'The Simpsons' skewers Trump University with Burns University
By now you’re more than familiar with Trump University, the highly derided, not-accredited, for-profit institution that was in the news late last year when then-President-elect Donald Trump settled three lawsuits for a reported $25 million. But what you’re about to familiarize yourself with is Burns University, which is affiliated with Trump University by means of direct parody.
Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons (8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox) takes you inside the world of Burns University, which Mr. Burns founds after he becomes disillusioned with his alma mater, Yale (Class of 1914!), and starts his own for-profit university, where Homer is hired as a professor. Neil Degrasse Tyson, Ken Jennings, Suze Orman, and Robert McKee are among those lending voices to the episode, as is Jason Alexander, who plays Bourbon Verlander, the deceptively wicked inventor of for-profit colleges. “He has a very evil scheme that is a little reminiscent of the film Ex Machina, where he has an army of androids built to capture all the student loans that the government is giving out,” Simpsons executive producer Al Jean told EW last summer.
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Check out this clip from the “The Caper Chase,” which is a promotional video in which Burns explains that his students land such plum jobs as an “elder care associate,” “museum manager, nighttime,” or “TV recapper,” and that they can even print their degrees on their computer “out of the sight of the law.” As Burns sums up, “I made a billion dollars through ruthless backstabbing, but now for no apparent reason, I seem to be helping young people.”
