Since we are talking about education, I have to comment on the recent news that Walmart employees can now get college credit for such activities as ringing up purchases, checking inventory and unloading trucks.
Sure they say it’s for such work-related issues as business ethics and “retail inventory management,” but since when did retail work at any store, much less Walmart, equal undergraduate OR even graduate school credit?
Walmart is providing a 15% discount on tuition at American Public University, an online-only school based in Charles Town, West Virginia. You can also play the ponies and slots there. They charge $750 for a three-credit course undergraduate course, more for a graduate course. Offered only online. Heck, even if you paid all the activity and lab fees, one would pay only $435 at the University of Florida this summer.
What could cost APU so much to run an online course? How can you justify allowing worker bees up to 45% of a college education by working at Walmart?
What’s wrong with our current idea of “higher education,” one that opens it doors to anyone with a high school diploma (and we all know that some graduates read at the middle school level or worse) and then offers hundreds of hours of basically free classes and tutoring to get them up to speed? What is it “higher” than?
Truth is higher education has been slipping into mediocrity for years. This is yet another example.
Related posts:
Owner, News Design School
That’s unbelievable yet I’m not all that surprised. I guess on the flip side of the coin, what are these people really going to be able to do with that degree? I’m not sure any hiring manager will be fooled…
Incidentally, the google ad on this page is advertising a “CALCampus” school which offers “distance learning courses and programs” since 1986. They’re spreading!
As a member of both classified staff and faculty of Napa Valley College, I would like to note that “distance learning courses and programs” are an important part of many established colleges from the two-year community college to the high-end private universities. In a time of Internet dominance in the lives of the young as well as a time-limited work force, the opportunity to take online courses adds significant educational opportunities. One needs to take a few precautions to make certain that advertised online courses are not put out by some sort of diploma mill, but that is easily done. As one promoting journalism online I should have thought that would have been a given.
You are reacting to a comment, not my original post.