Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Agree Whittle is a fraud and a con man who announces first then tries to backfill to make it happen. The DC AG let this happen under his watch despite constant filings. The story as to why- has still not completely come out.
Don’t understand why Chris Whittle isn’t in jail. Why no one sued him for fraud. ( loads of lawsuits but none for fraud). Why he’s even allowed to operate after embezzling millions from lenders, his wife’s funds and hard working families who handed him cash flow he claimed he had already raised.
That said - Baret Scholars is brilliant. There’s no infrastructure cost to this program. Just staffing cost. He doesn’t need to bankrupt a bunch of contractors to retrofit a bad sad building. He’s gotten his old friend education venture capitalist Michael Moe ( who sat on Whittle Board and encouraged the con to anyone who asked) to help legitimize the venture. And if you actually watch some of the application videos from prospective students on YouTube they are very impressive.
As a stand alone program it’s potentially viable. The catch is that Whittle and his old cronies who have lied and stolen from anyone that came their way, shouldn’t be allowed to operate anything. Yet the cat seems to have gotten a 10th life.
$64,500 in tuition (plus $30,000 in fees/room and board) and no college credit earned?
As an educator, I'm intrigued by this and any disruptive model of education just as thought experiments and also as competition to the status quo. However, the "high production values" language (traveling TED talk sounds like it's made for people with very short attention span) and the cost rub me the wrong way. It seems like a Grand Tour for the very rich, when people used to just organize that themselves. If you can't figure out how to travel and meet cool people and learn stuff for 100,000 a year, I guess join this program? Basically a travel agency with the promise of introductions to some interesting people, for a price? I am thinking of how WC Fields said he wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept him, what person would want to belong to this program?? Affluenza-ish and off putting. Reminds me of the We Work educational side venture.