Wow... this guy.
I can empathize a lot with being qualified on paper to make more money, but being stuck working for Wal-Mart. That was me for two years of my life after all.
It is frustrating, I agree. In fact it's downright depressing. However, I have to point a few things out here:
1. It sounds like Wal-Mart isn't treating him unfairly to me. Look no one at Wal-Mart, unless they come in with particular prior experience, starts at Department Manager. Also, while this trend is dying, one of the core conceits/concepts of Wal-Mart used to be that the salaried managers weren't MBA graduates from fancy schools, but rather people who actually worked their butts off in the stores. This isn't true any more (a good number of WMT's top executives were never so much as a cart pusher), but at the store manager and below level, it is still true.
Is Wal-Mart a bad employer? I'm going to say yes based on my experience but it's not like people seem to think it is. They're bad because they're so indifferent to people and treat 98% of their workforce like they're completely interchangeable, but anyone who works on the floor in one of their stores knows that's just not true.
They're not even "Bad" because they don't pay a lot; Wal-Mart doesn't set wages, circumstances far outside of their control set wages. But I will say they don't set relative wages correctly, in that higher performing employees don't really earn a meaningful amount more than their less productive counterparts.
The big decision makers at the top are so far removed from daily operations they strive for control and uniformity at the sake of innovation and effectiveness. It's a byproduct of the company being so damn big. I don't believe these are evil people, I just believe they have to make a big decision without understanding all the nuances.
That's really the source of some many of their problems. Wal-Mart needs to take a cue from Jack Welch and reward their top 20% instead of treating everyone the same.
2. I went to school while working at Wal-Mart. I went to a regular brick and mortar university who doesn't have to qualify itself as reputable and have no student debt. I realize he probably can't do this supporting a family (I can live like a pauper if I must because it's just me, but I'm talking about some urban survival type stuff here you wouldn't subject a child to). Still, even if I'd financed my degree, I wouldn't have spent more than $20,000. Guy needs to shop around and/or move cities/states.
He is right that WMT doesn't give a rat's butt about employee education above a GED. They do throw out a scholarship here and there, but it's not like there's a universal tuition reimbursement program save for the GED program (which Wal-Mart will pay for). The trick is, you have to sell your educational credentials to someone outside the company.
It is true that if you want to be a salaried manager it helps to have a bachelor's degree. But honestly the degree can be in anything, WMT doesn't care. Just study something easy.
3. It is true that it doesn't look good on your resume if you put "WALMART" up there front and center. However, what I do is list "Accounting Associate", my last title at that company, and then clarify it was at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The difference is, this shows the responsibility and roles I had and emphasizes what I actually did on the job rather than who I worked for.
4. Wal-Mart isn't this guy's problem. The fact is, I'm not too good to work at Wal-Mart. This guy isn't either. He needs to get it in his head that nothing makes you "better" than the people who work for this company their whole lives.
This guy's problem is he is needs to fish or cut bait. Take a poo or get off the pot. Finish the degree and move on to somewhere else that will value his new qualifications, or stay put.
Use Wal-Mart as a stepping stone or buckle down and make Wal-Mart work for you. Those are your choices. No one is going to swoop in on a white horse and save you from retail hell, the only way out is to claw yourself out of that pit with the exposed boney nubs of your overworked and stiff fingers. All of your choices suck.
To that extent I feel bad for him, he didn't do anything wrong by having a job that paid lots of money in the past and he probably had no reason to suspect it would end. It's got to suck to fall so far.
But the harsh truth is that anything he's lost, however bitter it is to swallow, is now a sunk cost. I went through the same thing, realizing the consequences of what was happening to me wasn't fun, but what he had before just doesn't matter any more.