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You May Not Be Cut Out for Accounting When: You Double Up on For-profit College Debt

It's so sad to read these stories but I am convinced this is a real person and not some made up front for the conspiracy against for-profit schools:

I attended DeVry University for over two years. However, in 2010, I had to drop out because I was told that I was going to go over my limit to receive financial aid. What I am upset about is they did not tell me in the beginning that I would not have enough federal aid to cover what I needed to complete for my bachelor degree program. Now that I have been out of school for two years, I have outstanding student loans from not only DeVry, but also Heald College, not to mention not being able to find work in my field of accounting.

Let's see. You not only fell for the Maury Povich commerical education scam ONCE but TWICE and wonder why no accounting firm who relies on your brain to process information logically would hire you? Shocked, I tell you. It's not like accountants are expected to be capable of making good decisions, like should I SALY the shit out of this or actually spend a week coming up with a PCAOB-proof audit plan? Or should I expense this hotel porn on the firm's dime or just view it on the Internet like normal people do? Choosing two for-profit schools with no job two years later shows that your decision-making skills are less than stellar. And this is coming from a person who makes very poor decisions (I do this for a living, come on).

You should have an idea of what you're going to pay going into it and know if the government is paying you enough to do it, and if not, where the rest will come from. Who signs up for four years of that without knowing how much it will cost you at the end? And you want to be an accountant?! Even I know to do that much and I hate math and would never subject myself to 1% of what some of you suffer through day in and day out.

It's interesting that so many DeVry grads have so much bad shit to say about their alma mater. Even some of you who went to awful state schools (you know who you are) have some pride in the school that taught you to just barely get by but all you had to do was pass and get a job, which many of you have done. The for-profit grads, however, obviously linger around waiting for the same kind of mediocrity only to find debt and despair.

It all gets summed up in the comments. When Keller (a DeVry property) wrote me about negative press they were getting from a Keller grad who asked us for help, Former PDubs writes:

It's nice to see that kind of reaction. Maybe some day the for-profit educational institutions will shed the stigma. It's not like accounting is some deeply specialized theoretical field that requires you to study with the best and brightest cutting edge researchers; It's rote memorization of a bunch of rules. I suppose some folks get more specialized at certain subsets of those rules, but all the same – none of it is overly complex. If they are successful at building a good placement program, there's no reason why Keller grads can't eventually be considered on level footing with top state school grads.

What is the barrier? Is easy government money to blame? Why can't students discharge this debt and why are we so eager to pimp it out to not only young high school graduates but "busy" working adults who seek out alternative education as easy as a SSN and a FAFSA?