For-Profit Online University Lets You Spend ThoughtCoins On Way To Job As Digital Gardener

Have you been thinking about enrolling in a for-profit online college that saddles you with thousands of dollars of debt and no job to show for it? Then get ready to spend your ThoughtCoins and ClassPoints at a school that will still take all your money but lets you skip the classwork and guarantees you a job when you graduate.

Check out the above infomercial for For-Profit Online University, which promises to do away with all the problems of an on-campus education, like crumbling buildings and suicide in the libraries by doing away with the buildings and the libraries… and the faculty and classes.

The enrollment process couldn’t be easier — if you have a credit card, you’re actually already enrolled whether you know it or not. And just like you can spend real money to buy virtual currency in games like Farmville, your credit card can be used to purchase ThoughtCoins, which can then be turned in to purchase facts that are yours to keep (so long as you continue to pay the monthly fee).

Classes too hard? Just level up by purchasing ClassPoints. As the French might say, “Viola!”

And you can also spend your digital money to deck out your online avatar or order a sandwich from Panera. If your account is getting low, just rat out fellow students who are committing fraud and be rewarded!

And unlike those other for-profit schools that don’t want the world to know that their students fail to find employment, FPOU’s graduates are immediately employed by the school as “digital gardeners.”

“Digital gardening is a meaningful task,” explains the school’s sole employee, “in which real live human beings look at images from the Internet and then identify them in ways that bots simply can’t.”

One former student says that when he’s “in the zone” and clicking his way through image after image, the rewards can be great.

“Sometimes i look up and it’s 8 a.m. and I’ve got 1,400 ThoughtCoins in my F-pouch,” he says. “That’s like two Panera Bread sandwiches a day… plenty to keep me energized as I attack another 20-hour day of identifying images.”

One thing to keep in mind before enrolling in FPOU — Beware of Howard. Always.

(via @alexismadrigal)

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