ITT Tech Is Officially Closing (gizmodo.com)

Reader Joe_Dragon shares a Gizmodo report: ITT Technical Institute is officially closing all of its campuses following federal sanctions imposed against the company. The for-profit college announced the changes in a statement: "It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service. With what we believe is a complete disregard by the U.S. Department of Education for due process to the company, hundreds of thousands of current students and alumni and more than 8,000 employees will be negatively affected."
ITT Tech announced it was closing all of its campuses just one week after it stopped enrolling students following a federal crackdown on for-profit colleges. ITT Tech and other higher education companies like it have been widely criticized for accepting billions of dollars in government grants and loans while failing to provide adequate job training for its students. Last year, ITT Tech received an estimated $580 million in federal money (aka taxpayer dollars), according to the Department of Education.

Comments

Universities aren't completely honest either

[Anonymous Coward]

So when are the FEDs going to shut down the big Universities? $180,000 of student loans and NO JOB prospects ... They aren't being honest either.

Re:Universities aren't completely honest either

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to ITT and now I write for Gizmodo. I applied to slashdot but I didn't have the errors per article count needed to be an editor

Re:Universities aren't completely honest either

[Austerity Empowers]

But a degree in Liberal Arts won't get me me a high paying job???????

You laugh, but even down here in the republic of Texas kids are being fed a boatload of lies, usually in the name of classroom economy. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "the nation's largest tech companies are demanding these skills" (group work, collaboration, well-rounded, etc.) I could retire and start my own school. What I hear when they say this is "we need to reduce teacher workload to shave some dollars off the budget", because all the things they say they won't do in class I find myself doing for my kids at home because 4 kids who don't know the alphabet can't teach each other the alphabet. I have no doubt the CEOs are saying these things, but I question their motives and perspective.

Normally they talk to fortune 500 CEOs, of which by definition, there are 500 in the world and they make hiring decisions only for the most senior executives. Those that they even see represent the very cream of the crop in terms of demonstrated results and pedigree which eliminates the vast majority of the world's population. You would be better off following your dream to pursue professional sports rather than pursue such positions, there are more employed pro-athletes. They are NOT talking to hiring managers and rank and file employees who actually make the hiring decisions for the majority of employees which is far more useful information for the vast majority of students. Unfortunately what they find might be expensive.

The net result is we have kids who have been force-fed bad information and have then made bad choices in their education based on that bad information. Be a collaborator, be a team player, be a leader, just pursue your dream, get a degree in anything etc. All horrible advice. Archaeology maybe your dream and you may passionately love it, definitely pursue it, but have a very viable backup plan of something that will net you a job with high probability and that you can live with. Very likely that is the job you will be doing while you wait for the archaeology position to open, possibly indefinitely. Also don't mention to prospective recruiters that your first love is archaeology but plumbing is a second choice: the odds that they will resonate with your dream are low, but the odds you get marked as "overqualified" (code for: will probably leave us for another job before we're ready) are very high.

Re:Universities aren't completely honest either

[Austerity Empowers]

They need to be stopped.

Nope, but requiring a degree or considering it on a job application needs to be stopped, I've worked in places where we won't even hire people who don't come from a short list of 8 colleges. There's a reason things like the bar association and the medical board exist: anyone's daddy can buy a degree, but not everyone can pass tests of competence.

The only barrier to employment should be certifications of competence in a field, either ad hoc (interview) or standardized (ex. the bar). You can go to all the Ivy League schools you want and get a large alphabet of degrees, but if you can't get certified you can't get employed. Unfortunately because of the need to justify H-1B's and outsourcing, employers are reluctant to embrace this model. If you could show that a large body of qualified applications do exist and are unemployed, it casts a big shadow on your statements that there aren't enough bodies to fill reqs. Even in careers like IT where there are some certifications, it seems to be a moving target of expensive and narrowly defined skills that you have to continuously chase. It's possible that industry professionals and the government are going to need to team up and create laws.

Re:Universities aren't completely honest either

[Anonymous Coward]

that cannot find enough trained machinists to keep up with production

That's because the entry level job is now open for Journeyman with 5+ years of experience, working $8/hr. Maybe if they did what they used to and hire dozens out of highschool for minimum wage, laid off the stoners and kept the ones who learned they'd have trained machinists again like companies did for centuries, but there's no instant gratification in that plan.

Instead they just hope someone else trains their employees for them, and whine like entitled brats when it turns out nobody's interested in doing that.

Re:Universities aren't completely honest either

[Copid]

I think the problem with government money for college is that we went demand side rather than supply side. States have a good history of building public universities that provided a great education at a great price and admitting students who could actually benefit from that education. Eventually, we shifted tons of money into providing loans and grants, which ultimately just arms both sides in a bidding war over the same set of seats for already existing universities. In general, when that happens, the price goes up and more suppliers enter the market to satisfy the demand. The problem here is that it's a lot easier to build a shitty fake university to soak up easy tuition dollars than it is to build a real university that actually educates people and has standards.

Worse, as more and more people are selected for seats in real schools, the remaining people with piles of federal cash burning holes in their pockets are, on average, worse and worse students. So building a good quality school with high standards isn't even necessarily the right thing to do even if your heart is in the right place and you're willing invest the money doing so. Ultimately, you just end up with a bunch of fly by night operations that specialize in separating vulnerable students from their loan money.

Don't Worry...

[Rob Riggs]

Don't worry. The same people will have already started a new company, under a new name, which does exactly the same thing as the old company. Bonus points if they also have ITT Educational Services, Inc. sell all the trademarks for "ITT Technical Institutes" to the new company.

Good

[geek]

I had a friend that worked at the office of one of these campuses. She told me that 99% of the time they didn't even have a teacher for the class until the day before it started, let alone lesson plans or anything else. She quit after the second FBI raid and never looked back.

Went to ITT

[Anonymous Coward]

Having gone to ITT Tech AND then having gone to get my BSEE from an accredited university I can say without doubt those schools are designed to let you pass with a minimum amount of effort. HOWEVER, you CAN get a tremendous amount of knowledge IF you step up to do the extra work, which is what I did. That being said if you are willing to step up and be that self motivated to do that much work then it's no harder to go to a normal uni and getting a real degree.. which I did 2 years after going to ITT tech.. it was an expensive waste of time and energy that would have been better put to something else.... like a real degree. I did find the first few years of EE classes pretty easy due to what I had previously learned... but the path I took mistakenly took is not one I would recommend for others.. It REALLY wasn't worth it in time or money.

good riddance.

Re:Went to ITT

[Acron]

I guess it's gotten a lot worse from 20+ years ago. My ITT two year degree from 23 years ago is accredited, and employers at the time were very happy with graduates from the particular ITT I attended. At the time, they had a 100% placement rate for everyone who graduated and did not go on to further education (and that was my whole reason for going, as my 4 year engineering degree from a top 10 school got me and 70% of the graduating class na-da : and the rest broke down as 20% going on to grad school and 10% being the chem engineers getting hired to go work in Saudi Arabia). But that quality came from the local ITT staff, not the corporate level. I heard even back then that the quality of your education depended on which location you went to. And it was definitely a heck of a lot easier than my 4 year degree, but also one heck of a lot more practical (which makes sense given it was a degree for a technician working on circuit boards, etc, not an engineer designing parts or systems).

so sad :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a student there. That was the best 7 years of my life -- good friends, better drugs, best sex. I'd drink a red bull and viagra on Friday afternoon and fuck 10-15 dudes before Monday came around. I'm working as a fullstack junior web engineer at a SF startup so there's just as much, if not more, sex, but I miss the drugs and friends. Skipping work because I'm hungover isn't quite the same as skipping class because I'm hungover.

I plan on doing my own startup in a couple months, once I get a cofounder, raise a series A and find an idea. I wouldn't be here without ITT so this is a little sad for me :(

False equivilency

[sjbe]

So when are the FEDs going to shut down the big Universities? $180,000 of student loans and NO JOB prospects ... They aren't being honest either.

You do realize that you don't have to go to an expensive private university, right? Anyway if I go get a Harvard degree it will cost me a lot of money but I will in all likelihood have gotten an actual education along the way. You can argue that it isn't a good deal financially but you do get something at the end of the day. If you can't turn a Harvard degree into some sort of job you're doing it wrong. Comparing Harvard to or even a state university to ITT Tech is ridiculous.

Companies like ITT (I don't really think of them as schools) basically provide a near worthless degree which nobody respects and doesn't open doors. They do so knowing that a large percentage of their customers (students) will fail out. They exist to load credulous low income people with debt while failing to provide them a real education. They prey on people who probably really aren't the sort of people who are college material in the first place. College is great but it isn't the right path for everyone. Trade schools would serve many of them much better and there is a clear need for skilled trades.

Re:False equivilency

[zrobotics]

While you can't outsource blue collar work, look at the way many of the trades have changed in the last quarter century. While plumbing, electrical, and HVAC are still great money-makers, many other trades are nowhere near as good as they once were. Craftsmanship isn't valued, customers don't know or care how shoddily their mcmansions are built. Additionally, it's hard to find Americans (of any race) who are willing and able to do the work. Anyone with a work ethic and half a brain has been convinced they need college and an office job. Technology has also eliminated many blue collar jobs, mainly in manufacturing. This is happening worldwide; a machinist friend is one of only two machinists employed at his plant. 15 years ago this company employed 14 machinists and machine operators, and the business has grown since then. While the trades are safer than programming jobs, they aren't immune or safe by any measure.

Re:State colleges give garbage degrees

[ScentCone]

I'm sorry but state colleges give garbage degrees. My brother just graduated from the University of Maine degree with a liberal arts degree and is sweeping floors at a gas station.

No, your brother chose a garbage major, and chose to spend a lot of money on an education that doesn't align with a career doing anything but sweeping floors at that gas station. It's not the state college's responsibility to make your brother face reality and study something that's actually challenging. If he wants to take on debt so he can spend four years on poetry or Russian literature or on women's studies, that's his business, and HIS debt. Quit whining - yourself, and on his behalf. You're as bad as he is, if you're blaming anyone other than him for his absurd choices.

Trades

[sjbe]

Part of the problem is that there's a push to put as many high school students into college (even 2-year college) as possible, even those who would be better served going to vocational schools.

I could not agree more. I have a staff full of people who are definitely not college material but would be (and are) served well by a vocational education. There is always a need for skilled trades, welders, machinists, etc. Trying to turn everyone into a computer programmers regardless of aptitude is just idiotic and counterproductive. Not to mention costly.

Protip: You can't outsource blue collar work.

Care to wager on that? Ask the folks who work the assembly lines in Detroit if blue collar work cannot be outsourced. There are plenty of blue collar jobs that are very vulnerable to outsourcing when you live in a place with high labor costs like the US.

Re:Loans

[ShanghaiBill]

What we really need in this country are 4-year community colleges that are really focused on delivering value.

What we really need are good 2-year vocational schools + apprenticeships that teach young people actually useful skills, like plumbing, mechanic, welding, electrician, etc.

My company recently advertised a marketing position, and we got over 300 applications.

I recently tried to find a plumber for a kitchen remodel, and it took me over 3 weeks to find someone who wasn't fully booked for the next month, and he was only able to squeeze my job in by working on Sundays while my daughter watched his kids. I paid him $80/hr, and he paid my daughter $5/hr for babysitting, so he netted $75.

too dificult to hire people for ( 1year) internsh

[Joe_Dragon]

So you want free labor?

Germany has a good apprenticeship system

[Joe_Dragon]

Germany has a good apprenticeship system that mixes real paid work with a trade school like classroom. That is what is needed in the USA and not years of pure class room at an high cost.

Re:What liberal arts actually means

[rjh]

Liberal arts is rooted in theoretical nonsense...

I hold a B.A. in computer science from a fairly good private college. One of my best friends graduated with a triple-major B.A. in physics, mathematics, and computer science, from the same institution. Other close friends from undergrad received B.A. degrees in chemistry, biology, geology, environmental science, and botany.

In fact, my undergrad alma mater doesn't offer the B.Sc. degree at all.

In 20 years in the software industry, not once has anyone ever asked whether I hold a B.A. or a B.Sc. It's a total nonissue. Some institutions offer the B.A., some offer the B.Sc., some offer both but differentiate them on how many differential calculus classes you've taken.