Are dual sports bikes good beginner bikes ?

I had years of experience on scooters and mini bikes and dirt bikes and learned the hard way that dirt and sand and gravel can be really hard at any speed above 5 or 10 miles an hour. That means concrete and asphalt is some really hard stuff
I learned early on that if you got on any bike that was faster than the one you had before was to be careful and pay attention. Its easy to overshoot and miss a turn which may or may not be a good thing but if there happens to be a four foot drop your going over it and the results are not good.
By the time I made it to the streets I was well aware of the dangers posed by heavy cars and trucks. A motorcycle is a pin ball, and if you lose it you are going to pay dearly in pain and agony for a while and if your real unlucky you may pay with your life.
I had friends who were maimed and really messed up or got killed from high school on. the saying there is old bikers and bold bikers but there are no old bold bikers is true. Believe it or not something as simple as a bottle can knock the front wheel from under you and down you go. You have to pretend your invisible to others every second your on the road. Never take it for granted oncoming cars see you when you are
Every bike handles different. I helped a friend transport a motorcycle he bought for 200 bucks. I had a truck and he needed help. We spent two hours in the truck that day talking about his 5 year old son and his hopes and dreams for his son. We even talked for an hour about how each bike handles different and how it was good to go find some big empty parking lot or somewhere you could ride around not worried about cars and learn how the bike rides and turns and stops. I remember thinking that this guy had a good handle on what he was doing. He got the motorcycle back two days later and 15 minutes after picking up the bike he was killed when he lost control on a overpass flew off the bridge ( without the bike) and dropped 40 feet into the commuter lane on a major freeway and went through the windshield of some poor guy going home from work.
There is no coming home from that. And all the dreams and hopes are gone.
learn how to ride safe I would stick with a 250 find something used do what you gotta do learn how to ride be careful you may outgrow it down the road but you can always buy a bigger bike.
Road rash is when you go down and shred your skin on pavement. A fist sized chunk of road rash will have you in agony for a while if you go down at 35 or faster. And they have to debrid it every few days which means they have to scrup the scabs off and take out the gravel and dirt and other crap ground into your skin to prevent infection. Leather jacket or a textile jacket with pockets for armor are well worth the cost. Motorcycle gear is not cheap because its double stitched so if you go down it does not just burst and leave you unprotected. Leather chaps go good over blue jeans and you don't have to clean them all that often compared to leather pants.
The rest is up to you. I could spend hours telling you of the crashes but here are a few. I saw a big full dress bmw saddle bags windshield radio everything as I came up beside him on the freeway he hit a plastic trash can that fell off a pick up. And it tossed him right over the handle bars faster than I can tell the story.
I saw a guy with a brand new ninja 600 wedged deep into the trunk of a car. the bike was upright buried up to the gas tank into the trunk. As I drove around the cars that were stuck behind the wreck I drove around plastic bits and broken parts there was an old man standing by his dually pickup tailgate barfing his lunch. Then I saw the biker. he landed face down on the dually trailer hitch ball helmet and all. It was buried in his face. He looked like a bug you see in a collection stuck on a pin.
It happens man and frankly you sound young you have your whole life ahead of you. If you don't finnish college and get a good education and start a family have a great job and some kind of life now its a lot harder to do if you end up paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. It changes your life completely. Do what you need to do you can always wait a while until you can afford a really nice bike? On the other hand you may meet some really good looking wild woman on your motorcycle too so you never know ? have fun stay out of trouble.

Dual Sports are OK, better than the racer sports because they don't carry all that expen$ive plastic.
Honda, Kawa and Suzuki all make 250's.