"If our degree does not help you get a job..

the we will help you pay your bills!!" :wtf:

At Westwood, we are passionate about your success.
We believe every individual has the potential to achieve success and find a better future. If you’re ready to begin your journey, we’ll help guide you every step of the way. Our newest commitment to help you succeed is the Westwood Employment Pledge1.

We’re so confident that you’ll receive the right skills to launch your career and get your first job that if you haven’t found employment within six months of graduation, we’ll help pay your bills. Simple as that

$500 per month for up to six months (bachelor’s degree) 3K baby!
$250 per month for up to six months (diploma and associate degrees)

That would be cool getting a check for $500 from a college, lol.

Way to go Westwood College, sign me up!

Employment Pledge

WOW!! This is a first for me, a school will "help" pay your bills if you don't get a job after graduation (within 6 months that is).

Jeesh, they can get massive enrollments AND solve the national unemployment problem. All from one little online school, again wow!

 

:laugh2::lmao: HAHAHAHAHA :lmao::laugh2:

Westwood students are probably thinking... what a great deal that is. :deal:

It cost more in their tuition than what they would pay back if you failed to get a job... Win-Win? I think not...

 

This is old news for law schools. Law schools are under a lot of pressure to show high post-graduation employment rates, because (1) this is a factor in law school rankings, and (2) given the high cost of law school, students are increasingly reluctant to attend schools with low employment rates. So to boost the stats, some law schools fund low-paying jobs for their own graduates.

For example, the George Washington University Law School's "Pathways to Practice" program pays unemployed recent graduates $15/hr, for a 35-hour week, to do volunteer legal work during their first year after graduation. That's $27,000 per year. (For comparison, GWU Law tuition is $46,000 per year for three years, plus living expenses.)

How bad is the legal job market? Due to a recent email slipup, it is now known that 21% of the most recent GWU Law school graduating class has enrolled in this program. It's costing GWU so much that they recently proposed reducing the payments to $10/hr.

And by the way, GWU is ranked in the US News "Top 20" for law schools, i.e. the top 10%.

This is not to single out GWU, other law schools have similar programs.

 

A "little online school"? Westwood College is part of Alta College, Inc., a for-profit system of 17 B&M campuses in six states, plus the online campus, with annual revenues of around $300,000,000.

 

So basic tuition and fees for a bachelor's degree from Westwood College –*and this NA by ACICS, not RA – are between $59,570 and $68,978, varying by major. Add more for textbooks, and potentially "tool kits, lab fee and online fees." Admittedly, with transfer credit, you might pay less, though I wouldn't be surprised if they limited the offer in such a case.

If you commit this money, and after graduation you're unemployed for six months – you get nothing at first!

Only after you've used whatever support you have for the first six months do they then kick something for months 7 to 12 of your unemployment.

There are conditions that seem to make their Career Services office like your welfare-to-work caseworker. "Eligible graduates must check in weekly in person or via phone with career services beginning upon graduation. Refusal of a qualifying job offer or interview may impact eligibility." "Employment is defined as employed in-field or related field." What minimum-wage work isn't related somehow to a Westwood major like "business administration" or "technology?"

And for all this, if they can't press-gang you into anything "related" after a year of continuous unemployment and you get the maximum possible benefit, you would have gotten… between 4.3 percent and 5 percent of that very basic cost of a Westwood bachelor's. You probably paid for that largely with loans. Much or all of the remaining 95 to 95.7 percent, plus texts and incidentals, may still be on your back.

Seriously, someone can sell a roughly 60 to 70 thousand dollar thing that's supposed to be a regularly four-year full-time-equivalent program, led by highly-trained and credentialed experts, designed explicitly to lead to employment – the mandate of ACICS, their accreditor, is that every degree they accredit should be linked directly enough to employment – and if this hasn't led a graduate to even one terrible "related" employment offer after 12 months, they'll kick 4 or 5 percent of that total cost back: and the "3K baby," for all this, is significantly appealing?

ETA: I do concede that this offer is better than the exact same offer with nothing for a graduate who from months 7 to 12 after graduation is unable to to obtain any "related" employment at all.

 

Oh: I missed that they have one bachelor's major, in Game Software Development, for a much higher base price still, $75,992.

Is this higher price to support a game development lab? Not likely or relevant; this is for the online degree. Of course the $500 stipend per month for months 7 to 12 of absolute unemployment doesn't scale up correspondingly.

 

The four Westwood campuses in California have been deemed ineligible for state financial aid (Cal Grant program), due to high default rates. Between 22 and 28 % of their students are in default on their student loans within 3 years after leaving school.

The default rate may be a more realistic measure of degree value than the employment rate. You could be "employed" after school -- but in a lousy job that you could have qualified for without that $60,000 degree. If you can't find a job that will allow you to make your loan payments, then maybe that says something about the net value of your education.

 

It's a pretty good marketing ploy. Sounds like a bit of security, but all it really amounts to is getting a little of your tuition back if you don't land a job. If that were the case, you would be better off never attending the school in the first place.

 

Normally, due to a higher demand of graduate students some of your course will not apply to your future job. Still you should grab the opportunities that really come in your way even if it is far from your finished course.

 

And here I thought Westwood was ACCSCT.

 

Until recently they had a patchwork where some campuses were ACCSC (formerly ACCSCT) and some ACICS. The ACCSC campuses seem to have withdrawn voluntarily by February 2012 and moved over to ACICS.

 

This seems to be the same thing as 1% cash back on Credit Card. But do they realize that playing interests more than 1% cash back. For example, I got my $10,000.00 credit limit Visa Card from Navy Federal Credit Union in June 14, 2011. Because I am a plastic user, who carries only about $20.00 cash in the wallet; all expenses are on credit card. Until the end of June 2012....I looked at I receive about $1,090.00 cash back; which I spent ~ $109,000.00. But when I looked at the statements I paid about $1,500.00 interests. Yup I spent that much due to new family, weeding, marriage problems, medical expenses and etc.

 

"little online school", OK Big school

 

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