The field of "survival" is rather hazy and vague, as previous posters have pointed out, both in terms of skills to learn and widely differing environments. While schools can be helpful, there is nothing like varied experience. Another issue is that survival is basically very simple and basic - fire, food, shelter, and first aid- handle those issues well and you will be in pretty good shape, most of the time. Many analysts have pointed out that one of the key ingredients is a successful scenario is "will to survive" and there are some astounding examples of that. How precisely would a key ability like that be taught?

I once had the dubious pleasure of retrieving the corpse of an individual abandoned by his companions along a remote trail. His "buddies" fled to a lower elevation, reaching the trail head successfully, and then called in the emergency. Subsequent investigation revealed that the victim's two companions were recent graduates of a winter survival course, something hard to believe because the narrative of their trip was a comedy of errors, with an extremely tragic ending.

I guess I am just a bit skeptical of schools of this ilk. I would be less so if the subject matter were better defined, as well as what constitutes proficiency.