Trump’s bewildering relationship with academia (PART 1)

I have worked in academia almost my entire professional life: first in Germany, then in Austria and finally in the UK. I therefore think that I know this world quite well. Recently, I have been observing with an increasing degree of concern what is happening to academia in the US. This matters to me, firstly because I have many friends, co-workers and colleagues in this sector, and secondly because major problems in the US will inevitably affect academia across the world.

This is why I took a keen interest in the US developments and tried to understand what exactly is going on there. To do this, we have to inquire about Trump’s weird relationship with academia. And to comprehend that, we ought to start by looking at family Trump’s experience.

Donald Trump started his education by attending the Kew-Forest School where he remained until the 7th grade. Trump himself has acknowledged that his behavior during this time could be described as disruptive. A classmate, Paul Onish, later recalled that Trump spent so much time in detention that his peers nicknamed it “DTs” (short for “Donny Trump”). Another classmate, Donald Kass, noted that Trump had a reputation for “saying anything that came into his head”.

Seeking to instill a little discipline, his parents, therefore sent him, aged 13, to the New York Military Academy, a private boarding school. A classmate from the Academy later said that Trump “yelled at his classmates. He pushed them around. … He ruled dormitory life with an iron fist.” Trump graduated from the Academy in 1964.

He then attended Fordham University in the Bronx for two years before transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1968. There’s no record of him pursuing further formal education beyond his undergraduate degree. Biographies, like those by authors Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, mention that Trump’s assertive personality persisted during his university years. William T. Kelley, a marketing professor at Wharton allegedly called Trump “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

Yet, Trump claimed repeatedly that he had been best in class, etc. Yet, there is no evidence for this, and Trump has threatened legal action against his former educational institutions in case they released his grades. Whichever way we look at it, Trumps academic career was at best unimpressive and at worst mediocre.

It is therefore all the more surprising that, later in life, Trump ventured into academia again – albeit this time as an entrepreneur. In 2004, he together with two associates opened ‘TRUMP UNIVERSITY, LLC’, not an accredited university but a for-profit education company. It claimed to provide ‘real estate and wealth-building seminars’ as well as Trump’s business strategies.

Initially, this institution offered online courses, audio packages, and workbooks focused on real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation. It promised students a way to learn Trump’s ‘real estate secrets’. The University soon expanded to include individual mentorships and multi-day workshops, with prices up to $35,000 for “elite programs”.

By 2010, the institution increasingly faced criticism. It was alleged that it used misleading marketing, employed unqualified instructors, taught high-pressure sales tactics, and ripped off students.  As it was not an accredited university, the use of the term “university” in the name violated state law. Trump reacted in 2010 by rebranding his company as the “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative”. Only one year later, it ceased operation.

Multiple lawsuits, including a class-action followed. It was alleged that Trump’s institution had misrepresented its offerings as well as its instructors’ credentials, and it was claimed that Trump had been running an unlicensed, illegal educational institution that had defrauded students of over $40 million. Finally, in November 2016, Trump settled three lawsuits for US $25 million.

And what about Trump’s family?

• Donald Trump Jr. graduated, as did his father, from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 with a BSc in Economics. A 2004 New York magazine profile and a former classmate both noted instances of Trump Jr. being visibly intoxicated on campus. In a 2004 interview, he himself admitted drinking heavily at Wharton stating, “I used to drink a lot and party pretty hard”. In 2001, he was once arrested for public drunkenness.
• Ivanka Trump also graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (in 2004) with a BSc in Economics. She seems to have been a diligent student and never caused any problems at Wharton.
• Eric Trump graduated from Georgetown University in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Management. Eric stated in 2021 that he was “not even that proud” of his alma mater, calling it “crazy as hell,” “off the charts,” and “out of their mind.”
• Trump’s current wife, Melania, attended the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia but left after one year to pursue modeling. There have been speculations that she misrepresented her academic credentials to obtain the ‘Einstein visa’, which would constitute visa fraud. However, her attorney maintained that no university connection is cited in her visa application.
• Trump’s youngest son, Barron, it has been rumored on social media, was turned down by Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford, but these claims are not supported by official sources. Barron is currently enrolled at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Trump claimed that Barron had been accepted to multiple universities and made this choice because he preferred it to the other options.

It seems to me that Trump’s own and his family’s complex experiences with various US universities might be relevant for understanding Trump’s bewildering relationship with academia in the US.