Federal ‘Job Corps’ Spends Up To $764K Per Graduate. Participants Go On To Earn $17K Annually.

A Labor Department program designed to train 16- to 24-year-olds to join the workforce spends more per person annually than Ivy League colleges, but participants wind up making minimum wage on average — raising questions about whether it should continue to exist.

The Job Corps pays teenage runaways, high school dropouts, and twentysomething ex-cons to live in dormitories and receive their GEDs and vocational training. 

The national cost per graduate was $188,000, with the average graduate staying 13.5 months. 

Of more than 110 campuses, the 10 least efficient averaged a cost of $385,000 per graduate. 

• Job Corps participants earn $16,695 per year on average after leaving the program, according to new government data.
• Nearly $2 billion in federal taxpayer money is spent annually on residential Job Corps campuses...