A 17-year-old is looking forward to college not because of the academics that he's focused on absorbing -- he wants the experience, ... So far, the Web can't fulfill those desires. |
But the flip side [is that] at age 40, there's no way you'd consider going anywhere else. |
In last 25 years, Famous Footwear was the most compelling growth vehicle that this corporation had. In 1981, it had 31 stores and now it's national with well over 900 stores. In 25 years, it's contributed more than $300 million in after-tax earnings to shareholders. |
We don't have buildings; we don't have cafeterias; we don't have football teams and marching bands. What we spend our money on is the actual education that students are getting and in particular, we spend our money on making sure that students have access to faculty. |
When I first started here, we'd get people in high school who'd take the SAT and we'd hope that maybe they'd come back to us four years later when they were going to law school. But that's it, ... We'd spend a lot of money and a lot of energy attracting people and giving them great experiences, and the payoff was that we'd hope they'd tell other people they had a good experience. |