Everything You Need To Know About Trump University

Thursday’s GOP debate brought some heightened scrutiny to real estate mogul Donald Trump’s Trump University, which Trump is currently being sued over. Here is everything you need to know about it.

Trump University…isn’t really a university. Trump University was billed as an online course with distinguished professors and expert real estate investors teaching people how to become rich like Trump.

“I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor,” Trump said. His university even advertised teaching students “how to profit from the $700 billion bailout.”

Problem is, it was all bogus. As Slate’s Helaine Olen has detailed, Trump University students attended a free seminar in which they were pressured to sign up for a three-day seminar for a fee of $1,495 in which all they learned was to spend more money:

According to the lawsuits, the main thing they learned in those three days was what they should say to convince credit card issuers to raise the credit limits on their cards. Why? They needed the money to fund their new businesses. Immediately. If that didn’t work, they could also apply for new cards. Students were told they should remember to include “projected income” when calculating household earnings on applications for new cards. What projected income, you might ask? Well, the real estate empires they would be setting up as soon as they left the class.

After this seminar, students were pressured to sign up for yet another class and receive expert mentoring for a one-day “special sale price” of $34,995 for the Gold Elite package. The cheapest packages were $9,995. Unfortunately for those who signed up, the mentoring they received was “spotty” and wasn’t from actual experts, as one of the so-called real estate investing experts had his homes foreclosed during his tenure at Trump University, and another had zero background with real estate investing. He just had experience at giving lectures.

Trump’s defense of the false advertising is that everyone else does it.

Trump University schlonged the little guy. In another Slate piece, Olen notes that most of the former students suing Trump University fit the profile of Trump voters–and they lost a lot of money paying for the phony classes. Olen highlights a couple of the plaintiffs: (emphasis bolded)

They’re people like Tarla Makaeff, a former model and would-be fashion entrepreneur—and currently a yoga instructor—who filed suit against Trump in 2010. She’s now, according to Yahoo, asking to be removed as a named plaintiff in the class-action case, claiming Trump is threatening to financially ruin her. (Unfortunately, the transcript from a December deposition Trump gave in the class-action lawsuit remains sealed.) Other alleged victims of Trump U include Kathleen Meese, a schoolteacher from upstate New York supporting a son with Down syndrome, and Nelly Cunningham of Staten Island, who says she blew all her savings on Trump University classes. “I spent $1,495 on the Trump three-day seminar and $24,995 on the Trump Gold Elite mentorship package, only to be demeaned and belittled. I feel like such a fool,” she said in her court filing.

A profile of Trump University in Time magazine features Kevin Scott, whose mentor advised him to “buy and flip” houses using “other people’s money.” However, the banks who owned the houses refused to take Scott’s deal unless he had the proper financing, which Trump University had promised to give him. Yet, Scott never received that money from Trump University, and as a result his credit cards were “tapped out.”

“I ended up being one of those distressed properties; I now have to rent out my house and live in a small apartment,” Scott said.

The America’s Future Fund has released ads of students who gave testimonials about being scammed by Trump University:

Trump counters these complaints by claiming that his university had a 98 percent approval rating and the university gave refunds. However, as the Time profile points out, almost one-third of the students were given refunds.

“If at least 31% of one group and 16% of the other were so instantly dissatisfied that they immediately demanded refunds, how could 98% have been satisfied?” the profile asks.

Trump University is the subject of multiple lawsuits, and Trump may have to testify during the campaign. Fortune magazine reports that Trump faces a 2013 civil lawsuit from the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that is “seeking $40 million in restitution,” and he also has to testify in a fraud case against Trump University.

Trump claimed that all the proceeds were going to go to charity. This too, is false. According to the Time profile, Trump pocketed $5 million from Trump University, so there is no way it could have been a “charitable venture.”

The Trump University attack clearly worked. The Washington Post reports that when Rubio attacked Trump over Trump University, a massive spike in Google Searches for Trump University occurred. This suggests that the Trump University attack was effective, and is something that will be used against Trump going forward.