepskin on the wall, but did you learn something about market segmentation from Don Sexton, and can you take that lesson and apply it.”
“The general idea came from the need we saw in the marketplace for a quality education that could be offered to people who cannot afford a $100,000 dollar education,” Sexton said.

The Trump name itself gives people faith in the product, said Sexton. So far, more than 100,000 people in 56 countries have taken Trump courses. Next on the school’s agenda is a retreat program, to be launched in the spring, in which people can enroll for three-day intensive workshops for face-to-face training.

The school has its critics. Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban posted on his popular Blog Maverick that Trump U. is “merely a way to pitch your How to Get Rich books and online courses.” Business Week magazine warned that the lack of moderation of peer class discussions by teachers in the school’s basic classes might lead to confusion and misinformation. Further, numerous people, including a columnist for the Boston Globe, have complained about getting aggressive amounts of spam from Trump U.

Said Michael Sexton, “We tried very hard to get the right type of marketing. Email marketing, where you hire businesses to send emails on your behalf, was not a good strategy for us, so we stopped doing that. It did not lure a good audience.”
Perhaps the school’s biggest critic is Victory Darwin, a disgruntled student who dropped out of Trump U. to found his own online, for-profit institution, the University of Victory. The Canadian school is set to launch by March, said the resident of Victoria, B.C. Darwin expects to generate a million dollars a month in sales within the first six months, based on fees of $4,000 (first discounted to $3,000) for 12-week courses. Students can also pay $10,000 apiece to work personally with Darwin in a mentorship capacity. According to Darwin, scholarships will be made available.

Darwin is a self-made multimillionaire who earned his fortune selling illuminated address numbers and software for Palm Pilots. “I love Trump, and I loved his book ‘The Art of the Deal,’” Darwin said. “Sure he’s over the top, but whatever.” Darwin readily admitted to styling his school after Trump’s, and he even bought his real estate program directly from the mogul (Darwin said it will retain the Trump brand). Darwin is also hiring employees for the school through a competition inspired by Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice.”

Darwin said he had dropped out of Trump U. last summer after a disagreement with his instructor, Don Sexton, over how much money should be spent on the logo of a new, bootstrapped company.
     

Darwin believes he can offer higher quality instruction than Trump, and said he was rounding up an all-star cast of instructors, including celebrity authors. “Ours is 100 percent interactive,” he said. “With Trump, you might get one phone conference a week, but we will have at least one a day.” In sizing up the universe of online educators, Darwin said, “The most they have in terms of interaction between students and teachers is a pathetic forum.” The former student said he had found much of Trump University “lame and really boring.” He called it “unengaging,” and termed the inspirational videos of Trump “goofy.”

Both Trump and Victory universities may be harbingers of more to come. Online education is a fast-growing field, with more and more brick-and-mortar colleges offering increased content over the World Wide Web. The trends are epitomized by the blockbuster success of the primarily online University of Phoenix, a for-profit endeavor that now boasts nearly 300,000 students around the world. That school has also been criticized for spamming, its low graduation rate and the quality of some faculty.

“There can be enormous pressure on those in for-profit educational institutions to cut corners to maximize profits,” said Ray Schroeder, “rather than maximizing the quality of the teaching and learning experience.”