The following letter I wrote right after I left Ashford University. I had worked there for about 6 months. I had decided I could not take the atmosphere and attitude of this "higher education" establishment. I shopped it around to a few different publications and two of them were interested. Unfortunately, it was never published and now I feel the time is about right to finally release it into the wild. Especially, after Ashford University lost its recent bid to be accredited by WASC.
Enjoy.
March 23,
2011
Why I Left
Ashford University
A week ago today I resigned from Ashford
University as an Admissions Counselor, a position I held for a little over
6-months. I’m actually surprised that I stayed there for that long. The
position was nothing like I had expected. All through our two-week training
when I first started, and even after we hit the floor, we were told the
position was “about the student.” That was what I wanted to hear. I came from
working with at-risk youth in low income areas, so this was a position I was really
looking forward to. I wanted to help people get their education and help them
better themselves.
Once I hit the floor I knew I was in for something
completely different. If you aren’t producing the number of applications per
week that management wants, you start feeling the pressure. I get it, it is a
for-profit college and we were there to enroll, or as they called it, “changing
lives.” That phrase in itself makes my stomach turn every time I hear it. I finally
realized that changing lives was right and I strongly feel that most of the
time I was changing lives, but for the worse.
Once you start struggling or not “changing lives,”
you realize it is about the students’ money and not the student themselves. Your
job as an “AC” revolves around enrollments. The higher the enrollments of new
students, the better it went for us. Keep in mind that the job, as they kept
telling us, was not about numbers, but about focusing on the student. Yet, as a
manager told us during a daily meeting, the first two hours and last two hours
were about “pounding the phone” and if an enrolled student were to call us
during that time we were not to answer their call because we had to be
especially focused on getting new students during those hours. If you weren’t
hitting certain numbers (250 calls per day, 2 schedules per day, 1 appointment
per day, or the equivalent of at least1-2 applications per week to “meet
expectations”), you were looking at getting written up for things like, “lack
of communication.” The negativity was abundant when the team I was on was
underperforming. Day in and day out we were having meetings in which we were
being blasted for how bad we were doing. The manager would lay into us and constantly remind us as to how bad we were. This is
the same manager I overheard tell a co-worker that 80% of our students are
“dumb.” At one point we were told that it would be a good idea for us to start
looking for new jobs. We weren’t “meeting expectations.”
I had a manager who told our team that if we hit
15 applications in a week as a team (completely submitted) she would buy us
breakfast, if we were to hit 20 applications she would get us a catered lunch,
and it even got to the point that, if we were to exceed that amount, she would
have looked into getting us a paid day off. That doesn’t sound too bad, right?
Well there was a catch. We were also told that if we did not reach our goals,
we were to expect disciplinary action i.e. be written up. This was from a
company that “was not” incentivizing the enrollment of students.
The mentality of the majority of the people there
on the sales floor, and I call it that because that’s exactly what it was, was
about money. Making the university money so that you can keep your job. It was
either get people enrolled or get a new job. And believe me, they too used
scare tactics on us. Telling us how bad the economy is, how everyone is out
there looking for a job, and we would be struggling to find a job that pays as
much or offers the same benefits as Ashford. In January they laid off about 150
people. They are planning another round of layoffs soon. They told us that the
bottom 10% will be cut this summer. Also, I think it’s funny how we were being
audited for accreditation purposes just a couple of weeks ago and we had to get
rid of everything on our cubicle walls that “tracked” our numbers/students.
Every single day there is about numbers, not education.
A co-worker told me one day that, “I cared too
much.” All because I wanted the prospective student I was working with to know,
as much as I could tell them, so that they knew exactly what they were getting
themselves into. I was told by the same co-worker to use “round about” figures
when describing tuition and technology fees. To emphasize how much they could
be eligible for in Pell grants. This is the same type of co-worker that our
manager told us to sit with, learn from, and “pick their brain”. This is the
type of person they wanted us to be like. Keep in mind that to go to Ashford University
for 4-years and receive your Bachelor’s degree, you are looking at $52,000+. To
go to an online university and pay that much is a travesty to me. We were
supposed to highlight how much Financial Aid they could possibly get and how it
was affordable to go to our school.” We
were told to tell each student how much a degree would help them in finding a
career and how much more marketable they would be. That might be
“affordable” in a sea of for-profit college tuition, but last time I checked
$52,000+ of student loan debt is not “affordable.”
As I did more and more research on for-profit
colleges, I came to find out about the many investigations and lawsuits filed
due to violations being committed across the country. These schools are getting
billions of dollars a year in federal aid funds. 45% of student loans being
defaulted on are from for-profit colleges and these schools account for 10.7%
of college students enrolled. The drop out rates at for-profit schools is ridiculous.
The government is providing this aid to students to obtain an education. If
these students cannot get a job to repay the loans after the completion of the
program because these programs are not academically adequate, the government
then loses out on millions of dollars a year. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe
that online education can benefit people in certain situations, but I strongly
feel that the majority of people attending an online college are being taken
advantage of. According to a Bloomberg article, “Students at for-profit colleges are more likely to be unemployed and
earn less in the six years after graduation than their peers at community
colleges, according to a study by Harvard University researchers.” There needs
to be stricter regulations on for-profit colleges.
Two months ago I knew that I needed to leave
Ashford University. I was asked a question that made me want to walk out of the
building as soon as I heard it. A co-worker of mine asked me, “Do you care more
about ‘Shaniqua’ or do you care more about your paycheck?” I was shocked to be
asked that question. I didn’t answer back. Keep in mind that this was one of
the people that management wanted us to be like.
All I could say in reply was, “did you really just ask me that?” She replied
with, “what?” She looked at me
puzzled as if I was the crazy person, as if I was the one who had just said something
extremely insensitive. I sat down quietly and just stared at my computer
screen.
I chose and will always choose; “Shaniqua”, “Juan”,
“Frank”, or anyone else for that matter that I honestly believe is being taken
advantage of, over a paycheck any
day of the week.
I decided to write this because I felt inspired by
Greg Smith’s Op-Ed about his resignation from Goldman Sachs. He inadvertently
used a term I had been mulling over in my head and had been thinking of using
when departing Ashford University. His use of “morally bankrupt people” really
struck a chord in me. Money is not everything.
Ashford believes more in monetary gain than an actual education, as do many
for-profit colleges. Being financially successful means nothing when you are “morally
bankrupt.”
Regards,
