‘Wasted money’: How career training companies scoop up federal funds with little oversight
In The News Piece in The Hechinger Report
Feb. 25, 2023
Shalin Jyotishi was cited in an article by The Hechinger Report about the United States spending millions on workforce training programs but many don't help people find jobs.
Between 2018 and 2021, these schools took in more than $239 million in federal workforce grants from the Department of Labor — most of which went to for-profit institutions like MedCerts. On top of that, such schools received unspecified millions of dollars in tuition money from Department of Defense grants for military service members and their spouses.
“There isn’t enough oversight,” said Shalin Jyotishi, a senior analyst at the progressive think tank New America, adding that information about how students fare “is excruciatingly difficult to obtain for for-profit institutions.”
MedCerts, owned by the publicly traded corporation Stride, Inc., is approved to provide workforce training in more than 30 states. It promises quick, affordable paths to jobs; most courses take less than nine months to complete and cost less than $5,000. Yet it’s impossible to know how many MedCerts students finish their programs or how many of those who use taxpayer money to do so ultimately get jobs in the fields they trained for.
Read the full article here.