Bubble U.: Inside High Point University

As our little electric train pulls away from the admissions building, it’s already clear that High Point University looks like no campus any of us has ever seen. Piped-in classical music drifts across freshly planted flower beds as a student guide, steering a golf-cart-style “engine,” tows our group of six parents and teens past statues of Aristotle, Galileo, and Jefferson. She parks in front of the Plato S. Wilson School of Commerce, and we clamber out to tour the building. Opened in 2009, it’s outfitted with marble floors, a full-size replica of a financial trading floor, and a classroom with row upon row of computer-assisted design consoles. The kids’ eyes pop as the tour continues, with visits to a first-run movie theater, a steakhouse, and dorms with plasma-screen TVs and outdoor hot tubs.