I was asked to apply for a job a couple days ago. I turned it down. I want a full time job, but .... This was a tough call, but I think it's the right one.
Here's The Back Drop
It's not in the papers anywhere, but last Monday, this for profit school that bought over 10 campuses from bankrupt Anthem Colleges, (dba Florida Career College) announced to their Miami campus staff that they were moving toward 90% part time staffing in all positions. Effective immediately, almost all new hires will be for 20 hour week positions. Part time admissions reps, part time financial aid, part time everything. The entire campus is reeling. For now the full-timers are "safe" whatever that means. It turns out taking over a bankrupt school is more difficult than they anticipated. They laid off about 150 people last year, wiped out all PTO when they took over and renegotiated all vendor contracts there isn't much more that can be cut. Maybe it's a combination of factors from being asked to refund the $350,000 Anthem conned out of the State of Florida and City of Ft. Lauderdale, or maybe it's lackluster new enrollments due to a sluggishly improving economy or the horrendous student reviews they are getting, but apparently it's more difficult to make money with the for-profit college business model these days.
Making more profits by avoiding paying benefits packages is old news. Doing it on the backs of the employees that turn out your work product is what corporate life is these days. Expanding part time staffing from the academic staff to career services, financial aid, IT techs and registrar employees is relatively new. I don't see it working well. For profit education already has exploitation problems. Making everyone part-time won't improve that scenario. Having a campus full of part time employees with only a few full time supervisors will be awful for campus supervisors. It won't serve the students very well either.
If it works out (for IEC, not the employees), this policy will likely be rolled out to the rest of the campuses, too. The Academic Dean (Director of Education) at a nearby campus gave her 2 week notice last week because she's had enough. She and her husband wanted to retire in a couple years. Rather than deal with this new circus, she's packing it in early. In her words, "This job used to be both gratifying and enjoyable. Now,..... I just want out. I used to feel good about turning out successful students." Another good friend who used to teach future medical assistants lab skills before they made her a "Team Leader" and now is always under at least 2 feet of paperwork, is actively looking for a medical billing and coding job at a hospital. Yet, another friend who was a good Career Services rep who was constantly pressured to falsify his paperwork (but wouldn't), sold everything and emigrated to Australia while he was out on medical leave.
That's the back drop of information I had for this company when I was talking to yet another employee, this time a campus manager. I got a, "Hey! How you doing? What you doing?" call out of the blue. I played along waiting for it, but I wasn't prepared for, "Why don't you apply for the DOE job at the ____ campus?" (It was the position soon to be vacated by my friend and one of the few that would be a full time job with benefits.)
I laughed, "No way!"
Don't get me wrong, I want to exchange the 4 part time jobs I'm doing for a single, full-time job. Several years ago, when my mother-in-law got sick, it was convenient for me to do contract work. I want a single job, but not this job. I could get my name on the short list for this position, I could land this one if I said the "right" things and acted the "right" way. But, could I hide my ambivalence about the job? I could just as easily blow it. Go for it? I've learned the hard way that sometimes I have to be true to myself and passed on this job.
Let me explain. In schools like Anthem Colleges, University of Pheonix, Sandford Brown, Kaplan and others like it; classes run in the morning and at night. The metrics are brutal. You must retain 90% of your students despite the accreditors only requiring 70%. You have to discourage Leaves of Absences because they too often become double drops. Drop is a four letter word. Double Drops are a cuss fest. Instructor staff compensation can never exceed 25% of all compensation. Too many failing grades and management is all over you. Never issue a "D" grade, because although it's a passing grade, the student still has to repeat the class. The classes are too tough. The teachers and classes are too boring. It's NEVER the student didn't read the book or do the work (which could occur for good reason). Every department has their own metrics and they encourage one department to score off another department. For instance, if Career Services can get a student to drop during internship; the drop goes against the Academic Department, not Career Services. Career Services tend to run the internship programs. Despite the conflict of interest, this remains to be the status quo.
Admissions reps blame instructors for driving their students away. The Academic staff faults the Admissions staff for enrolling inappropriate students (i.e. a legally blind person in a Surgical Technologist program, or a student with moderate intellectual disabilities into a medical assistant program, or a person who cannot pass a criminal background check into a nursing program, or a student with a husband who has 4th stage cancer and her daughter has a high risk pregnancy and she's working 3 jobs and trying to go to school, or -my favorite - a student with a current deportation order). Career Services faults the Academic Staff for graduating students they cannot place (like a student who was deported after completing their coursework, but before they could be placed). For-Profit education is worse today than it ever was. I will work for a school, but I'm careful about what schools I will associate with and this one doesn't make the cut.
Then there's the job I was asked to apply for
The Director of Education (DOE) needs to be there from 8 in the morning until classes end in the afternoon around 1 pm. Then, there are meetings with Team Leaders, instructors, the Campus Director. Lunch is usually around 3 pm and it's ok to disappear for a couple hours around then as long as 1. There isn't a corporate conference call you have to be present for and 2. You're back by a little after 5 for the night students. The night students (and night staff for that matter) also may need to see the Director of Education. You have to stick around until at least 8 if not 9pm every night. If you have an event in the morning, there must also be another event for the evening students on the same day. The paperwork for 300-600 students is overwhelming. Tracking the academic progress for that number of students is daunting. It would be doable if the product turned out were happily employed graduates, but that isn't happening. Many of the graduates are saddled with $50,000 in school loans for an A.S. degree and they get job offers for $12/hour. These days, the compensation for the DOE job is anemic. This job used to pay around $75-80k per year, but now you're lucky if they offer you $60k plus bonuses (but don't count on the bonuses because the metrics are stacked against you ever qualifying for a bonus). This campus is 60 mile round trip and I'd incur $7 in tolls every day. The only nice thing is that on Fridays, you go home around 3pm (maybe). A regular 12-13 hour day, 58-60 hour weeks plus at least 1 1/2 hour commute on top of doing it with separate morning/night staffs and this becomes not just no way, but Hell, No!
Not only is the job itself not so great, but when I looked at the corporate management team, I had deja vu all over again. Half of the top management team were prominent executives for Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (dba Everest), a school I stopped working for 5 years ago (for good reasons and) the U.S. Dept of Education forced into collapsing from 110 to about 35 campuses last year for Career Services fraud "violations". These people left Everest several years ago, but they were part of the management team that created the metrics that drove for-profit Everest into a collision course with the U.S. Department of Education. The remaining three include one who formerly worked closely with an education accreditor. One wouldn't even name the school they formerly worked for, but they didn't have to, I recognized them and it's another school that was forced to close "merge" with another school. I'd be working for a different circus, but it's the same clowns pulling the strings.
I'll keep looking. Thanks.
3:14 PM PT: Thank you for the rescue and the rec list and your kind words. It's a nice start to the weekend.