Wal-Mart to Offer Its Workers a College Program

Source: New York Times

Now on sale at Wal-Mart: college degrees for its employees.

The purveyor of inexpensive jeans and lawnmowers is dipping its toe into the online-education waters, working with a Web-based university to offer its employees in the United States affordable college degrees.

The partnership with American Public University, a for-profit school with about 70,000 online students, will allow some Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club employees to earn credits in areas like retail management and logistics for performing their regular jobs.

The university will offer eligible employees 15 percent price reductions on tuition, and Wal-Mart will invest $50 million over three years in other tuition assistance for the employees who participate.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/business/04walmart.html?hp

Think they'll teach Keynesian economics and the history of Marxism there?

Just sayin'

Yay.

Next month:

Wal-Mart announces they will provide student loans to their employees going to this fake school. Employees will be able to work off their debt load over the next 60 years while working at Wal-Mart.

Indentured Servitude is alive and well.

continues to boggle my mind.

Just as pathetic are the folks that cheer them on.

Why don't they just stick to pushing cheap shit from China on people who are too dumb to realize they're buying shit from a place that put them out of jobs in the first place?

How nice.

What would be sweet is; if every employee eligible, signed up.

Quite suddenly, a lot of employees would be very very pissed.

I went over there and found it costs $250 per credit hour to go to American Public University. Knock fifteen percent off that and it's still $212.50 per hour to take their classes--highly unaffordable for the vast majority of Walmart associates.

I think Walmart's ulterior motive is as follows: Since APU offers degrees in Retail Management and Logistics, after a couple years of offering this program anyone who wants to get promoted past Sales Associate (which is a nice way of saying Shelf Stocker--there are very few departments in a Walmart where any actual selling, as opposed to just sticking the shit on the shelf and letting people pick up whatever they want, goes on) will need to have taken classes at APU. If you want to be a Department Manager you'll need 30 credits, a Zone Manager or Assistant Manager will need an Associate's in Retail Management, a Store Manager or Co-Manager will need a Bachelor's in Retail Management and anyone above store level will need a Master's in it.

Even if you get a degree in that university, you're practically stuck in that dead-end job, no one else will touch you at any other company.