Walden on Wheels by Ken Ilgunas

Author:Ken Ilgunas [Ilgunas, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Harvest
Published: 2013-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile, Josh, over the course of my six months in Mississippi, grew more and more disenchanted with his new job at Westwood College. He had the title of admissions representative, but he was really no more than a “glorified telemarketer,” as he described it. He sat in his cubicle all day and called up teenagers to persuade them to attend Westwood. Most of them came from low-income families who—Josh pointed out to me—were a lot easier to persuade. At first, he thought the job was socially beneficial: He figured selling education was better than selling anything else. But when he learned more about Westwood, he found himself in a moral quandary.

Students enrolled at Westwood’s online school pay $64,000 to $79,000 for a three-year degree. Because Westwood—like many for-profit colleges—isn’t regionally accredited, students can’t transfer their credits to conventional four-year colleges. After a little googling, Josh discovered that hundreds of Westwood students couldn’t get jobs with their degrees, nor could they pay back their astronomical debts. Plus, Westwood was lending loans to students with ungodly 12 percent interest rates.

It was a cruel irony that Josh, floundering in student debt of his own, was now in the business of getting other young people to go into debt. This was not the time for idealism, though; Josh needed the money, and morally unambiguous jobs were clearly in short supply. So, like a good loan drone, he shuffled out of bed each morning, groaned, put on his collared shirt, and settled into his cubicle.

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