Op-ed: Uber’s partnership with ASU is an exploitative sham

Donald Trump has turned corporate loyalty into public policy, rewarding companies that flatter his agenda while punishing those that don’t. So it should come as no surprise that when news broke of a White House list ranking corporations by fealty, Uber was right near the top.

The company has spent years mastering the art of masking exploitation as progress. It claims to empower workers, yet its model depends on pushing Black, brown and immigrant drivers into some of the most precarious jobs in the economy — jobs with no wage floor, no sick leave and subject to constant algorithmic control. The company champions policies that gut public services and strip workers of protections, stays silent when its drivers are targeted by ICE on the job and floods the media with glossy “opportunity” stories to mask the harm.

The latest example came last month, when Fast Company profiled Uber’s tuition partnership with Arizona State University as if it were a breakthrough in expanding college access. The article painted a picture of drivers logging flexible hours, building income and earning degrees. But scratch the surface and the story looks very different.

To even qualify for Uber’s “free tuition,” drivers must complete thousands of trips and reach Uber Pro Gold, Platinum, or Diamond status — benchmarks tied to punishing performance metrics and algorithmic control. Out of millions of drivers, only about 1,100 have actually qualified. That is not a pathway to higher education — it is a rounding error. Education here is not being offered as a right or universal good. It’s dangled as a reward for enduring exploitation.

The reason the bar is so high is simple: This program, like so many other Uber tactics, is less about access than it is about optics. It is a piece of corporate theater, carefully staged to magnify the smallest possible outcomes while obscuring the widespread harm. Uber markets its program as empowerment while helping dismantle the very public systems — like robust higher education and social safety nets — that make economic security possible in the first place.

That contradiction is stark. While Uber boasts about a thousand driver diplomas, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi endorsed Trump’s federal budget plan — a plan that slashes Medicaid, food assistance and Pell grants while restructuring student loan repayment in ways that will harm millions of students and their families. Uber elevates a handful of success stories while standing shoulder to shoulder with politicians dismantling education for the many. This is not a solution; it is political cover.

And the costs fall hardest on the workers least able to bear them. Immigrant, Black and brown drivers — the majority of Uber’s labor force — are pushed into precarity and targeted by racialized enforcement. Just weeks ago, ICE agents arrested an Uber Eats driver mid-delivery. Uber stayed silent, even as it continued to trumpet glossy stories of opportunity that obscure the daily risks its workers face.

Even the much-hyped “flexibility” that Uber touts is a myth. Drivers don’t control their schedules — the algorithm does. To keep ratings high and meet Uber’s performance demands, workers must drive at peak hours, push through exhaustion and accept poverty wages without basic protections like health insurance, paid sick leave or unemployment coverage. For many immigrant drivers and workers of color, gig work isn’t a choice at all; it’s a last resort that traps them in insecurity.

This is the deeper political context that stories like the Fast Company feature ignore. Uber and its Silicon Valley peers are not expanding opportunity — they are narrowing it. They rewrite labor laws, undermine public systems and force workers to rely on employer-controlled perks that reach only a privileged few. These perks are not generosity. They are political posturing, designed to consolidate power, launder reputations and distract from the harm these companies do every day.

We do not need the Trump administration and tech oligarchs like Khosrowshahi deciding who deserves a diploma. We do not need austerity for the many and perks for a chosen few. We need a renewed public commitment to affordable higher education for all, funded by taxing corporations like Uber that profit from exploitation while undermining the very safety nets their workers and riders depend on. Because here is the truth: True freedom and opportunity come not from corporate perks but from strong public systems that guarantee education, dignity and security as rights — not privileges.

Veronica Avila is an expert on the gig economy and the director of worker campaigns at the Action Center for Race & the Economy.