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The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s tuition reimbursement program, which pays for employees to take college-level courses, has garnered some criticism from an Iowa senator who said the agency doesn’t provide students with enough information about college options. WMATA -- which is funded by the federal government, the District of Columbia, and state and local jurisdictions -- spent almost $500,000 on the program in fiscal year 2010, according to The Washington Times.
“I am increasingly concerned that many government agencies, not just WMATA, are using taxpayer dollars to send students to low-quality, high-cost for-profit colleges with terrible student outcomes,” said Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat, in a statement. “Most troubling is that these agencies do not provide students with sufficient information to protect themselves or perform adequate due diligence regarding the schools’ value.”
According to The Washington Times, which received documents about the program from an open records request, many WMATA employees opted to take courses at for-profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix and Strayer University. Employees also took courses at some area institutions, such as the University of Maryland University College and Prince George's County College.
The documents also revealed that some employees took courses with no apparent professional correlation -- on video games, black history and parenting, for example.
