By James Arnold BBC News Online business reporter

Every inch the hot media brand

The Apprentice, the TV vehicle of property tycoon Donald Trump, has become required viewing on American business-school campuses.

Some colleges have built courses around the show, and Mr Trump - or "The Donald", as he prefers to be known - is planning a book about what he's learned.

As the series comes to a close in the US, and before a clone hits British screens (the BBC has already bought the rights), it might be worth asking what those lessons ought to be.

The Donald launched his series with sexually segregated teams, but the girls trounced the boys so thoroughly that he had to mix everyone up half way through.

But the women took a kittenishly feminine approach to their early business challenges - selling kisses along with the lemonade they were supposed to be marketing, running around in Planet Hollywood in tiny T-shirts - much to the disgust of feminists and misogynists alike.

Mr Trump has an eye for a pretty face, and seemed to be living out a decidedly unreconstructed fantasy.

But in the end, two sober-suited men reached the final.

"Because they know that sex has power, they make the reflexive leap that powerful women should wear their sexuality boldly," tutted the Washington Post.

"But sometimes, a short skirt just reflects a shortage of confidence."

Education counts for little in The Donald's world.

True, Mr Trump - born into a wealthy family - is a graduate of Wharton School of Finance, one of America's top business schools.

The battle of the sexes was fought on unequal terms

And the two finalists were both college graduates - one from Harvard Business School, no less.

But the only diplomas The Donald really values are from the school of hard knocks and nasty surprises.

The first man he fired from the series was also the best educated - a physician with an MBA.

"I have a higher IQ than the other contestants," the spurned doctor fumed.

"Which goes to show that there is no correlation between a high IQ and selling lemonade."

When The Apprentice first hit TV screens, it was assumed that Mr Trump was looking for someone just like himself.

Slow and steady wins the race

Indeed, all the contestants tried as hard as they could to be mini-Donalds - preening, bragging, one-upping and advertising their single-minded pursuit of wealth and power.

On their web pages, the contestants' tag-lines are impeccably hard-nosed - "I'm going to crush my competition and I'm going to enjoy doing it"; "I'm aggressive, I'm feisty, I'm loyal and I never take no for an answer."

But the fierce and the feisty fell by the wayside, and the two finalists - Kwame and Bill - were the mildest-mannered.

The winner, Bill - a genial Midwesterner who worked his way through college - is almost a parody of all-American solidity.

Whenever companies merge, they talk about "synergy", as if anybody knows or cares what they mean.

She's only after him for his synergy

But The Donald's performance brings that much-mocked word to life: his business career helps his TV career; his TV career helps his business career.

The series was set in and around his offices, with liberal product-placement of his real-estate empire.

Bill, the series winner, is being put to work in an outpost of that empire, and Mr Trump intends to get more than his money's-worth.

Mr Trump's pursuit of the deal is unceasing: he even claimed - in a Fortune magazine profile this month - to have sold an apartment to the president of NBC Entertainment, the network that screens The Apprentice.

The Apprentice would never have generated its legendary volume of buzz without The Donald's talent for self-puffery.

Trump by name, but not by nature

In practice, this means making a little truth go a long way.

Mr Trump told Fortune magazine that The Apprentice was the "hottest show on television"; in fact, it's number seven in the ratings, and given a hefty shove by the disappearance of Friends, NBC's banker.

Mr Trump routinely describes himself as "the largest real estate developer in New York" - except that others have built more property, and arguably own more valuable portfolios (exact figures are disputed).

And Mr Trump has said he is "officially the highest-paid person on television", something even the show's producers have disputed.

"Love him or hate him, Trump's self-promotion works," Fortune admits.

Nike, Coca-Cola and the rest realised this years ago: making things is all well and good, but the real money is in selling them.

The queues series two are already building

Mr Trump's name is all over New York, and increasingly the world - but in many cases, the name is the extent of his involvement.

He no longer owns the building that made him famous, Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle, Manhattan.

He has been paid to license his name to developers in Arizona and Florida, and even South Korea.

In the real world, meanwhile, things are looking sticky: auditors recently warned that his core business, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, might not be a going concern. The company owes $1.8bn, and Mr Trump's majority stake is reckoned to be worth just $54m.

Little wonder that the glamour of the media spotlight has such allure.