I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, in which case: it actually is brilliant. If I thought of a way to get thousands of people to give me thousands of dollars to teach them whatever, I would. Wouldn't you?

Not like that, no. Playing people for suckers has never been my thing.

Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on nearly any school that claims a 100 percent placement rate. I doubt that even Harvard and Yale can claim all of their graduates are successfully employed in their chosen fields within months of graduation -- certainly not in the current economy.

Rick Veitch who was a student in Joe Kubert's school's first year of operation has, unsurprisingly, a remembrance of Joe. I wouldn't know if R.V.'s circumstances were unusual or even unique, but they do bespeak an uncommon generosity from Joe Kubert and his wife to him.

http://www.rickveitch.com/2012/08/13/remembering-joe-kubert/#comments

I have no doubt the man was nice. It's like the doctor who did my Dad's knee replacement surgeries. Super nice guy. He was there when Dad woke up, talked with us for a really long time, answered all our questions and allayed all our concerns. And then probably went out shopping for a new Mercedes-Benz with the $120,000 he just got paid for a morning's work.



Rick doesn't finish the story, but I'm guessing the Kuberts got paid.

By all accounts I've heard, Joe Kubert was a nice man. He certainly was one of the great comics artists.

But Allen's questions about the Joe Kubert School are interesting.

Seventy students at about $30,000 per year = $2.1 million a year, about one-fourth of which is federal tax money via Pell Grants and federally backed student loans.

Many private for-profit colleges (which is what we're talking about here) are ripoffs, as has been documented in the news lately, including a recent U.S. Senate investigation. They suck up millions in federal financial aid and produce unemployable schmoes, often deep in debt. Doonesbury recently has been calling them "publicly subsidized failure factories."

I dunno if this description fits the Kubert school or not.

I do know, according to its own numbers, reported to the feds, it accepts about nine of every ten applicants, so it ain't that choosy. Only 58 percent of the students who enrolled went on to graduate, so ... 42 percent fell out somewhere, having paid some money already.

And as Allen says, its Web site claims a 100 percent placement rate for its grads as of November 2009. That would be -- well, to be polite, that's impossible to believe. Conceivably, all of their graduates from that year's class were holding some sort of job somewhere, such as the midnight shift at Taco Bell, but -- that's not what the placement rate is supposed to suggest.

For context, for that same year, the University of Florida posted a placement rate of 45 percent for graduates going onto relevant jobs and 26 percent for graduates going onto more education. So a total of 71 percent of Florida grads had found placement somewhere successfully.

I'm gonna guess the Kubert school isn't more successful than Florida.

"From Mike Grell

4:19 PM (2 minutes ago)

Mr. Lawson and Mr. Montgomery spout opinions as fact while admitting they have no knowledge to base them on. Further demonstrating their ignorance, they criticize the school for being subsidized while charging tuition... like, oh, say, every university in the country. Perhaps they feel it would be more fair if it were free. But then you'd be stuck with instructors who worked for free, instead of the best talents in the industry. And they seem to object to the idea that Joe might have profited from the business he built out of nothing but a dream... and 35 years of labor. Gee, how unfair!

The Kubert School boasts a long list of famous alumni to prove its claims. As to the 9 out of 10 acceptance rate - no one applies to the Kubert School without having spent years drawing. It stands to reason that those who apply already have some skills and the placement rate speaks to the quality of instruction they're given.

IF Mr. Lawson and Mr. Montgomery intend to discuss this issue further, they should first arm themselves with the facts. If they'd like to discuss it with me in person, I suggest they simply arm themselves.

Mike Grell"

Is Mike Grell aware of who he's taking on? Grell vs Lawson - no contest!

I'd take Grell in any contest, in any challenge, in any setting.

Suffice to say taking potshots at Joe Kubert within 24 hours of any of us finding out about Joe's passing hardly favors Mr. Montgomery as a human being. Best not to waste time, Mr. Montgomery.

Re: Mr. Montgomery's initial statement:
____

"But his "school?" Let's call it what it is: a reversal of the Eisner sweat shop model into a fleecing of deluded hopefuls. And let us not forget he is included in the list of willing contributors to Before Watchmen.

Talented man. Too bad he couldn't have been just that."
_____

Thanks for clarifying for me the true nature of the man I thought I knew (and foolishly loved) since 1976; that my own career was a delusion; that what I stupidly thought was an education that had me selling my first pro work (to HEAVY METAL, Scholastic, etc.) before the end of my senior year (of a two-year program) was actually a "fleecing" and a "sweat shop"; and that Joe's being a "willing contributor" to a project Mr. Montgomery personally finds objectionable qualifies him for verbally trashing and soundly demolishing the career and ethics of a man who accomplished more than most of us would ever come close to accomplishing in five lifetimes.

If Mr. Montgomery ever opens a school, I'll be the first to apply in hopes of perhaps salvaging what remains of my mongrel existence in time to measure up to some approximation of Mr. Montgomery's admirably high standards.

Sorry to see my being away from the comicon.com boards for another year prevented my engaging with Mr. Montgomery's enlightened world view sooner. Had I been paying proper attention, he might have ripped the blinders from my eyes earlier, allowing me to divert my remaining energies into some path Mr. Montgomery might deem more rewarding and/or non-delusional, and thus sparing my own students my inflicting upon them (with other sad, pathetic "educators") another year of "education" at the Center for Cartoon Studies, "fleecing...deluded hopefuls."