Bargains in Short-Order Courses

By Ezra Bowen

It had been a typically mellow day at Manhattan's New School for Social Research for Bill Zanker, 26, who was cruising through a master's program in filmmaking. Then came a surprise phone summons from his father for lunch. When they met, Dad's message was "Get a job."

Every father should have a son who listens so well. Zanker did not just get a job; within six years he built himself a business whose $1 million a month in sales put him at the top of one of the fastest-growing sectors in U.S. education. It began when he reflected that many of his fellow students were not interested in a degree but paid hefty fees for credit. "So I thought, gee, set up a film school that was just for information--quick, and no credit," he says. Friends suggested adding a pottery class and a course on surviving the ordeal of job interviews.

For classrooms Zanker first used borrowed offices or living rooms, then began renting public school rooms at $5 to $10 a night. To promote his curriculum, which he dubbed the Learning Annex, he took $5,000 that he had saved from his Bar Mitzvah, printed a course brochure, dressed up as a clown complete with whiteface makeup "to differentiate myself from people giving out porn stuff," and handed out the booklets in Grand Central station. Then he raced back to a tiny basement office in a building just off Central Park and waited for the phone to ring.

Ring it did, right off the wall, and the Annex was in business. Today 3 million Annex catalogs mailed out monthly offer short-order evening and weekend study programs on everything from boudoir photography to computer programming to women's body building. There are more than 300,000 adult students in twelve cities coast to coast. A typical course like Belly Dancing meets once a week for only four weeks--just right, says Zanker, for "people who don't have the time or the energy to take long-term courses and who don't care about credits." The price is right too: an average of $40.

"We took a very, very boring industry--adult education--and we created a little pizazz," says Zanker, who rarely speaks below a shout and tends to sound like an LP played too fast. "Quality education we give, but in a showbiz atmosphere," he adds, drawing his legs up beneath him on his office chair and rocking back and forth as the words rattle out. "I give an average of 150 shows a night." The Annex is not the only show of its kind. In the past decade some 50 similar enterprises have started up, from California's thriving Learning Exchange and Learning Tree to Chicago's Discovery Center to the Open University in Washington. Zanker, who takes a modest $70,000 salary but holds $5.5 million worth of Annex stock, sweepingly dismisses the competition as "mom-and-pop operations." He has, however, bought out the Open University. "I am the Ziegfeld of adult education," he proclaims.

To lead his classes, Zanker wants no regular teachers. "I hated my teachers in high school! I hated my teachers in college!" he shouts. To Zanker they committed the worst of sins: "They were boring!" Instead, he recruits lay professionals--or at least zealots--in the subjects offered. When he wanted to set up a course in direct-mail marketing, which he suspected might also help him promote the business, "instead of paying the consultant the ten grand he wanted for the day, we called up and said, 'Why don't you teach?'" Zanker says high-priced help frequently succumbs to the opportunity of showing off to a captive audience for modest stipends (from a flat $100 to 30% of the total class fees). Among those who have been lured: a helicopter-company president, a real estate developer, an estates attorney and a U.S. national-team boxer. Zanker claims he can get on the phone in any city and recruit a catalog full of teachers within 48 hours.

Of the Annex's computer-stored list of 10,000 possible courses, many have been suggested by volunteers who want to play teacher. In 1980 someone tried to promote a class on cross-dressing, at which even the freewheeling Annex hesitated. Into the computer files it went, to come out in 1985 when Boy George was at his peak. Some 40 people signed up. "Who are we to judge what is crazy or not?" shrugs Zanker. Last month in a New York City class, three dozen students sat raptly as a fiftyish couple disclosed the Sexual Secrets of the Orient, which featured a unison exercise requiring all present to stick out their tongues and move them in various directions, including figure eights.

Zanker cheerfully concedes that such sexy studies, plus the simple chance of making new acquaintances, constitute much of the Annex's appeal; the "meet market," he calls it. Some 55% of his students are singles. But he points out that in today's economy and self-promotional climate, courses like Accounting and How to Market Your Ideas for Millions with Dr. Fad are outpacing all others in popularity.

While Annex vendors in whiteface help keep enrollment booming by handing out catalogs on street corners, Zanker plans further expansions of his empire. This week four new directors are in training before launching new Annexes in San Francisco, Denver, Phoenix and Boston. Next year the first overseas Annex will open in London, where Zanker may lead with How to Find a Lover. "They don't have anything like that over there," he says. Next on his horizon: Japan. "Anybody can be your market!" Zanker exults. "It can work anywhere!"

With reporting by Reported by John Edward Gallagher/New York