Trump University students say they were bullied into giving glowing reviews

Donald Trump's main defense of Trump University, in the face of several fraud lawsuits and campaign attacks, has been the positive, "beautiful" reviews former students gave his real estate courses. Those reviews, it seems, appear to have always been "a central component of a business model that, according to lawsuits and investigators, deceived consumers into handing over thousands of dollars with tantalizing promises of riches," The New York Times reports, citing "hundreds of pages of legal documents, as well as interviews with former students and instructors." And, many former students and instructors say, the glowing reviews were coerced.

Instructors say their income depended on getting high reviews, and, in an usual arrangement for academic courses, students filled out the evaluation forms in front of instructors and were not told they could leave off their names. "I think it's much better when a student puts their name on it," Trump said in a January deposition. Otherwise, "they don't mean anything, actually." Many of the students were supposed to continue working and getting guidance from the instructors and mentors after turning in their signed evaluations, and according to documents made public during litigation, the students were asked to turn in evaluations to get their graduation certificates.

Normally in academic settings, evaluations are anonymous, so students can be frank about their experience, former Trump University consultant Howard E. Haller tells The Times. "No one knows if you even filled it out. The professor sure doesn't know." In interviews, Trump U alumni said that instructors had pleaded for high scores, refused to leave the room until receiving a 5 out of 5 rating, and hounded students until they recanted their low ratings and gave the course top marks.

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A lawyer for Trump, Daniel M. Petrocelli, dismissed the complaints. "Folks were not coerced," he said. "They gave overwhelmingly positive reviews because they were being honest about their assessment." Read more at The New York Times.