Chopper College was created in response to the growing niche market for shorter and more intense learning environments, the push to expand ones’ skill base, the ever popular demand for custom bike building, and the move towards a ‘green’ mode of transportation. The theme of the school is to provide boot camp style classes for a myriad of types of hands on instruction.
The college began with one campus located thirty miles south of Chicago offering just the weekend bike building boot camp. Over time it has upgraded and expanded its core curriculum and toured the country with Allstate Insurance, promoting its radical style of learning while continuing to design innovative class instruction.
There are many revenue models and the opportunity for growth is widespread. However, the basic components lie with student demand and the boot camp format, all else follows naturally. The boot camp format consists of intense learning condensed into a short period of time. For example, Northwestern University offers a nine week summer course which covers three entire science courses. The medical industry has followed suit, offering Medicare Boot Camps to hospitals over weekends.
Chopper College follows much of the same approach. The students immerse themselves in an environment that is truly conducive to absorbing as much information on a specific topic in a limited amount of time. The schedule allows for no distractions. Chopper College is exceedingly focused on hands on instruction in every aspect of building a motorcycle from start to finish. These areas run the full spectrum from custom bike building, welding, frame design, fabrication, to even PC design workshops.
One example of innovative teaching styles implemented at Chopper College include having a wiring harness enlarged and painted on the floor so students can walk through the flow of the current and feel the ‘pops’ and ‘shocks’, or real power.
Starting with one class entitled The 3 Day Boot Camp, Chopper College has now expanded to over thirty classes and is currently developing instructional videos for a variety of topics that will be mass produced and marketed.
The popularity of such a school stems from motorcycle owner demographics, company sponsored continuing education, cars and cycles becoming more customized, and the industry as a whole expanding to include and embrace women.
Through the years 2007 and 2008, Chopper College sponsored the Chop This National Tour which was conducted in tandem with the Allstate Mobile Garage tour. Those tours jointly presented both companies in various venues with a traveling boot camp that invited students to participate in a three day bike build leading up to the unveiling of a custom chopper at the end. The now famous Allstate chopper is a result of that national tour.