Courses Range From Starting a Business to Knowing Your Aura : Learning Annex Unites Education, Fun
Bill Zanker’s glitzy, pop education Learning Annex is now in 15 cities, offering such courses as dog sledding, knowing your aura and finding a lover.
Students can learn French or flirting, how to take a better photo or dance a better mambo.
Where does Zanker get these ideas?
“You just have to listen to what people are complaining about, what they’re fantasizing about, what their fears are--and those are our courses,” said Zanker, a 32-year-old multimillionaire who began his adult education center about six years ago with $5,000 saved from his bar mitzvah.
300,000 Enrollment
Since its inception, the non-accredited Learning Annex has grown from a one-room studio apartment in Manhattan to a nationwide network that will enroll about 300,000 people in 1987.
“People want to learn. They want quick information. They don’t want to spend a lot of money. They want it in safe environments,” Zanker said. “And it’s a great way to meet people.”
The possibility of meeting a mate and making new acquaintances appears to be a major draw. About 54% of the students are single.
“The percentage of singles used to be 70%. It’s moving away from a place just for singles to a place for everyone to meet because if you’re a married couple, you also want to meet other people,” he said.
The Annex has inspired about 50 similar enterprises, including California’s Learning Exchange and Chicago’s Discovery Center.
Zanker recently visited Tokyo to discuss a joint venture with investment groups. “In Tokyo, if you go to the discotheques, the men stand on one side and the women stay on the other side. They just don’t know how to get to know each other,” he said.
Other Courses Popular
But Zanker contends that the Learning Annex is not just a social gathering place because achievement-oriented courses in accounting, computers and finance are outpacing all other offerings.
“People are interested in making money and getting ahead in their careers,” he said. “Probably our most successful course . . . for years has been how to start your own business.”
Even so, representatives of other continuing education programs say the Learning Annex’s success doesn’t threaten them.
The New School for Social Research, where Zanker studied film before he started his business, has done market research indicating that the Learning Annex is not a competitor, spokesman Malcolm Carter said.
“We are a serious educational institution founded 68 years ago to provide a forum for learning and debate to working adults,” Carter said. “Today, we remain faithful to that tradition and not to just creating a social setting.”
At the New York University School of Continuing Education, spokeswoman Susan Gilbert said: “People who take courses here (NYU) are serious about what they’re learning because it has something to do with their career or success. They’re not doing it to meet people or just to take a course.”
The New School and the NYU school, which each serve about 35,000 adult students yearly, are accredited, degree-offering institutions. They also offer non-credit courses.
Their fees range from $200 to $250 per semester for non-credit courses, substantially more for credit.
At the Learning Annex, new semesters begin each month, and courses cost from $21 for a three-hour seminar on the new tax laws to $140 for a day of hot-air ballooning.
Emphasis on Fun
Zanker, who always emphasizes fun, says he avoids hiring teachers trained in education and instead recruits business leaders and lay people to lead his classes.
