Wal-Mart University?

Now, I'm no Wal-Mart hater, PER SE*, but the company has had more than its fair share of employee relations issues. There's forcing folks to work off the clock, gender discrimination in job assignment, failure to pay overtime or grant sick leave and, worst of all, what they do to those old people who greet you.

Seriously America, this is the best we can do for elderly? Standing on their feet pretending to welcome you when they're really there to eyeball your purse for stolen goods? Senior citizens as first-line security defense?

Wal-Mart, however, wants to show you that they care. This agreement with APU (not, as the website makes clear, to be confused with American University in Washington, D.C.; because I'm sure that's a huge problem for them) will create associates and bachelors degree programs specifically for Wal-Mart employees.

The curriculum will include portions of on-the-job training and a 15% tuition price reduction, both of which sound like the kind of mass negotiation Wal-Mart strikes with all of its suppliers.

And there's part of my concern.

If the college is just a supplier then Wal-Mart, not the school, is the one calling the academic shots. If they can get a school to negotiate tuition how far-fetched is it to wonder if they can get the school to negotiate academic standards, admissions, and graduation requirements?

Further, how far-fetched is it for any other employer to assume that to be the case when a former Wal-Mart employee and graduate of this APU degree-program applies for a job on the strength of this credential?

Even for the "education as workforce preparation" school of thought this has to be troubling. A college degree, even when reduced to a mere social signal, is supposed to allow for class mobility. This degree runs the risk of preparing Wal-Mart employees only to become better Wal-Mart employees.

With Wal-Mart's recent employment hiring spree announcement that may sound like a safe bet to make -- a degree that will make you employable at one of the few places hiring these days -- but remember when we once thought something similar about the auto-makers in Detroit.

Nothing is forever...except what you know.

What I don't know is how this program will be structured. Already, though, Wal-Mart has done something I've yet to hear of any other company doing: it hand-picked the school employees are allowed to attend.

Even selecting one's own college is too much power to give to a Wal-Mart hire! That alone leads me to question the intent of this program. But given Wal-Mart's employee relations history it's fair to wonder how the tuition program will be administered and for the ultimate benefit of whom.

If it is in line with most company standards then employees will be expected to work for X amount of years to repay the company for the benefit.

If they leave Wal-Mart employment they would owe the full balance at the time of separation.

Considering the average hourly salary of a Wal-Mart employee is $11.75 an hour -- below the poverty line for a family of four even if both adults worked 40 hours a week at the local Wal-Mart -- how feasible it for an employee to repay the loan? How difficult will be for the employee to repay the company even if the degree got them the golden goose: a better paying job elsewhere?

And that assumes one can get 40 hours a week or can meet the requirements of a "target" or "above target" employee evaluation and if their job description qualifies them for on-the-job credits. Even hitting all of those benchmarks the employee would end up paying $24,000 for a bachelor's degree, presumably in student loans.

So now you have a degree in "intelligence studies" or marketing from American Public University -- not to be confused with American University -- with partial credits from Wal-Mart, a $276.19 student loan payment and a few years of working to repay both Wal-Mart and the student loan company.

As they say in New Orleans: Where dey do dat at?

Apparently at Wal-Mart.

I know this much, an education that shackles you to a job description is just educational sharecropping.

I know how that ends: You, me and the old people chasing welcomed customers down with little stickers for their returns, proud owners of a college degree that makes us slaves to Wal-Mart.

*anything followed 'PER SE' is admittedly bullshitting on the part of this author.