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Massachusetts AG Sues ITT Tech For Exploiting Computer Network Students (networkworld.com)
alphadogg quotes a report from Networkworld: Browsing through the latest news releases from ITT Technical Institute you'd never think the for-profit school would be capable of the things that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says the state is suing it for. The school, which boasts of over 130 locations in 38 states, touts its efforts for women in STEM, its donation of laptops to public schools in Indiana and its record giving for United Way. But AG Healey is suing ITT Tech "for engaging in unfair and harassing sales tactics and misleading students about the quality of its Computer Network Systems program, and the success of the program's graduates in finding jobs." ITT Educational Services, however, rejected the AG office's claims and lashed out at the office for the manner in which it has brought the suit. ITT's statement reads in part: "The litigation follows the Office's wide-ranging fishing expedition that lasted for more than three years..." If the state wins, the school could be forced to reimburse students for tuition and fees, though ITT says it will defend itself against the charges.
Should've gone to DeVry.
In 2002, I had an ITT rep tell me they were fully accredited.
Was this one of the outfits that used to advertise in Marvel Comics? I remember C.I.E. (Cleveland Institute of Electronics) was one that advertised a curriculum based on self study materials, but I'm not sure about ITT.
OTOH Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, famously got his start with a learn-at-home course in drawing cartoons.
I distinctly remember setting up Internet access for someone with an ITT diploma on their wall - and having to explain to them how to refresh their IP address. I think the AG may be on to something.
Fuck ITT Tech right in the ears. They lie, they get you whatever you need to go to their shitty school, and lie some more.
Fucking outdated equipment, outdated books, outdated everything.
Fuck ITT and all other for-profit schools.
It seems half the government needs to be held accountable for taking advantage of students
How are they getting a pass?
I imagine that the case will hinge on how much the AG is able to prove that ITT(or, just because this is how scam selling always goes, its marketing flacks verbally but not in writing) lied about the quality of their program, job prospects of graduates, and so on.
Mere shoddiness they can probably get away with, schools don't have any general duty to not suck; but if it can be demonstrated that they were falsely advertising the goods they were pushing, nail 'em to the wall.
the for-profit school
Who else wasn't ready for that startling and horrific revelation?
The 2002-2004 class materials were a joke.
Textbooks for some classes were sourced from India and had dozens of obvious errors.
The C++ class was okay, but could have been much better.
Overall, I would give these quality scores:
Operating Systems - F
Mathematics - C
C++ - B (Asian professor, accent was a distraction - "mammary leaks" discussed in-depth)
Linux - C (didn't cover configuration as much as it should have)
Group dynamics - B
Other core classes - B
It was definitely not worth the $30k I paid, although being "Validictorian with a 4.0" may have opened a door or two.
They wanted me back for a BS, but not with that quality and cost. 90% of the technical knowledge I have is self-taught.
If anyone wants to research that travesty of an Operating Systems book, it's NIIT product code IT103-OpSys-SG-01.
It does not have an ISBN number, but I did retain a copy.
"listen, if students cant tell the difference between an accredited higher education institution offering meaningful and relevant education in computer technology in the 21st century from a ponzi scheme im not sure what we're trying to do. Its very plainly obvious that ITT, the corporation, is an exemplary behavior modification experiment and economic simulation as is clearly stipulated in our .06 font disclaimer on the toilet tissue contracts we distribute. how, i ask you, how would any pioneering facility other than ITT have made as much headway into determining the proper amount of disciplined disregard and callous hatred for the betterment of mankind required to summon satan himself?"
--ITT headmaster/man gnawing on unidentifiable femur.
Good people go to bed earlier.
ITT Tech has been doing that for DECADES. They always lie through their teeth about placement rates. Cripes back in the 90's they claimed 95% of ITT tech students work in the field!
Note: running a cash register meets their definition of being in the field for EE and CS.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It really is no surprise at all. Happens to traditional universities all over the planet as well: As soon as they think they can get rich on tuition or money from the state, they try to enroll as many students as possible and then waste their time with education quality going down the drains. An excellent example for a field where capitalism does a lot more harm than good.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They should have gone to Trump university.
So much more classy.
All the diploma feature a gold rim, and a facsimile signature of the Donald himself.
Think about how much this is going to be worth on eBay in a couple of years!
Would be a good starting point for a gone berserk educational system!
Bummer. I slacked off in high school and didn't go to college. ITT's "network engineer" certification took me through Novell's CNE classes and exposed me to technology I wouldn't otherwise have access to. It got me in the corporate door at a time when distributed systems were just taking off. Really wish I'd gone to college, though. Could have been at Google instead. Now I'm just another reasonably compensated generalist avoiding the move to management.
My ex-wife wasted a huge amount of money getting a student loan for ITT Tech, after they convinced her she could graduate with an electrical engineering degree there and get a great job.
None of the credits earned there transferred to other colleges or universities, for starters. The courses she took were mostly a joke. I learned the same basic electronics skills in my high school electronics classes. (Here's how you read the color bands on a resistor. Here's the basic definition of voltage vs. amperage. That sort of thing....)
At one point, because she was pregnant, she took a semester off. When she tried to return, they announced one of the courses she needed as a requirement to graduate was no longer available and they wanted her to take a different track, taking several more classes to get to the same place.
At that point, she bailed out on the whole thing, and then they put her in collections almost immediately, despite her making repeated contact with them trying to work out some sort of payment arrangement for what she still owed.
Schools like this tend to focus on the how, not the why. Focusing on how in technology puts you into a niche market with a short lifespan on your skills. To say you understand networking because you followed directions in a Cisco IOS manual doesn't really matter. To say you wrote the manual without guidance does say something. It means you understand the material thoroughly, have the ability to create a structured plan, and communicate with others. That way when the next IOS release comes out or you end up in an Alcatel shop, your skills aren't worthless.
I've been n I.T. for 30+ years...as a programmer/systems systems analyst/database ..etc etc etc. I've been in the position before where I had to hire and fire people too. One thing I can say about I.T.T. grads that I've dealt with ---- they didn't know squat!! There was one that was already working where I was and I had to fire the guy because he was unable to do the job. Everyone one of the grads I interviewed (over a dozen) was horrible. It finally got to the point where if I see ITT on their resume - I didn't even bother to read the rest of it - just tossed it in the trash.
You're OK with a shoddy education so long as they don't make claims that are veritably false? I'm not calling you out, but I think it's worth taking a moment to let that sink in... IMHO we've let sketchy businesses get away with this kind of crap too long. Yeah, you and me know better. But there are _lots_ of desperate and vulnerable kids without the kind of critical thinking skills needed to realize ITT is a scam. Imagine if you went to a crappier school and maybe had an alcoholic parent or two. Or if you live in Flint and just got a healthy dose of lead in your drinking water... Suckers aren't just born, their made... :(
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Yep, I taught as an adjunct instructor at ITT for three years from 2001 to 2004 teaching Linux.
It had some good points and bad points. Some of their classes were quite good, others were mediocre. The dean was great and supportive. The equipment was good, the building was nice, and the hours were reasonable. The biggest problem was that there were WAY too many students there who had no business being in college [of any kind]. They had no technical aptitude and it was obvious they were there solely because they had government loans or GI bill and thought "tech" was a road to land a money job.
I kept my sanity by focusing on the few people in each class (of typically around 20+) that DID have aptitude. There were people there for whom ITT did great things (and usually the only ones with A's or B's in my classes).... but the majority were clueless and ITT fought hard to keep those people from failing. I was not afraid to give poor grades for poor work, but the administration would occasionally interfere on behalf of a student, saying they should have more time or another chance, etc.
What finally caused me to leave was that I wrote the entire curriculum- syllabus, handouts, assignments, classwork, quizzes, and exams for two entire courses and taught how I felt it should be taught- making Linux interesting and exciting while still imparting practical skills. Then, after years of people saying my class was the best they had ever taken at ITT, the mandate from Corporate came down that everyone would have to teach strictly their "professionally designed" curriculum- using outdated books, really outdated distros, very boring assignments, confusing exams, and complete with mandatory PowerPoint slides we are supposed to use in class. I told them "Sorry, you hired someone with many years of Unix/Linux experience to create and teach classes. You can hire anyone off the street if you just want them to teach this poor quality coursework." And left before the changes took place.
It was an interesting experience that I don't regret and I do hope helped some people in the process. It gave me a great appreciation for teachers- something I certainly could never do full-time.
You obviously didn't go there, or you'd know that it's should of.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I wince when some eager future programmer asks me about one of these strip mall schools. I have met many an excellent programmer who got their start in one. This would be more a situation where the person was very smart, got a piece of paper, got a job with that paper, and began accumulating experience. I don't give the schools any credit much beyond the piece of paper fooling some HR person into giving the person a chance.
I would say that the average person who goes to one of these will primarily learn the hard lesson that there are predators out there who will rob them blind. For those who succeed after these places, in most cases a community collage should have been available to offer them a handful of courses that are often (on paper) better offered at these scam factories.
I went to a technical college in Canada in 2000. The school really harped on how they train for real world and work with industry to ensure they teach the skills they want.
At the time, I thought that was a bit of a stretch, but only the last decade, I've been told time after time that I'm MUCH more skilled and useful than a 4 year graduate. I was shown more practical skills, the degrees got more theory.
I'm currently contracting on a project where American Masters students in Electrical engineering are making a complicated integrated circuit, and none of them have been shown basic soldering. 5 fucking years in school.
How about how school counselors care more about making sure classes get filled up than making sure you're on a career path that makes any sense whatsoever for anyone at all, let alone you?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is it someone who learns directly from a network by imbibing WiFi signals or something? Is this about that Linux kid IBM was always talking about in their ads?
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If memory serves, this is one of the places that advertised heavily about what a great industry to get into IT was during and after the dotcom boom busted. That really told me all I needed to know about them.
The reason why they can't find jobs is because of damn selfish companies like Disney, Citizens Bank, Wells Fargo, Epicor, etc. sending great paying IT jobs overseas. The reason why they do this isn't because of a lack of talent, in fact local talent is far superior. The reason when IT is outsourced the bastards can amortize payroll over 7 years to entice shareholders and future shareholders. That's the only benefit.. the truth is outsourcing IT overseas is a huge risk to a business. Companies that outsource great paying IT jobs overseas are just helping the economy to fail.
I realize the electronics classes I took in high school weren't available everywhere. I was impressed that my public high school offered those AND a "power tech" class where you had a real auto garage space where you could work on cars. It was a pretty typical high school for the area in every other respect.
My point was more that you shouldn't be paying ITT Tech course prices to have some instructor teaching you the most basic concepts of electricity and what basic components are called/look like. If you really have any interest in electronics, that's all stuff you can learn at no charge by taking out a few books at the local library or looking it up online and doing a little bit of reading.
To counter your advertising, here is the link -- http://www.ibtimes.com/profit-... -- talking about ITT Tech issues.
ITT Tech and DeVry have never been good places to get a solid education. Now that that's pretty well known by most people, they're enrolling the people who don't know or are so desperate that they'll try anything to get a better job. It's no surprise that these schools would try to take advantage of a vulnerable population. I'm not saying universities get free passes on this either, because I've seen lots of students who graduate with a $150K BA in Art History and wonder why they can't get a job. But the for-profit schools just milk unsophisticated people for their student loan money and leave them with nothing.
I consider myself extremely lucky to have started in IT around the mid-90s, when you could still get solid entry-level work. I also am very lucky to have graduated around a time where just getting through a 4-year degree, let alone getting a STEM degree, was an automatic guarantee of at least some kind of middle-class employment. The root problem is that neither of these are true anymore. Offshoring and outsourcing have killed lots of entry-level help desk or support tech jobs, where people get the experience they need to move on to the next level in IT. In development, junior developer jobs have also gone away, so it's not easy for a n00b to get assigned simpler tasks on software projects.
I really think the long-term answer to this is to bring back entry-level employment and set up some sort of apprenticeship system to guarantee the quality of skilled work in IT and development. Offshoring everything pulls the ladder up so people just starting out can't get that first job that they build into a successful career progression.