In 2014, investigators at CALDER/American Institutes for Research created nearly nine thousand fictitious résumés. Some of their fake job applicants held associate degrees from for-profit universities, others had similar diplomas from community colleges, while a third group had no college education at all. The researchers sent their résumés to job postings in seven major cities and then measured the response rate. They found that diplomas from for-profit colleges were worth less in the workplace than those from community colleges and about the same as a high school diploma. And yet these
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