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Comment by morley | Hacker News Reader

I don't think your dystopic vision is what's happening here. From the article:

> The Walmart employees will not be obligated to continue working for the company after they get their degrees, and must put up only $1 a day toward the cost of classes.

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Perhaps. But it certainly is yet another incremental step, among many others, back towards that dystopic vision.

No it's not. It was much worse before. This is in fact a step forward away from that dystopic vision.

Is it? Wouldn’t it be better if the loans were not needed because the education would be paid by state? Doesn’t this actually cement the current situation?

No - this is a raise in the form of subsidized education, and it's hard to see how that's worse. I'm very dependent on my employer because I live off of my salary, but that doesn't make it a dystopia. If they wanted me to learn X, and paid for my training in X, I may not enjoy that as much as the cash value of the training but it's still a benefit to me. For Wal-Mart, the employee can leave whenever, they will either forfeit their incomplete program or graduate and now have a degree.

This is literally the classic CFO/CEO exchange:

CFO asks CEO: What happens if we spend money training our people and then they leave?

CEO: What happens if we don't and they stay?

But what education? Are even half of those graduating in a program that is in relative demand? I think that higher education funding, if publicly funded, should be entirely based on demand and merit.

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