Girl turns stripper after getting worthless $70,000 game designing degree

Bloomberg brings the story of Carrianne Howard, a 26-year old woman with a $70,000 bachelor's degree in game art and design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college partly owned by Goldman Sachs. Howard had a dream of working in the video game industry and expected the degree would help her on her way, but a couple of years into her studies she grew disenchanted and discovered that she'd been deceived, instead of getting a decent degree she was only making the college industry richer. Some classes consisted largely of playing video games, she says, and claims it's like she never attended school at all as no video game company accepts her degree.

After graduating Howard got her first job at GameRecruiter, a Fort Lauderdale-based gaming industry employment agency where she was making $12 an hour. Marc Mencher, GameRecruiter's president and CEO, says she was "an exceptional performer", but unfortunately Howard lost her job in March 2009 as the company closed down her entire department. Unable to find another job, the girl made a significant career change and is now working as a stripper at a topless club in Florida, earning $400 to $1,000 a week. She's trying to save enough money to go back to college to get a decent business degree, and also helps run an anti-Art Institute website.

Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”

More info at Bloomberg.