Meredith Manor: An Excellent Scam, Part 2
If you read Part 1 of this series then you know that Meredith Manor is a massive waste of money purely based off it’s cost compared to a reputable institution with actual, genuine name recognition within the industry. Maybe that’s not deterred you though because you’ve heard such wonderful things about MM from a former student--- well, let’s get into the kind of education you’ll receive at MM. Easiest to start with is who you’ll be getting this education FROM:
You’ll notice something interesting about Ron Meredith’s “credentials”. He holds an HONORARY doctorate in Equestrian Studies which is “the only degree of it’s kind in the world”--- would you like to know WHY that is? Well, it’s not a real degree. It’s not a real degree and it is not based on any genuine knowledge.
Honorary degrees are not considered of the same standing as substantive degrees earned by the standard academic processes of courses and original research, except perhaps where the recipient has demonstrated an appropriate level of academic scholarship that would ordinarily qualify him or her for the award of a substantive degree. They are given out at the discretion of an institution and are almost always a PR stunt--- valued donors of a college tend to be recipients. What’s funny about this too is that Salem College is a WOMEN’S liberal arts college (no shade to ladies or liberal arts, but if a recipient of an honorary degree hasn’t graduated from the college awarded it it’s generally a sign that the “degree” is even more meaningless). You know who else has an honorary degree? Pitbull. Aside from that, it mentions Ron’s many contributions to the equestrian community... funny, I’ve never heard of him before! He’s not a Robert Dover or a George Morris. Or interestingly the fact that Faith Meredith is supposedly an accomplished FEI level competitor who has trained others to that level--- yet some dedicated internet sleuthing found that Faith doesn’t have any recorded scores. Not sure how you can be a successful competitor at the FEI levels without any officials scores to your name; who told her she was successful? Her husband? The guy with a fake degree?? With the exception of TWO instructors listed, everyone is an MM grad. (By the way, the one real professor with a real degree also potentially may no longer be associated with the school at all since OSU no longer has a joint program with MM). There’s a strong issue here: having only your graduates as your employees highlights three glaring issues with your program--- 1) No one knows who you are, 2) You’re not providing the best instructors, & 3) Your job placement rate is awful. Why are these the glaring issues? Well, for a program that’s supposedly so well-renowned to not bring in any outside faculty suggests that actually, no the school isn’t well known at all. If you can only manage to hire your own graduates then clearly no one knows who you are because they’ve not even heard of you when searching for jobs to apply for OR if they have, they’ve not heard good things. Only pulling from your own pool of... “talent” is also highly indicative of your inability to provide a good educational program--- don’t believe me, go find someone who works in college administration and have them explain to you that diverse faculty insures quality instruction. You see, there’s no way on earth that all the teaching talent worthy of teaching in a program is coming from ONE school (or even one State worth of schools); Harvard will hire Princeston grads, Princeston will hire Stanford grads, Stanford will hire Howard Grads--- like programs recognize like talent/skill and seek out hires with different educational backgrounds in order to guarantee students are getting the most up-to-date and broad education. Only hiring your own grads also suggests your job placement is horrid. If MM grads are so talented, then why AREN’T we seeing them teaching in other collegiate equine programs? Guesses are, they can’t get jobs and feeding back into the school is one of their few options for employment. An extremely insular hiring situation will also guarantee a degradation of knowledge over time--- if everyone has learned from the same program and is regurgitating the same information you lose basic theory comprehension, basic practical application, and lose some aspects of the original method; you cannot isolate learning and expect a program to evolve or thrive, limiting yourself as an individual or as an institution from other methods of learning or training guarantees you are functioning with the most sub-optimal version of knowledge available. Now, what about what they’re teaching? Let me start with my absolute favorite thing I discovered:
You know what no one should ever have to pay for when attending what is supposed to be a college program for aspiring professional equestrians? Having to work for 21 hours in the barns--- in fact, if you want to work part-time in a barn while a fulltime student there are plenty of colleges with ISHA teams that will gladly waive your fees if you’re going to work that much. Everything this course claims to cover is a) something anyone even considering owning a horse should know before ever taking on horse ownership and b) something you learn from working around/with horses. I don’t even mean in a Working Student position, I mean if you take lessons regularly/own your own horse/in-barn lease/even went to enough bullshit pony camps you should know. If you don’t know to pick out a horse’s hooves, size a blanket, or how to properly clean a stall then you should not be paying money to get a degree in horses. That would be like expecting someone who has never even added 2+2 before to get a degree in mathematics--- you can’t possibly have enough exposure to know you’d want to make a living out of it and you clearly do not even have the most basic knowledge required to pursue it. There’s also the whole MM obsession with dominance theory and horses
All current studies on horse behavior suggest that not only is this an extremely out-dated theory but that’s it’s completely wrong. Dominance theory ignores rational explanations for a horse not doing a desired behavior (is the horse in pain? is the horse confused? is the distracted?) and bases training around the concept that horses willingly misbehave. This leads to an inherently abusive style of training with horses because it removes all ability for communication, either the horse does that you say or you “dominate it”--- when we ignore an animals tools to communicate pain, fear, and confusion we are exploiting a power imbalance. If I were to ignore you (a human, or maybe a pornbot) when you told me you couldn’t understand why 2+2=4 but also why 1+3=4 and my response was to keep screaming at you to tell me why these are equal equations or to hit you each time you explained incorrectly... that’s very clearly an abusive relationship. Meredith Manor also likes to pretend corn is a viable and nutritional feed option for horses.
Oh. notice how the two people trying to convince us that corn (something with almost no nutritional value for horses and would be akin to human being eating only gummy worms) are the two people who have to make sure the school has enough money to function. Feeding corn is cheap. Oh and do also take note of the fact that Faith is trying to advocate for the idea that horses ridden frequently enough don’t need turn-out (without even going into any science behind why this is not okay--- do you think if I kept you locked in your bedroom but took you out for 2 60 minutes gym sessions a day that it would be good for your physical and mental health?). Let’s take a quick look at some of the visual results you’ll see when looking into MM’s riding program. Here we have, a walking lunge lesson--- listen, no shade at beginners because that’s fine, but you shouldn’t be pursuing a career or education in horses if you’re remotely near a level where your riding will benefit from a lunge lesson at the walk (also, I believe the horse has side reins on--- very, very, very dangerous).
Here we have a horse which, even at this angle, clearing isn’t wearing a properly fitted saddle. If they don’t know what a correctly fitting saddle looks like or why it’s important... they’re not going to teach you anything worth learning.
Oh and hear we have the college freely advertising their inability to consider horse and rider safety (y’all ever seen one of those buckets shatter? let me tell you... that’s a nightmare waiting to happen if a horse decides not to jump that).
So, if this school is offering barely above beginner knowledge and expecting people to pay out the hoo-hah for it... why are they still in existence?
Because they are preying on beginners.
Here’s all it takes to get accepted into MM:
By being a school that’s focused primarily around producing professional equestrians, having no baseline requirement for riding ability guarantees you are producing inconsistently knowledgeable/skilled graduated. It’s a 72 week program guys, do you really think someone who starts riding at MM will be anywhere near as skillful or knowledgeable as someone who has been riding in regular lessons for 8 years? No. You don’t because you’re not that dumb. That aside, let’s think of it like this: People who go into Med School aren’t people with poor grades in Freshman Biology, it’s a skilled field with a limit to the amount of professionals it can accommodate and the practical and theoretical knowledge it takes to be become a full-fledged doctor is demanding. Being a professional equestrian shouldn’t be considered differently--- it has a limit to viability, doing it well, correctly, safely, profitably requires much more skill/knowledge than your average Tom, Dick, or Harry. You don’t produce a doctor from scratch (or lawyer or chemist or [insert high skill job here]) in 72 weeks neither can you produce an equine professional in 72 weeks.
And yes, their design is meant to prey on beginners.
Just look at this:
That’s extremely basic knowledge. If this is knowledge you lack there is no way in hell you should be spending $65k at a school meant for producing horse professionals. Nor is it even safe for you to be putting in that 21 hours a week doing basic horse care. Not only is there no way you’ll have any worthy knowledge in 72 weeks, but... honestly you should never, ever commit your education to something you have such a little basic understanding of. Horses might seems like a fun career to your random 16 year old who grew up loving horse girl movies and maybe did a 2 week camp every summer and who is “horse crazy”, but the problem with “empowering” beginners to become professionals is that they have no real genuine idea of the scope of work that goes into it--- imagining spending $65k only to find out you don’t even like horses enough to want to pursue that profession or to find out you just don’t have what it takes (burnout is very real and there’s no shame in being a very competitive AA rider ((or casual AA rider)) who enjoys their time with horses but literally could not do it as a full-time job). If you think you want to be a professional and you don’t have any serious experience then go out and get a WS position, grooming position, or even just find a work-to-pay-off-lessons deal and see how that goes. You’ll save $65k, possibly make money, and actually learn a lot more than you would from MM. Being a beginner is okay and fine and normal, but convincing a beginner they can pursue a professional career is predatory. MM doesn’t care if you can ride or have even seen a horse before, MM only cares if you can pay them. I’ll leave you all this time with these stellar endorsements of MM grads off of COTH: