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For-Profit College in Calif.: Hire One of Our Graduates, and We’ll Give You $2,000

September 8, 2011, 2:36 pm

The University of Antelope Valley, a for-profit college north of Los Angeles, is offering to pay employers $2,000 for each graduate they hire, the Los Angeles Times reports. The offer is valid only this month, and only for employers that hire graduates to fill jobs that match their fields of study, the newspaper says. Some colleges are under pressure from federal regulators to improve their job-placement rates.

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  • dale1

    Let’s just call it what it is, a bribe.

  • mjkelly

    Funny though, if the government does it, the term is “tax incentive.”

    No doubt this school is having difficulty with some placement compliance issues. With the current pressures from the Feds I would assume they are pulling out the stops. Wow, I’d hate to be in their place.

  • willynilly

    What an incriminating admission?  Employer Interpretation  =  This institution’s graduates are so poorly prepared for careers that they have to offer employers $2,000 to take on their risk.  No way Antelope, we employers would prefer to allow your graduates to “roam”.  They are your problem.  If they can’t get jobs, you hire them.  For heavens sake, you own them something – to date you have given them nothing.

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    I can think of at least a half dozen well-regarded non-profit law schools that have gone a step further: let our grads “intern” for you for nine months [so we can count them as "employed" for USNWR purposes], and we’ll pay you, the employer, several thousand dollars.

  • dale1

    It sounds like fraud to me, or at least disingenuous.  My comments did not necessarily exclude malfeasance from not-for-profit institutions.  They’re all inappropriate. Calling one out as a bribe doesn’t mean the others aren’t less inappropriate.

  • agailey

    When the government does it, it creates a competitive employment opportunity that will go to the most qualified candidate. This college’s incentive, on the other hand, rewards an employer for hiring their graduate, regardless of the graduate’s suitability or competitiveness for the position. A governmental incentive can potentially benefit anyone and everyone; the college’s incentive benefits only the college’s statistics, possibly an underqualified applicant, and probably not the business or anyone else in the long run.

  • betterschool

    Speaking to those of us who do our best to reason from principles (from history, this excludes WillyNilly), how, then, do we feel about the federal government’s various hiring incentives?

  • mdwoodhull

    I do not think the issue is for-profit universities and colleges. Most of them do a fine job of educating students and most are regionally accredited. The problem is the Obama Administration’s insistence that students are “owed” a job upon graduation. This is a ludicrous notion. If it were true, well, gosh darn it, I’m “owed” a tenured professorship at Harvard. Fork it over now, please. I imagine the $2,000 is a simple promotion. “Try one of our graduates. Get a skilled worker and we’ll pay your signing bonus!” I see zero problem with a school doing this to showcase their graduates. Universities routinely do this to get students to attend in the form of tuition reductions, grants, and scholarships. Someone said in this forum that the government provides incentives to hire the most qualified candidates. Oooooh puuuhlease!  The government is notorious for NOT hiring the most qualified candidate; maybe even the worse offenders! I say, if it’s working for Antelope College to get the quality of their student before employers’ eyes, it’s worth a try. By the way, there’s not a nursing graduate out there who doesn’t get some sort of major hiring bonus either from a recruiter or from an employer. I’m not understanding all the hand wringing going on here about this issue?

  • mamanas01

    This should be interesting. How many employeers will take them up on the offer?

  • R117532

    Most of this discussion, including related discussions on defaults, fails to take account of the recession and high unemployment, especially in the youth sector. 

    Looked at through an objective lens, this idea is a good one and is roughly comparable to the new jobs plan initiative. Sometimes small businesses need only a small reason to take action. Given that most jobs occur in the small business sector (Bank of America is still laying off; Apple sends that vast majority of its work to China, etc.), initiatives like this can have a real effect. 

    I’m going to encourage everyone I know who leads a college or university to do what UAV is doing. We could get the economy back on track in six months if every college and university in the nation were to do this.

  • betterschool

    R117532 & mdwoodhul: I like your thinking. 

    Anyone up for a movement?

    Let’s ask every college and university leader we know to do the same thing that Antelope is doing and to keep it going for six months. While Congress is still engaged in its high-wire act, we could turn the economy around and stem the rising loan default rate. I’m picking up the telephone as soon as I post this. This is too good an idea to let it stop with one school.

  • renellin

    I am just wondering where the money is going to come from. I know our funding keeps getting cut and cut and cut, and we are already shaving every nickel where we can. Will we be increasing tuition to cover this cost?

  • betterschool

    I just got off the phone with one of my colleagues and that was his first question. We tossed a few ideas around and he thought that they might be able to work out a field placement program to defray some of the expense. He also thought the longer term returns would be greater than the cost because of increased corporate support, etc. He is going to take the idea to his cabinet next week. I think there is a sense of patriotism here that will overcome some of the short-term cost issues. Very few institutions are in a situation that they cannot afford $2K per graduate. If they are, there are deeper problems.

  • renellin

    Excellent! An idea and a solution, and if it helps people get jobs, go for it. Let’s just hope they can keep them!

  • betterschool

    Not that we should waste our time on hyperconservative naysayers, like willynilly, who accomplish nothing, but there are even more examples of extant higher education signing bonuses. Nursing programs have been doing this for decades in various forms. Many hospitals offer signing bonuses and some nursing programs have cooperative financial relations with the hospitals in that regard. Some of these bonuses can be substantial in amount.  

  • betterschool

    renellin, Yes. The “keeping them” has to be addressed. I would think that the signing bonus should require a term long enough for someone to settle into the job and prove worth. That length of time varies with the profession so I’m not sure what kind of policy would address that problem. I just spoke with another colleague who, believe it or not, was already thinking about it. She says to watch the Chronicle in two weeks! Seriously. I hope we all have time to get on the phone. It is an idea “whose” time is now.

  • mdwoodhull

    WillyNilly, like the Obama Administration, you are promoting the notion that graduates from any school are “entitled” to a job post-graduation.  This is silly WillyNilly and it’s a nanny-state concept that is ridiculous. I think Antelope’s concept is to showcase the good qualities of their graduates, not bribe employers to accept sub-standard graduates (which they would never do anyway).

  • mdwoodhull

    I thought it was a brilliant idea to get their local small businesses off center and back into hiring locally from what I presume are well-trained Antelope graduates. Somebody is thinking at Antelope College. 

  • mjkelly

    You’re probably correct referring to the motivations of the school’s “incentive program.” But just for the heck of it, consider that the “program” they have instituted (for only a month as I remember) is an advertising “gimmick” to assist their placement department get public notice.

    We don’t REALLY know what their motivation is. It appears though the term “for-profit” automatically brings with it a negative connotation. Could it just be creative?

    Just thinking…..

  • http://arthuride.wordpress.com/ Dr. Arthur Frederick Ide

    In other words: if the applicant does not have sufficient credentials or credits, or does not meet the criteria of the job, the for-profit school can buy the graduate a job placement.  Phoenix “University” has long been declaring that its graduates are competent, and then its graduates who have spent a fortune on a bogus degree get nowhere and find that their degree(s) are worthless.  That is why Phoenix has been sued so often, cited by the Department of Education, and rightfully criticized by papers nationwide.  Now to add insult, a California “University” [of Antelope Valley] is offering kickbacks to employers who hire their “graduates”. Quality graduates will be invited to accepted positions that do not come with a price tag.  It is past due that “for profits” go out of business, and true academics return.

  • http://arthuride.wordpress.com/ Dr. Arthur Frederick Ide

    Well-trained? by what standard?  Have you looked at its catalogue? It’s library (it has one librarian) is primarily ERIC®, the Education Resource Information Center which is “online” (it does claim that its book collection is growing but from nothing to something is better than zero). Its faculty is centered around medical needs (such as “billing”), and “nursing”, while its “General Education Instructor” attended a local community college and eventually transferred to California State University, Dominquez Hills, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in liberal studies and physical education. After graduating she enrolled in a postgraduate credentialing program where she earned her teaching credentials in multiple-subject education and later attended graduate school online at Aspen University, focusing on educational leadership and technology. The instructor has no record of earning an MA or PhD or other degree.  I have never seen an “online” degree that was worth the electricity it took to run the computer. I am not impressed with Antelope’s “thinking.”

  • http://arthuride.wordpress.com/ Dr. Arthur Frederick Ide

    There are more than 7000 a day who are dropping out of high school every day in the USA.  If these students go to places like Antelope not only will they know less than will have more reasons not to be hired.  This is a scam.  It is for profit–not for knowledge or competence.

  • betterschool

    What a convoluted reading of the facts! The issue of proficiency — good or bad — wasn’t raised here. I don’t care whether the school is for-profit, public, or independent, I care about creating incentives for jobs, for getting employers past the tipping point. By placing your personal preferences about the national good, you share something with many Tea Party extremists. It would be interesting to see your tap dance justifying why it is acceptable for public programs, such as law and nursing, to do what you decry here.

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