Cornell "Outdoor Education"

Cornell Outdoor Education, described by its director Todd Miner as "not a business", is certainly run like one; it is not an academic unit and does not enjoy academic governance or oversight by the academic units of Cornell, despite the fact that it is the only such non-academic unit which can offer academic credit (though only for physical education equivalency).

As a business, COE has revenues approximately in the $1 million per annum range, of which a simple calculation shows that the students who conduct the bulk of COE courses are paid about 30%. The other 70% goes to a permanent staff of about ten people. Thus COE has commoditized what historically has been the sharing of the skills for outdoors exploration into a business relationship, extracting revenues of about $300 per trip per person, the bulk of which goes not to the people conducting the event, but to an office staff.

COE also operates its sock puppet Outdoor Odyssey/Wilderness Reflections, a student front which recruits unpaid guides for freshman orientation trips and launders student government money for trip "scholarships" to what are otherwise functionally identical COE trips costing hundreds of dollars apiece.

COE (under previous leadership) attempted unsuccessfully in the early 1990s to take control of the Cornell Outing Club's Japes Lodge. They have enjoyed more success recently influencing the leadership of the club and repurposing it as a semi-colonial appendage of Cornell's highly remunerative guide service.