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It’s a well known fact that scams have been around for a long time, scams like that email in your inbox about that distant cousin in Nigeria who just happens to be a prince that has left millions and millions of dollars. All you have to do is give them your bank account and your mother’s maiden name to transfer the money and wa-lah! Scams come in many different forms, from emails from sent by the Central Bank of Nigeria to someone offering to double your money on Runescape, it happens everywhere to everyone. Now this article isn’t reporting on something that’s a scam, but something that comes very close to one: Envision’s Global Young Leader’s Conference (GYLC).

GYLC has been around since the foundation of Envision in 1985 when “a Connecticut educator saw an opportunity to make the world her classroom”. A very aspiring tale as to how Envision began and perhaps it did start like that but it is now something different, something rather suspicious. So suspicious of a scam that the NYTimes wrote an article about it (or at least something very similar, for information see here) and was commented on many forums as such. Despite being suspected as a scam, GYLC has been supported by many schools and even AISG happens to advertise this event. Many readers might be thinking, “but this is something that is supported by the school, how can this possibly be a scam?”. Well for all the skeptical and indignant readers, it’s not really a scam as mentioned above, it just doesn’t seem as worthy as it costs.

Taking a venture into Envision’s site. Envision promises to provide:

Seemingly academical and interesting, Envision puts on a pretense that says “high caliber” learning like no one else, except it’s basically all fun and games with some learning. After some investigation from forum to forum and perusals of GYLC’s twitter page, many signs point to an experience that is analogous to what AISG provides through Dragonfly (except you can’t write about china trips on your resume). If you didn’t just take a quick glance through the list of things that the tuition provides, you would have noticed that they provide two meals a day. Being an organization that is founded in America, a country with a culture that embraces the idea of more than three meals a day, it is worth noting that they only offer two meals a day. Let’s just assume they provide brunch and dinner.

To be honest, GYLC isn’t a bad event, it just isn’t a good one. They meet in some interesting places from Xi’an temple in China to embassies in America, but for $3,095 to participate in the U.S. program or $4,295 for either the China or Europe program, GYLC seems particularly expensive for what it offers. From what many people say, it is a fun experience and especially a great one if you haven’t been to the country (United States – Washington, DC and New York; China – Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai; Europe – Vienna, Prague, and Berlin).