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When Tech Schools Go Bad?
profet asks: "I am currently in the middle of my senior year at Polytechnic University. When I began my journey here I was told by all that it was a good school. Since attending I have gone through much discomfort. The University decided to close down the campus that I attended. Then they decided to change course requirements so that they no longer offered courses that were required for graduation. After talking to others in college it seems that being 'shafted' is common at tech schools. I was wondering how others have faired at their schools." For those who found themselves in this situation, what did you do to resolve your issues?
How's gatech?
VTC SUX
I go to Vermont Technical College.
They stopped serving alcohol in the lounge.
They took away the student's garage.
My degree will HOPEFULLY be accredited by the time I graduate.
The school is grossly underfunded and run by chowderheads.
Thank god I go to VTC and not YOUR school!! For once the grass ISN'T greener. Compared to what I've heard about other schools, my academic experience at VTC has been pretty l33t So what if my social experience has been a steaming turd.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Then they decided to change course requirements so that they no longer offered courses that were required for graduation.
What will happen to you? Forever paying school fee with no hope of graduation? Why paying for endless torment without purpose? Are you posting from Hell?
I think you should really turn to Customer Right or Human Right for help.
. . .when you go to school in Amityville. Like the poster says: "For God's Sake, Get Out!".
at my (former) school, a major university located in arizona, they changed all the upper division classes over the course of a summer from one primary language (C) to another (Java).
the semester before they made the change, they began offering a single Java class. the semester after, most everything was Java based. many of my classmates and i had to start from scratch for 2 semesters or so to get caught up. i got fed up of having to pay tuition for the same courses in a new language, so quit altogether.
the uni has a few satellite campuses, and one in particular has a lot of the profs i liked pre-language switch, teaching pretty much the same courses they did before. i will probably start back at the satellite campus next fall.
i would have gone to the u of a instead, but i was already pretty well settled down in the phoenix area, so went with the other big uni in az.
The downturn in the world economy can only have a negative effect on the numbers of American students going to university - when times are bad, people who don't have the benefit of a college fund built up by their parents since birth are less likely to find putting themselves into heavy debt for the foreseable future an attractive proposition for a qualification that won't necessarily get them a well-paid job. And, when there are thousands of people out there who already have those qualifications and years of real-world experience competing for almost every opening, the odds of a new graduate finding his/her dream job - or even a relevant job in their field - can become an impossible task.
(Conversely, in Europe, Australia and elsewhere, where the cost of education to the individual is either paid for or subsidised by the state, a poor job market can be a greater incentive to go to university.)
Fewer students means more choice for students, as colleges are forced to fight harder to get the numbers they need to fill their programmes. Inevitably, this means that the most prestigous universities, such as the Ivy league, MIT, Caltech, will continue to prosper, whilst those lower down the ladder suffer. At the bottom end, it becomes a dog eat dog scenario, and universities that fail to meet their projected student numbers can find themselves vulnerable.
(Of course, the fact that research funding will follow a similar pattern during tough times doesn't help either.)
My guess is your college is one of the vulnerable ones. It's cutting cost where it can (closing down an entire campus surely suggests a fall in student numbers) and making its courses more attractive to students (dropping the need for everyone to take required courses in order to graduate).
Of course, as you're almost finished there, there's little you can do except to bite the bullet and finish your degree. But, if you're going to supplement your education with a masters or a doctorate then you might be better off looking to read those elsewhere - if the college's student numbers and graduate quality falls in the coming years studying elsewhere higher up the food chain should help you from being pigeon-holed as someone who only has "a worthless degree from a third-rate college".
Sure, it's a harsh assessment but, believe me, it's a harsh world out there. Compared to the real world, college is paradise.
Good luck for the future.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I guess RIT isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was in comparison to other tech schools. I just received my Bachelors from RIT, so I shouldn't bitch too much.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
He forgot to mention that the guy to girl ratio is like 1000:1
I go to WPI.. and aside from the guy/girl ratio, I like it (well, I ended up beating the ratio and finding a girlfriend anyway, but I was as surprised as anyone.. the ratio is pretty damn bad, heh). A couple bad classes, but nothing horrible. And none of the stuff you seem to be going through. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a school to attend. Especially if you're a girl (I know, it's slashdot, what are the odds of finding one of *those*? probably worse than at WPI. :P )... I still have plenty of single friends who would like to see the ratio move a little more towards balanced. :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
I'm a freshman here. I don't have quite as many entertaining stories, yet. Um I got one tho.
You have to take this course, CS1114 which is a basic intro to CompSci. If you take the AP Computer Science exam (and get a 4 or you might need a 5, i am not sure, I got a 5 (the highest)) you get credit for it and go move on to CS1124 w/o taking 1114. Here's the kicker: They'll give you credit for AP Computer Science A, but not AB. Guess which one I took? Yeah, AB the more "advanced" course. So I had to take 1114, and it was immensely boring. I know when kid who got them to place him into 24 anyway, but he doesn't have credit for 14.
Oh and as someone else already mentioned, the female population is practically non-existant.
Looks to be a "fun" four years.
Why not fork?
If you got into MIT and went to Poly, you shouldn't've gotten into MIT. If you went to Poly because you didn't get in anywhere else, why complain? You know you couldn't do better. Unless it was the money, in which case, feel better. Other people have college loans, you probably don't.
1. An online "university" once appeared,
using an address in an Adelaide-suburb;
PhD's, Masters degrees were offered, but
NO details on any faculties
2. Short-course IT training (min Au$ 6,000)
comes with a "Guarentee" of assistance
finding a job; students reported getting
-very- short periods of modestly-paid work
(essentially, able to earn back a small part
of the 1,000's of dollars paid for training)
The training business was written up in media
and quietly renamed itself.
Poly is unfortunately,a terrible school in terms of student relations. I went there starting in '95 and transfered out asap. Sorry to have to say this, but their proiorities aren't churning out good graduates, but sucking them in.
From that stupid 3 person staffed registrar area, to the badly admined sun servers (is utopia.poly.edu still around?), bad computer labs, terrible classrooms.
Maybe it was a great school 20 years ago, but a lot has to be fixed before they start building new things like the gym, the dorms (which are only like a third full and such.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
No, seriously. :)
;x
My cousin graduated from ### in 2002 for Computer Science. Well, he installs Cat 5 now for a living. (I believe he had a high GPA, too.)
If even he can't get a job, how am I supposed to when I attend a community college for the same field? People aren't getting jobs in Computer Science recently; instead, they are losing jobs. And, it seems that people who are hired (or stay) have to work crazy hours! And the third kicker is that even if he *is* hired, then even he won't be paid more than $30,000 (versus hundreds of thousands in the dot com boom) to start, most likely than not. All this, while doing more work than a programmer previously probably ever had to.
With programming losing its dignity, and the 1% female rate in classes, I'm going NUTS. The hardest part about switching majors is that the other major I've been considering for the past two days is not offered at my school.
I am thinking I could use my love for programming in personal projects while working many weird jobs in the mean time.
That's why I believe the best plan for me will be to resign from ############## and attend the other college.
I guess CS was worth it back when pay and hiring was at a high, but exploring other interests now that the light has shown itself seems like the best idea for me. It used to be that the Visual Arts major I'm thinking about was the interest and CS was a sure thing to fall back on, while now it could sadly be true to think the opposite!!
Let me be the first to say this: CS majors should be ready to fall back on some similar venture or another venture that they would enjoy doing, in case CS doesn't work out!
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Hey buddy. I feel your pain. I REALLY do! However, let me provide a little bit of perspective for you. I graduated college way back in 1993. If you don't remember 1993 very well, that was the year we were coming out of the Bush Senior recession of the early nineties. The situation wasn't that much different then than it is now.
Like you, I was graduating with a tech degree which I thought would be my ticket to riches and glory. Unfortunately, not a lot of companies were hiring entry level people, and the ones that were offered salaries that were in the $20K-$30K range. Hardly what you'd call a booming job market.
Here's the thing though. I love CS and I love technology. Even though I had a fallback (I took a couple of the actuarial certification exams in college), I knew that I would enjoy working in the software field more than any other (legal) occupation. I kept pounding the pavement and through a combination of hard work and luck, I was able to land a job doing software development for $30K. Sure it sounds low by dot-com standards, but the dot-com salaries are the exception, not the rule.
Fast forward to the late when everybody and their mother was looking for software developers.... I was in a great position to take advantage of the boom. I had several years experience, a proven track record, and a passion for what I was doing.
In summary, all I can say is this: if the reason you went into CS was to get a six-figure salary as a "web developer" without any effort, then you shouldn't have majored in CS in the first place. If you do enjoy CS, then do some work and look for a job, take that "low" $30K job like the rest of us had to, and when the next boom hits (and there WILL be another boom), you'll be sitting pretty.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
I am just curious.
How much do CS programmers get paid now?
how much did they really get paid back in the 90's?
Sigs are dangerous coy things
My cousin graduated from ### in 2002 for Computer Science. Well, he installs Cat 5 now for a living.
Well, that's what he gets for going to ####. I know a guy that went to $$$$$ and he's making a bundle.
That's why I believe the best plan for me will be to resign from ############## and attend the other college.
Where do you go to school? Richard Nixon University? I mean, ############# is the ######### with all ### ###########?
This one.
It's simple supply and demand. You Americans swear by the capitalist system, but when the simple fact of an over-supply of 'engineers' causes the market to collapse, you insist the problem is elsewhere.
Too many schools, too many graduates, not enough to do.
No other reason.
And you ruined the field for people like me who can't stand morons.
I am currently in the middle of my senior year at Polytechnic University.
The name should have given it away immediately. In Britain at least, the term "polytechnic" is synonymous with poor-quality education - so much so that a few years ago they all renamed themselves to try to blend in with the real universities and colleges. Still, everyone knows which are the ex-polys and the stigma remains. If you want a good education, go to a place with a bit of history, 100 years or more, because you can trust that it knows how to maintain its quality.
There was recently a slashdot article about Distributed Proofreaders in support of Project Gutenburg. Volunteers proofread one page at a time from public domain books which have been scanned and OCRed.
The nice thing about these two is that you can spend as much or as little time as you would like. Have an hour a month? Thats fine. Want to spend 16 hours a day? You can. If you want to do less later or you just want to try it out, that is no problem.
I had similar problems at ITT Tech. When I started, I was told that we would have three courses (I took Electronics Engineering at the Nashville, TN campus). Theory, required course (math, sociology, etc.) for credits, and Lab. And it was that way for the first quarter or two. And during those first two quarters, I was passing all my classes easy as pie. Then they switched. Lab, required course, and Theory. BIG problem for two reasons.
1) Lab was two (or more) chapters AHEAD of Theory
2) Lab was before theory
At the end of the first year I basically flunked out because of this, even though the first half of the year I was passing with a 3.4 GPA. I wasn't the only one whose grades suffered, either.
As for resolving it, I didn't. I just don't have anything to do with them anymore.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I attended Hofstra University on Long Island, NY as an undergraduate (Computer Science and Math). I was told all about how their program was one of the "top in the country", which, though I did not fully believe, trusted was at least "up there". By my second year, the school dropped down a tier (I think tier 2 --> 3 or 3 --> 4). The CS department was full of part time adjunt faculty that were terrible teachers. The equipment would have been new in 1975, and there were no real resources.
I decided to go onto graduate school at Cornell (Comp Sci), and the differences were absolutely amazing. I learned more in the year at Cornell than I did in the 3 1/2 at Hofstra.
I would recommend to anyone who can get into a top CS school to go there-- scholarships, etc to lesser (crap) schools do not help you at all. If I could go back, I wouldn't have gone to Hofstra, it was a waste of 3 1/2 years, and I'm far behind where I would have been if I had gone straight to a better school.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Class of '91 here, also attended the now-closed Farmingdale campus. Professors (well, not all of 'em) who hate having students, WWII-era lab equipment, "library" the size of my living room, dorms made from Civil Defense shelter plans. Then again, parking was always plentiful, and climbing the Poly Ball (the vacuum chamber for the defunct hypersonic wind tunnel) was always fun. I was in the CS program - one of IIRC less than a dozen students in my year in the program. (The school is, or was, very heavily focused on EE.) Tuition started at $9500 a year when I started in '87, and was $14K by '91, and has climbed steadily from there.
I'll say this, though - love it or hate it, I don't know anyone who managed to graduate (of course, many people don't) who doesn't have a good job now. IMO Poly is kind of a "crucible" that culls the chaff pretty quickly.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Don't believe all the people you always see on here complaining that CS people don't make much nowadays. That's not true. A quick look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/home.htm) will tell you otherwise. According to the 2001 employment estimates, the mean annual wage for a computer programmer was about $62k. The mean for a software engineer was about $74k. This is, of course, relative to your abilities. Some people right out of college are worth that $70k a year; some people with 5 years experience aren't worth a dime.
... was to branch out and add some meat to my degree by taking other classes. In my particular case, I graduated with a dual major in Pure Mathematics and CS, with a minor in English Lit. I took more coursework than I would have otherwise, but I think my degree is more impressive to potential employers than it would be otherwise. I'm a programmer, but the English minor demonstrates that I have some skill with words as well, which is valuable. Of course, in our innumerate society, the math degree convinces a large number of people that I must be some kinda genius math whiz. Silly, but their lack of understanding works to my benefit.
For me, however, it's been equally important that I can speak to people. Those skills are really, really important. I'm not naturally gregarious, and I don't have a silver tongue, but I spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Mexico doing nothing but talking to people all day, every day -- all kinds of people, from every walk of life. The result of that investment (made for completely unrelated reasons) was that I largely overcame my bookish nature. I also became fluent in a foreign language, which hasn't ever been a clear differentiator that I can see, but has to have been an advantage.
In addition, I also spent 8 years in the US Air Force Reserves being, of all things, a cop/security guard. That experience has proven surprisingly valuable and, when combined with the interest in cryptology I developed while completing my math degree, has made it very easy for me to move into the particular sub-field of computer security that I currently inhabit. The leadership opportunities I had as an Air Force NCO taught me a great deal about working with people in a superior/subordinate role (though I think I'm still not great at it). Even my year working part-time as a convenience store clerk has proven to be very valuable in my software career.
In summary: Most geeks in training are pretty bright people, who are capable of doing a lot of things. Broaden your background, add some "softer" stuff, do something that requires extensive human interaction (and not just with other geeks!) and you'll have more to offer a potential employer. For example, my current boss values my programming skills and my expertise in cryptology and secure system design, but he also appreciates (even more, actually), the fact that he can send me in to deliver a technical marketing pitch to senior execs of a multi-national corp, or to talk to a group of line workers in a factory to understand their jobs and how IT systems could facilitate them, or to lead a team of software developers, testers, technical writers and subject-matter experts in defining, building and deploying a solution.
My company (IBM) just went through a couple of rounds of major layoffs but I wasn't ever really concerned. Why? Because I'm *flexible*, and that makes me more valuable than many geeks. That's not to say that I couldn't end up on the street also, but (a) my expertise is sufficiently broad-ranging that I can fit into a lot of technical niches and (b) there are a few other things that I can do, even though they'd pay quite a bit less.
Anyway, breadth of experience, and not just technical experience, has worked very well for me, and I see plenty of reason why it would work equally well for others.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If you know of an industry thats recession-proof, please clue the rest of us in. Yeah, IT is in a downturn right now, but I don't think we're getting a lot of sympathy from the automotive plant workers or the steel mill workers. Every industry has its ups and downs. The only difference in IT is that the skills and knowledge that employers want keeps changing, and it's up to the individutal to keep reinventing themselves.
As for my educational experience... I attended DeVry back in mid 80's. Stuck with it even though they were teaching us Cobol and mainframes, and any idiot could see that those were a pair of dinosaurs headed for extinction. Nevermind, I learned logic and programming and some self-dicipline, and now I can pick up a book and teach myself this stuff. I think Churchill said it "I enjoy learning, I detest being taught.".
One final clue... if the male/female ratio is *that* important to you, maybe you're in the wrong industry. Check out one of those "Learn Bartending in four weeks!" schools they have on late night TV. You can meet lots of chicks that way.
Assuming that the posting wasn't intended as flamebait, in the U. S. the term "polytechnic" is NOT "synonymous with poor-quality education." It is mostly just an indication that the school DOES have a long history.
For example, WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) and RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) are both fine schools.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
thats because most of them live in areas where costs of living are extremely high, where 50k/yr is nothing due to high costs...
eg: Movie ticket in Silicon Valley $10.00 With a date, popcorn, etc: you would spend at least $60.00
Rent for a 1 brdrm, 1 bath: $1100.00/month
parking in downtown LA: 13.00-26.00/day
electic bill for 1 person living in a 1 brdrm: $200.00/month
Cable bill (with cablemodem): $120.00 / month
it all adds up quickly....
[insurance, etc,.....]
someone getting 50-60k in the coasts is like someone with 20k in the midwest...
The tech glory years are over. If you are
a female and want to meet a nice male guest worker from India that works 70 hours a week, then stick
with computers. Otherwise, go into immigration
law where you can shake them down for $10k a pop.
Hey dude, it's Nick, how's it hanging? It feels like a reunion around here.
Why is it that I always end up in a crowd of few girls? When I was younger I was the only girl in the comic book shop, then the only girl in the computer room, then one of a few girls in a college, and now? Please tell me there are some other girls beside me here?
Scandal
Hmm, I think the one they gave me was the "Promise" scholarship...
I suddenly have the feeling they had their fingers crossed behind their back.
To be fair, the guy who used to be the Dean of the Farmingdale Campus is nice, and he tried, and also got shafted.
Scandal
*laughs*
*laughs harder*
Yeah, lets go there, why not?
See, in their infinite wisdom, it was decided that both campuses, brooklyn and li would have the same math final.... There was one small catch, in this particular case, we (my class) got a new math teacher. He didn't know anything as far as we could tell. He spent almost an entire session trying to figure out how to connect two dots on a graph... With a ruler even... This because he wanted to solve a problem graphically. You could do it just by looking...
(I can still remember shouting in student services next door what the answer to the problem was. I think the answer was 2. I wonder if the people who didn't leave the classroom heard me shouting about how they needed to fire this guy. I hope he did.)
Now imagine an entire classroom's frustration as the teacher does this repeatedly when they have to cover about 4 chapters in a week.
This is why, after a small while, students began to cut the class in order to study for the final. As far as I can tell, it proved effective. Many who stayed, failed.
Scandal
just transfer, thats what I did. I just had enough of professors looking to fail you, pipes that leaked shit(and I do mean shit), and the "we're getting screwed" attitude of everyone from the students to the administration. I go to SUNY Stony Brook now, and they have actual resources(my workstation of choice in the computer lab is a SunBlade 1000) and tuition is only $4k a year. Its no less respected by industry and all that stuff about having a 2.0GPA from poly is better then a 3.5 from most schools is bullshit. A 3.5 is a 3.5. And no it isn't perfect but the administration is able to run a campus of 17,000 undergrads, massive research programs, and an actual campus bigger then my backyard, a hell of a lot better then Poly runs their university.
Like anything, it depends on where you live and how good you are.
I recently was laid off (due to buy out)from an ISP in Nebraska. I started at $7.50 an hr as a hell desk jockey. When I left I was the lead tech/sys admin, and was making more on salary than the owner was. About 36k year.
I just started at a new ISP (same town). $7.50 an hour. Part-time. In 2 years I'll probably be right back where I was, maybe a little sooner.
36k though, in Lincoln, is *good* money. In Omaha, it's chump change. Omaha is only 60 miles away.
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."
At some point, maybe between my sophomore and junior years, my university switched from quarters to semesters. Many pairs of classes were combined into a single new class... and needless to say the university required you to retake the new semester-long class if you only had one of the prereqs.
Toss in the normal shuffling over 4 years, etc., and I think everyone in know had to hustle to complete graduation requirements. I know I ended up filling the paperwork for an associates degree for under one of the early catalogues, then using that degree as a "pre-existing AS degree" to waive all of the lower-division requirements for my BS. Toss in the fact that I could never decide between a math or physics degree and I ended up with three diplomas (one AS, two BS) in less than a year.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I don't have the great base of experience you have had, but I share with you the same trait of not being naturally gregarious.
I also make an effort to speak to lots of people, and have always made an effort to spend some of my schooling improving communications skills. That has served me very well at every place I've worked at.
If you are adept at technology you can always pick up new skills quickly, but being able to communicate well provides the best base to grow from in any company (or in your own).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I also graduated around 1993. I had a full time job doing a little programming in Texas, but I knew I wanted to move back to Colorado - so I just moved back into my parents house and started looking for work. After a hundred or so resumes and two months later, I had found a job... on a QA team. From there I was happily able to convince them of my programming avbilites and move to development before too long.
My starting salary? About $22k. That was a year after school with some real experience elsewhere.
That said, I still think times are a little tougher now for CS grads. Because of all the hiring freezes and out of work computer people, I'm not sure how entry level people find jobs at all right now. It doesn't seem like there was so much a similar flood of youngish developers floating around in 1993 to scarf up jobs like there is now.
Even so, I pretty much agree that the best path for a student now is to stick with CS, then get a job in a company doing anything close to programming - like QA or support. From there once there is a shortage again (which there will be) you can be in good shape to move your programming career forward. Don't give up on CS as a degree as it will serve you well if that is what you want to do as a living, and will help you to move more quickly out of a QA/support position.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have noticed at colleges across the country students consume alcohol, listen to loud music, and try to be entertained when they aren't being stressed trying to become engineers and what not. For a school to try and stop all of that as well as changing schedules to keep people at a miserable campus make no sense. To not allow seniors who went on co-op for a semester to not walk with their class during graduation is irresponsible. To tell me that I don't even need a computer if I come to RPI and then the next year make a mandatory laptop policy baffles my mind.
Did I mention classes? TAs that don't speak english, required classes in my major that are locked out every semester. No actual real professors for my CS classes (just grad or visiting profs.) No "real" CS building (in a tech school, largest major outside of general engineering). Oh yeah.. and about selling out, RPI is the biggest money grubbing girl lacking sell out school there ever was.
But I am writing this from my job that my CS degree did land (I graduated in May) so what the hell do I know.