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So, I am a lower income employee, struggling paycheck to paycheck, and usually recieve around $600-$800 each year at tax time, but for some reason this year I was quoted that I would recieve only $300. I really needed that extra couple hundred bucks due to being the only income in my apartment now that my mother lost her job last year and I've been paying the bills. So is this the beginning of all the awesome benefits us poor people have to look forward to each year, or does that start next year on our taxes?
Thank God I do actually need healthcare and knee surgery, but can't even afford to take time off to use the healthcare because I can't even afford to take time off for surgery due to my financial situation. So I'm so glad we all get to chip in to this system of 'free' healthcare that I basically have to pay for, but can't use. How do you think Obamacare helps someone like me? Am I going to be penalized each year at tax time for this so called free healthcare that I cannot use?
I would rather see the workers getting the money than the crooks sitting in some board room somewhere sending their profits to Switzerland. At least they can buy a house and pay their taxes.
Paying thousands of people millions of taxpayer dollars they didn't earn seems crooked.
So, I am a lower income employee, struggling paycheck to paycheck, and usually recieve around $600-$800 each year at tax time, but for some reason this year I was quoted that I would recieve only $300. I really needed that extra couple hundred bucks due to being the only income in my apartment now that my mother lost her job last year and I've been paying the bills. So is this the beginning of all the awesome benefits us poor people have to look forward to each year, or does that start next year on our taxes?
Thank God I do actually need healthcare and knee surgery, but can't even afford to take time off to use the healthcare because I can't even afford to take time off for surgery due to my financial situation. So I'm so glad we all get to chip in to this system of 'free' healthcare that I basically have to pay for, but can't use. How do you think Obamacare helps someone like me? Am I going to be penalized each year at tax time for this so called free healthcare that I cannot use?
Obamacare aside, recognize that if you're getting a relatively big chunk of cash back, then you're doing something wrong with your withholding. That's your money that you could have held onto and used throughout the year rather than let the government borrow it for the better part of a year, interest-free.
Sorry about your situation, I've dealt with cancer, brain tumors, death, and heart attacks in my family this past 2 years, so I know what it's like to feel helpless. Where do you get the idea that DeVry is worse than a high school diploma? I recall taking coarses with the kind of mathematics that a lot of other college graduates wouldn't understand. So, how is that worse than a high school diploma now? One of my uncles went to DeVry (long distance relative that I only met once as a kid) and he started his own company which was really succesful for a long time.
DeVry overcharges for a poor, lazy product. Yes - you do get out of it what you put into it, but DeVry is beholden to it's shareholders versus the best interest of the students. It's best for the shareholders if you keep paying - so it is near impossible to flunk out of DeVry while even community colleges will fail someone if they aren't doing the work. The quality control is quite poor, so it's impossible to tell if your 3.5 (or whatever) from DeVry is because you worked for it or if it's because you coasted through. It's in the same vein as University of Phoenix and ITT Tech. Look at the thread in the education forum to see how your degree is perceived: University of Phoenix - Merged Threads. These types of schools prey on people from lower socioeconomic classes who do not know any better and then are out almost $40,000 for a useless associate's degree. You can do an associate's degree for less than a quarter of the cost at a community college and many brick and mortar schools have legitimate online classes (Penn State comes to mind).
Additionally, an associate's degree is not the end goal - it's a step on the way to a bachelor's degree. A DeVry 2 year degree cannot be applied to a 4 year program at a university because DeVry is not regionally accredited. This means that if you want a bachelor's degree, you will either need to do the full 4 years OR get another useless degree from DeVry. That's not a good thing.
I'm glad your uncle did well - however, did he have experience before getting his degree? Did he look for a job with an employer straight out of DeVry? Your experience getting only a pizza delivery job is just not out of sync with your degree unless you have a work history. Did you go to DeVry straight out of high school? What other jobs have you held?
My experience is that HR automatically filters out resumes listing those types of colleges... but it doesn't filter out people with only high school degrees. Your mileage may vary - people who did not go to college might not know the difference. However, in an area such as electronics, unless you are the guy outside climbing poles or you are an independent code monkey, your education matters. When I think of electronics, I think of big companies like Google which hire thousands of network engineers, server engineers, help desk, etc - they provide tuition remission to their employees but will NOT PAY FOR DeVry (but will pay for more expensive brick and mortar programs). That should tell you something.
DeVry overcharges for a poor, lazy product. Yes - you do get out of it what you put into it, but DeVry is beholden to it's shareholders versus the best interest of the students. It's best for the shareholders if you keep paying - so it is near impossible to flunk out of DeVry while even community colleges will fail someone if they aren't doing the work. The quality control is quite poor, so it's impossible to tell if your 3.5 (or whatever) from DeVry is because you worked for it or if it's because you coasted through. It's in the same vein as University of Phoenix and ITT Tech. Look at the thread in the education forum to see how your degree is perceived: University of Phoenix - Merged Threads. These types of schools prey on people from lower socioeconomic classes who do not know any better and then are out almost $40,000 for a useless associate's degree. You can do an associate's degree for less than a quarter of the cost at a community college and many brick and mortar schools have legitimate online classes (Penn State comes to mind).
You're right as far as socioeconomic classes going and how we wouldn't know any better. My father wasn't there after the divorce and I never had anyone to turn to for advice on things in life. I really never planned on going to college at all let alone DeVry because I was scared of being sucked into owing a debt I didn't have before on top of already being poor. However I was praying one day and God led me down the path to DeVry which looking back I can now see why as I now know I was supposed to cross paths with certain people in life and situations in life within that time.
Additionally, an associate's degree is not the end goal - it's a step on the way to a bachelor's degree. A DeVry 2 year degree cannot be applied to a 4 year program at a university because DeVry is not regionally accredited. This means that if you want a bachelor's degree, you will either need to do the full 4 years OR get another useless degree from DeVry. That's not a good thing.
I don't feel as though the degree is 'useless' in the sense of all I struggled with to achieve it, but you are right as far as it being useless so far looking for a job in that field.
I'm glad your uncle did well - however, did he have experience before getting his degree? Did he look for a job with an employer straight out of DeVry?
He went for a Masters in Electrical Engineering and he along with some buddies from school started a successfull company in Silicon Valley and invented some kind of processor. I don't know the details on that because I barely know that part of my family. I don't know if he had any previous experience in electronics/computers, but that was back in the 80's when things were booming.
Your experience getting only a pizza delivery job is just not out of sync with your degree unless you have a work history. Did you go to DeVry straight out of high school? What other jobs have you held?
My history is way more complex than most people as far as the timeline that things happened. I made some mistakes as a teenager with drugs and getting caught up with things in the neighborhood we moved to in Miami which was common to seeing guns, robberies, and violenc, but I also went through moving around more than even most military kids did. I've moved about 35 times in my 34 years. Have always been in the lower income bracket. My parents came from nothing. We lived in karate dojo's as I was a baby, then in lower income housing, in a car a few times, onto friends basements ect ect ect..I cannot remember all the places. Nothing has been stable in my entire life. As far as your questions right here, well only getting the pizza delivery job was for a bunch of reasons. It's really too complicated to go into out in the open or to any strangers on here, but my injury was the main reason I chose that line of work at the time. I dropped out of high school because there was nothing, but fights, gangs, drugs in my school. We even had security guards selling drugs up there at my school, so due to that enviroment I wasn't focusing on school and started skipping classes until that became a habit, so I dropped out after 3 years of that high school. I literally only went to maybe 10 percent of my classes in those 3 years. I was always an A/B student on the honor roll growing up before that. I ended up going to an adult ed school the next year, but dropped that school as it was even worse. Kids showed up drunk and asking if anyone knew who wanted to buy a car they just stole, fights, and it was in the middle of one of the roughest areas, so I dropped out again. I didn't graduate high school until I was 20. I studied the GED book on my own, took the test and graduated. I was always working some kind of job since I was 12 or 13 unless I was out from injury. So yes I did do lots of other jobs, mainly low paying gigs though because I had no 'skills'. This small paragraph wouldn't even begin to explain the complexities or the situation at all, so hopefully some people that 'know it all' on here will 'think' they have me figured out. They have no clue even after reading this because I can only give certain info on a forum to strangers.
My experience is that HR automatically filters out resumes listing those types of colleges... but it doesn't filter out people with only high school degrees.
That's kind of strange that a high school degree would be of more value than someone who actually put the effort into gaining a degree, at least you know they went through a program that required more knowledge than high school coarses require.
Your mileage may vary - people who did not go to college might not know the difference. However, in an area such as electronics, unless you are the guy outside climbing poles or you are an independent code monkey, your education matters. When I think of electronics, I think of big companies like Google which hire thousands of network engineers, server engineers, help desk, etc - they provide tuition remission to their employees but will NOT PAY FOR DeVry (but will pay for more expensive brick and mortar programs). That should tell you something.
That may be true, and maybe this 'is' why nobody is calling me back for interviews. I've been looking for work outside of this dead-end gig for a few years now with no luck.
Again, don't blame Obama for your problems.
When the taxes and fines come from the new healthcare law next year I will be justified in complaining against Obama because I really didn't want that law to pass.
I appreciate the information and the time it took you to write it, but I clearly remember some students not being able to continue on in the program because they had failed the same class twice. I do not remember DeVry cutting anybody any slack when it came to failing a coarse more than one time. My coarses went from an average of 40 students in each coarse in the beggining to less than 10 students in my final semester coarses.
Last edited by RazorRob305; 01-23-2013 at 02:31 AM..
I nearly tripled my return and dropped my overall rate to about 12%.
I'm rather satisfied.
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