“I feel like I was set up to fail”: Inside a for-profit college nightmare

Jaqueta’s time in school

Jaqueta signed up because she wanted to escape a future of minimum-wage work at part-time service jobs. She had to borrow in order to go to school, but the loans were a risk worth taking. The chance of a better career – even if the outcome was uncertain – justified the gamble.

“I think that if I go back to school,” she told me, “I can get a better job and I can pay them back. I can get a salary job.”

Studies consistently show that workers with advanced degrees realize a high return on the dollars they spent going to school. Given that, the general consensus in society is that post-secondary education is great thing. But those reports often ignore the fact that schools differ from each other. It makes sense that the tuition at an Ivy League school probably comes with higher-than-average returns. But for every school that brings greater-than-average returns, another falls short of the mark. Unfortunately, at-risk students like Jaqueta rarely end up at an Ivy League school. All too often, they end up at the wrong places.

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