Today’s Kalamazoo Gazette ran a feature article promoting a new local truck driving school.

For only $4,995 anyone can now learn to drive a semi truck and then snag a job as an over the road line haul driver for a company that specializes in moving freight over long distances. The program lasts four weeks, and while students are not guaranteed a job after graduation, at least one OTR CEO affirmed that, yes, if someone else would train his drivers he’d hire a whole big bunch of them pronto, seriously.

According to the article, OTR trucking jobs start at around $30,000 per year, but OTR drivers can look forward to as much as a 40 cent per hour raise after driving for five years or so.

My thoughts upon reading this article were many, and none of them were very nice.

1. Why doesn’t Schneider Trucking bite the bullet and train their own damn drivers?
2. How about if I show you my excellent work history, perfect driving record, 20 personal and professional references, and healthy strong body and you give me a job WITHOUT me forking over $5,000 I don’t have because, duh, I’m already unemployed?
3. OTR trucking is really, really hard, and not everybody makes $30K doing it. People who do make as much as $30K driving a truck long distances for the companies listed in this article are still making less than half of what they’d make driving a truck for a decent carrier. The OTR companies listed by this school are considered by drivers themselves to be the worst in the industry. If you don’t believe me, talk to anyone who works for Old Dominion, Estes, Conway, or Fed Ex.
4. You do need schooling to get a CDL these days because trucking companies no longer provide it. That’s because they have access to so many laid off experienced drivers that they have no need to train anyone. Really awful, low paid OTR companies like the ones listed by this school could, however, decide to provide training if they are really that hard up for warm bodies. Some of them used to train their own drivers: I remember their ads from before the crash.
5. Given that trucking as an industry is struggling right now and the job market is already glutted with downsized and laid off truck drivers, is it honest, sensible, or decent to make money by charging out of work men $5,000 to learn a trade they may or may not be able to use when they get out?
6. I made more than $30K annually at my first call center job, and I didn’t give them ANY money to get my foot in the door. On the other hand, the job I held briefly after the crash required me to spend $80 for a clearance from a physician saying I could handle the work. That job paid about $120 per week, and the company folded within two months. Today, most call center jobs here are funneled through temp agencies, depressing wages even further. Benefits? Forget it.
7. Why is The Gazette talking about this con as if it was the best thing since sliced bread? “Good news people! We now know how to SLICE the bread, and you too can get in at the ground level!” (For $5K)

What especially troubles me about this trend toward private vocational schools is how horrendously expensive it is and how poor the opportunities are once the students get out.

One local private college that specializes in training for medical careers demands tuition close to $20,000 for programs in medical assisting or billing. These are jobs that may or may not pay $10 or $12 per hour if you can get one, and they may or may not be full time. The last three medical billing jobs I found in the Michigan online data base were part time and paid less than $10 per hour and, ironically, provided no health care benefits.

Worse yet, most private vocational colleges have access to government-backed private loans to ‘help’ students pay the ridiculous tuition. Students get out with a five figure debt, can’t find a job, (or find one but it sucks), and then have to default on the huge loan. How can they not default? No money, no repayment. Then, who pays for the default? Not the school. The federal government pays. You pay.

Perhaps you already see where this is going.

These schools are not so much real vocational training as they are fronts for banks who sell no risk student loans to poor people and then collect from the government when the loans go into default. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if these loans are also being gamed in the still red hot ‘shadow banking’ derivatives market—packaged and put up for international gambling like so many new slot machines.

From 2008 to 2009, community college enrollment in West Michigan, where I live, increased 70%. And yet, the jobs in greatest demand here in the coming decade are mostly in customer service, retail, medical assisting of various kinds, and home health care. None of these jobs pay worth spit, and none of them require extensive, expensive training.

Community colleges are much more responsible and worthwhile than exploitive for-profit vocational schools, but at some point wouldn’t it be nice if we injected a little reality into all this desperation?

And could we please make the banks stop robbing poor people who aren’t even working?

It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to rob people with no money because all the people who used to have money now have none. If you want to fleece people in this market, you have to first loan them money you can rob (because they don’t have any of their own), and then get the government to fall for your stupid robbery scheme so you can steal your own money back from the government.

That’s pathetic.

Maybe what we really need is a school for scoundrels.

Although, come to think of it, that field is full up too.

For more information on the rise of for profit colleges and the many sticky issues involved, watch the new PBS Frontline series. College Inc. online or on your local PBS station.