Teach the children well, and maybe they won’t fall for this when they grow up

15 October 2009

The entrepreneurs who founded Absolute Best Care have come up with a brilliant business plan—or possibly a brilliant grift—and the New York Times doesn’t understand it.

…To that end comes the Absolute Best Care Learning Center, scheduled to open Oct. 26. For a mere $4,000 — $2,040 if you act now — aspiring nannies who attend a seven-day course will obtain training in child care, developmental milestones, CPR, first aid and household management. (Five have signed up so far.)

It’s worth pointing out that pediatric first aid and CPR courses rarely run more than a few hundred bucks, and that the textbook Absolute will be using, “Mrs. Starkey’s Nanny Manager,” is $79.95 on Amazon.com.

But as soon as I saw the price tag, I could tell that ABC is not selling these classes to aspiring nannies. The overprivileged parents who were portrayed in The Nanny Diaries will send their nannies to this school, and cheerfully exchange those kilobucks for the peace of mind that comes from having a properly-educated servant.

The great thing about the corporate-training biz is that as long as there are employers out there with money to burn (as a tax-deductible business expense, no less), you can set prices in the stratosphere. If Harvard Extension can charge $1,975 for a six-hour class in Fundamentals of Website Development, then I’m sure ABC will have no trouble finding enough parents in the Upper West Side to fill their classes at $2,040, or even $4,000, per seat.

• Later: Grand Old Pluralism
• Earlier: Cain’s best friend