Barring a last-minute legal decision, as of July 1, the nation’s for-profit colleges are going to be subject to a new Education Department rule known as gainful employment. That is: Do students end up earning enough to pay off their loans?

A trade group of career colleges is suing to stop the rule, but this is far from the only monkey on the sector’s back. As recently as 2010, these schools enrolled one in nine college students. Today, some are shutting down, cutting back, tanking in the stock market, even going bankrupt. The bellwether was the giant Corinthian Colleges a year ago, but many others are in trouble as well. Even the University of Phoenix, which five years ago had 460,000 students, has seen that number fall by half.

Part of this is thanks to government crackdowns. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, is the new watchdog in town. And it has taken a particular interest in for-profits that market student loans directly to their own students, sometimes in misleading and aggressive ways.

Officials at the bureau sued Corinthian Colleges, alleging predatory lending and illegal debt collection tactics, and in the wake of the Corinthian shutdown they arranged for $480 million in private student loans to be forgiven.

Student activists have also been vocal in criticizing the industry and demanding relief from their loans.

But government enforcement and political debate is not the only reason that these colleges are having problems. Market forces should be considered too.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, if you were a working adult who needed flexibility, in most parts of the country, your best — or maybe your only option — for finishing your degree was probably an online program from a for-profit college. It was hard to ride public transit or turn on a TV during the day without seeing an ad for one of the schools, and they were sophisticated in online advertising as well.

Today, public institutions like Arizona State University and nonprofits like Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University have gotten into the game. They are trying to meet the needs of this same student population by offering online, go-at-your-own-pace programs.

They are enrolling tens of thousands of students. And they are partnering with employers, such as Starbucks with ASU, to defray tuition costs. Their tuition tends to be lower in any case than what the for-profits charge.

“I think the market’s been educated,” says Paul LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire. “People used to not be aware of the difference between for-profits and nonprofits.”

Seven years ago he began the process of building a large online program at his regionally accredited private college. Today it enrolls 22,500 students and has partnerships with 78 employers. Recently Anthem, the health insurer, agreed to offer SNHU’s College for America bachelor’s program to employees for free.

About half of the company’s 55,000 workers — call center employees, administrative assistants, and the like — may be eligible.

So what is the upshot for students and prospective students here?

There are still hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of current and former for-profit college students from over the last two decades who are saddled with high loan debt and degrees of potentially dubious value.

The Education Department says it’s working to develop a process for providing debt relief to defrauded borrowers, including many at Corinthian. But critics say that these processes are too onerous and too slow.

At the same time, with the gainful employment rule, observers say the Department of Education is opening a can of worms. Right now, the rule applies only to for-profits. But there are a lot of public and nonprofit privates out there too that may be graduating too few students and leaving them with loans that are too high.

For example, across the country the graduation rate at public community colleges is still just one in five. Nor have the new big online institutions furnished hard evidence about the life experiences or employment prospects of their graduates.

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Like it or not, much of what we encounter online is mediated by computer-run algorithms — complex formulas that help determine our Facebook feeds, Netflix recommendations, Spotify playlists or Google ads.

But algorithms, like humans, can make mistakes. Last month, users found the photo-sharing site Flickr’s new image-recognition technology was labeling dark-skinned people as “apes” and auto-tagging photos of Nazi concentration camps as “jungle gym” and “sport.”

How does this happen? Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, tells NPR’s Arun Rath that biases can enter algorithms in various ways — not just intentionally.

“More often,” she says, “they come through the complexity of the program and the limits of the data they have. And if there are some imperfections in your data — and there always [are] — that’s going to be reflected as a bias in your system.”

Interview Highlights

On bias in the Facebook “environment”

These systems have very limited input capacity. So for example, on Facebook, which is most people’s experience with an algorithm, the only thing you can do to signal to the algorithm that you care about something is to either click on “Like” or to comment on it. The algorithm, by forcing me to only “Like” something, it’s creating an environment — to be honest, my Facebook is full of babies and engagements and happy vacations, which I don’t mind. I mean, I like that. When I see it, I click on “Like” — and then Facebook shows me more babies.

And it doesn’t show me the desperate, sad news that I also care about a lot, that might be coming from a friend who doesn’t have “likable” news.

How biases creep into computer code

One, they can be programmed in directly, but I think that’s rare. I don’t think programmers sit around thinking, you know, “Let us make life hard for a certain group” or not. More often, they come through the complexity of the program and the limits of the data they have. And if there are some imperfections in your data — and there always [are] — that’s going to be reflected as a bias in your system.

Sometimes [biases] can come in through the confusing complexity. A modern program can be so multi-branch that no one person has all the scenarios in their head.

For example, increasingly, hiring is being done by algorithms. And an algorithm that looks at your social media output can figure out fairly reliably if you are likely to have a depressive episode in the next six months — before you’ve exhibited any clinical signs. So it’s completely possible for a hiring algorithm to discriminate and not hire people who might be in that category.

It’s also possible that the programmers and the hiring committee [have] no idea that’s what’s going on. All they know is, well, maybe we’ll have lower turnover. They can test that. So there’s these subtle but crucial biases that can creep into these systems that we need to talk about.

How to limit human bias in computer programs

We can test it under many different scenarios. We can look at the results and see if there’s discrimination patterns. In the same way that we try to judge decision-making in many fields, when the decision making is done by humans, we should apply a similar critical lens — but with a computational bent to it, too.

The fear I have is that every time this is talked about, people talk about it as if it’s math or physics, therefore some natural, neutral world. And they’re programs! They’re complex programs. They’re not like laws of physics or laws of nature. They’re created by us. We should look into what they do and not let them do everything. We should make those decisions explicitly.

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For half a decade, General Electric has been paying for a massive dredging operation on the upper Hudson River in New York.

The billion-dollar cleanup, designed to remove toxic PCBs, sparked fierce controversy when it was proposed. But as the project enters its final summer, it’s been so successful that even some of the cleanup’s most vocal critics want it expanded.

A Symbol For Sick Rivers

Just offshore in Mechanicville, three hours north of New York City, barges shuttle back and forth across the Champlain Canal, a waterway linked to the Hudson River. A backhoe is digging up great gobs of PCB-contaminated muck.

“The good news is we’re finishing the dredging and then we anticipate [that] over a decade or decades, that the fish advisories will begin to be reduced,” says Gary Klawinski, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Hudson River field office.

PCBs were once a key ingredient in GE’s manufacturing of electrical components, but the substance has been linked to cancer in animals and studies have shown severe impacts on wildlife. PCBs were banned in the 1970s, but not before GE poured tons of it into these waterways from two plants along the river.

As a result, people were warned against swimming and eating the fish. The Hudson became a symbol for sick and polluted rivers nationwide.

Still, when the cleanup was first proposed, it was surprisingly controversial. With advertising, GE convinced a lot of locals in places like Mechanicville that dredging would do more harm than good.

“These wonderful moments on one of the richest rivers on Earth could be interrupted for the next 20 years, if the EPA orders the Hudson dredged,” read one ad.

Those ads scared a lot of people. Ernest Martin, then mayor of the nearby town of Stillwater, N.Y., captured the mood when he spoke at a public hearing in 2001.

“I am definitely against dredging in the Hudson River,” Martin said. “It will take too many years to clean it under the dredging proposal by EPA. Our future for tourism, employment, new business will be lost forever.”

A National Model For Dredging

But the EPA pushed forward, requiring that GE remove roughly two-thirds of the PCBs. It was described as the largest, most complex Superfund site in U.S. history.

With active dredging now its sixth year, even the project’s early critics say it’s been a huge success.

“We did have reservations about this project, as did many others,” says Mark Behan, a spokesman for GE. “Because at the time that it was conceived, no project of this size or complexity had ever been attempted before.”

Behan says the company is now proud of its work here, developing new techniques to remove toxic silt from a vast river that changes from season to season.

“We assembled a world-class team of dredging, environmental and engineering experts, we adapted technology to the task and we’ve produced a project that EPA now calls a national model,” Behan says.

Now towns along New York’s upper Hudson have begun revitalizing these old industrial waterfronts, thinking about a future where kids can swim and play along the shore without fear of contamination.

“I remember when this all started the predictions were it was going to have a major impact on all communities,” says Mark Sever, who works for the city of Mechanicville. “So I guess, we’re pleasantly surprised.”

Calls For An Expansion

The dredging has gone so well that a lot of local leaders here have pivoted completely. More than 50 towns and counties are now calling on GE to keep working until all of the PCBs are scooped up.

EPA officials haven’t endorsed that idea. They say they’re satisfied that enough PCBs have been removed that the Hudson can begin healing. GE’s Behan says the company has done enough.

“For years, there have been voices who have said they wanted a different project, a larger project, a smaller project, but EPA is the decision-maker,” he says. “EPA ordered the dredging project, and GE executed that project, and I think did so exceptionally well.”

But a separate coalition of state and federal agencies — not including the EPA — has been studying the impact of PCBs on Hudson River wildlife. They’ve signaled that they may push GE to dredge contaminated sites not included on the EPA’s list.

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For some people, too much salt is bad for health. Too much salt is also bad for growing most crops.

Salty soil is a common problem for farmers in the arid West and it’s gotten worse because of the ongoing drought. Water is necessary to flush salts out; without it, salt builds up over time.

In New Mexico, one crop that’s suffering is the state’s beloved chile pepper.

Chile is not just a crop in New Mexico — it’s an identity. Whether red or green, the long leathery pepper with its unmistakable aroma is the reigning ingredient in local cuisine. It’s posted on road signs, arranged in vertical wreaths for decoration and protected by state law from impostors. But lately the state’s chile crop has been declining.

Joe Paul Lack is a farmer who married into New Mexico’s chile dynasty. His wife’s family is credited with commercializing a mild green pepper known as Big Jim.

“This is the third year that I have not had one acre of chile,” he says. “I’ve been farming since the ’70s, so yeah, that hurts.”

Lack farms in southern New Mexico, near Hatch, the state’s chile capital. Foreign competition and labor shortages are partly to blame for the shrinking chile acreage. But so is drought.

Dry weather forces farmers to pump from underground aquifers. The water spills into irrigation canals that flow onto fields, making up for a short supply in the neighboring Rio Grande. But while groundwater can be a blessing, it’s also a curse.

“The aquifers tend to be salty,” said Stephanie Walker, a vegetable specialist at New Mexico State University.

Salt is part of a geologic legacy beneath the desert, leftover from ancient oceans that once covered the West. The shallow aquifer under New Mexico’s chile fields concentrates the salt. Experts estimate salt content there has quadrupled in the last four years.

“The longer growers have to pump water … the more detriment to the vegetables that they are trying to grow,” Walker says.

The detriment comes in the form of root damage, which weakens certain crops, like chile. In New Mexico, production is down 40 percent from record highs a decade ago. That’s despite better farming techniques that allow farmers to grow seven times more chile per acre than they did back in the 1990s.

“What we need is a couple of monster snow seasons,” says Phil King, a civil engineer and consultant for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.

Like the Colorado River, the Rio Grande depends on snowmelt. The more water in the river, the more water to flush away the salts. But as global temperatures rise, scientists predict there will be less snow to feed rivers. One federal study says the Rio Grande could lose a third of its flow by the end of the century.

“Our whole system is predicated on having a supply of fresh river water from the north, and if we don’t we are simply not sustainable,” says King.

The battle against salt is happening across the West. It’s fallowed more than 100,000 acres in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Salty runoff from farms in the Colorado River basin was what prompted the federal government to build a desalination plant in Yuma, Ariz., after years of complaints from Mexican farmers downstream.

“We have a tendency to utilize our resources to their fullest capacity and then go through painful downsizing when necessary,” King says.

The Elephant Butte Irrigation District, which covers 90,640 acres in southern New Mexico, is making an effort to combat its salt problem in an era of little water. Farmers are installing drip irrigation, which uses less water and pushes salt away from a crop’s root zone. The district is also looking into creating systems that capture storm water.

No matter the challenges, farmers pledge to not let their state’s beloved chile pepper die. Those who have stuck it out say they’ll continue until nature forces them out.

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Recipe for a good summer-job market: First, hire a lot of people in May. Second, give workers raises, and third, push down gasoline prices. Mix it all together — and pour out hope for teen workers.

“Having a job makes me feel really excited. I can put my own money in my pocket instead of asking my parents for money all the time,” said José Moncada, a 16-year-old job seeker in New York City.

Moncada and other teens may have caught a break Friday when the economy followed that seasonal employment recipe precisely.

The Labor Department said employers added 280,000 new jobs in May, exceeding economists’ expectations. May brought a burst of hiring in leisure and hospitality, with 57,000 new jobs. Retailers added 31,400 jobs.

Typically, those are the sectors that hire a lot of younger workers. And those are the sectors that benefit when workers have more cash to spend. The May jobs report showed average hourly earnings rose by 0.3 percent — which translates to an annual growth rate of nearly 4 percent, far exceeding inflation.

Here’s another factor that may encourage summer hiring:

On Friday, OPEC announced it will keep oil production unchanged this year, even though supplies are plentiful. That helped lower the U.S. benchmark price to less than $58 a barrel, down from around $106 at this time last year.

AAA, the auto club, is predicting gasoline prices will fall this summer. The average national price of a gallon is $2.75, way down from $3.66 last year at this time. “This could be the year of the summer road trip,” AAA spokeswoman Avery Ash said.

That’s all positive for young workers. “Seasonal hiring is expected to take a nice jump this summer,” according to a report from CareerBuilder, an online jobs site.

Based on a Harris survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers, the company concluded that 36 percent of private-sector employers will be hiring summer workers, up from 30 percent last year and an average of 21 percent from 2008-2011.

“Many summer jobs went away completely during the recession as companies eliminated internship programs and as households cut back on vacation and recreation spending,” CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson said in a statement.

Not only did many summer jobs disappear during the Great Recession, but competition increased for those that remained, according to professor Ruth Milkman, a labor expert at the City University of New York.

“It used to be that minimum-wage jobs were mostly for very young people, either teenagers or people just entering the labor market permanently,” Milkman said. “What’s happened with the deterioration of the wage structure in recent decades is that more and more working adults are in minimum wage jobs.”

All of that competition has discouraged many teens from even looking for work. As recently as 2000, 52 percent of teenagers were in the labor force. Today, it’s down to less than a third.

So here’s where things stand heading into summer: The national unemployment rate is 5.5 percent, but for workers ages 16-19, it’s 17.9 percent. That’s much lower than the 27.2 percent peak most recently hit in 2010, but it’s still painfully high.

And there’s a big unknown in this summer’s labor market. While the demand for workers has been growing, so have wages. At least 29 states and many cities have passed laws raising the minimum wage well above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Many private employers, such as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Target, have raised their wage floors to well above the federal minimum.

These wage increases will disproportionately affect young workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says more than half of all minimum-wage workers are 24 or younger.

So teens who do land jobs may make more money, which they could then spend at malls and restaurants and amusement parks. But their higher wages could dampen hiring.

Whether the bigger paychecks for young people will translate into a better economy — or just less hiring — remains to be seen.

For now, Moncada, the job seeker at the Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, just wants to get working. Last summer, he cleaned streets at the state minimum of $8.75 an hour. He wants the same gig this summer.

He said his family of six lives on less than $30,000 a year, so he needs money for his school uniform and sneakers. Also, “I go to the store to get food that we need for the house,” he said.

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On Wednesday, in advance of a Friday shareholder meeting, Wal-Mart executives told employees they’d turn up the heat and mix up the music in stores — after complaints that workers were chilly and subjected to endless repetition of Celine Dion and Justin Bieber songs.

“Taking care of our customers begins with taking care of you,” U.S. COO Judith McKenna said in a statement. “It’s that simple. My commitment to you is that we will continue to listen, and, more importantly, act on what we hear.”

Activists say they applaud the company’s efforts to improve working conditions for U.S. employees — policy changes that also include raising their pay to at least $9 per hour.

But a report out Thursday highlights a series of ways that Wal-Mart is neglecting commitments it has made to maintaining labor and environmental standards throughout its supply chain.

The report, published by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, highlights cases in
which suppliers have failed to uphold the company’s compliance standards and Wal-Mart has neglected to enforce its own standards and goals.

Ultimately, the report calls the company’s commitments to improving labor and environmental impacts “mostly a PR stunt.” Wal-Mart did not reply to The Salt’s request for comment.

Over the years, Wal-Mart has made a series of pledges that now fall under the umbrella of a “Responsible Sourcing” code of ethics. It requires suppliers to abide by standards including “labor protections, such as hours of work, pay, and health and safety, as well as environmental policies, such as complying with local and international laws and regulations and reducing pollutants and waste,” the report notes.

Many of these standards are already required by law. But the report finds that the company as a whole, and its suppliers, are falling short in many places.

For example, two investigations cited Wal-Mart as a major buyer of shrimp from farms known to use slavery and forced labor. And two of Wal-Mart’s major packaged lettuce producers, Taylor Farms and Ready Pac, have been repeatedly cited by OSHA for failing to protect laborers from injuries, thus violating Wal-Mart’s labor code of conduct. The same is true for some baked good suppliers.

On the environmental front, Wal-Mart announced in 2010 that it would
cut 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions out of its supply
chain by the end of 2015. As of March 2015, though, Walmart had reached only 38 percent of that goal, the report finds.

But Jose Oliva, co-director of the FCWA, says a perhaps even bigger problem is that the company isn’t transparent about its adherence to its code.

“There is absolutely no way of verifying their claims or of ensuring that the claims are systemic and creating the kinds of conditions, in terms of workplaces and environment, that we need for food to be healthy and procured without suffering,” Oliva tells The Salt.

What the company could do, he says, is hire a third-party verification entity to ensure that the code of ethics is being followed and implemented. “And Wal-Mart would have to abide by the recommendations that independent entity puts out,” he says.

Wal-Mart also set a goal of purchasing $1 billion worth of “local” food from area farmers by 2015. But, the report says, it’s not clear that the commitment is much more than “corporate greenwashing.”

Farmers “receive inconsistent prices for their produce, depending on whom they work with, and in some instances, when the person they work with leaves the company, their replacement is no longer interested in buying from a farmer or a cooperative,” according to the report.

Oliva says the FCWA’s research revealed that Wal-Mart needs to work harder to fulfill its local food goals so that the benefits to farmers are more just.

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