How ITT Tech Screwed Students and Made Millions (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader shares "a grim story about a company that screwed poor people, military veterans, and taxpayers to turn a profit." Gizmodo reports: By the time ITT Technical Institute closed its doors earlier this month, the for-profit college had been selling tenuous diplomas at exorbitant prices for more than 20 years...burying low-income and first-generation students in insurmountable debt, and evading regulators since the early 1990s...
ITT collected $178 million over two years just in federal education funding for veterans -- even while the company projected 33% of its students would ultimately default on their loans -- and last year 70% of the school's total revenue came directly from federal financial aid programs. Gizmodo spoke to one student who "will now spend the rest of his life paying back loans for a degree that is practically useless," after compounding interest turned his $70,000 loan into $200,000 in debt. "Like all of the former students interviewed by Gizmodo, he was placed in a job that did not require professional training" -- specifically, a game-testing position that didn't even require a high school diploma, while ITT "placed" another student in a $5.95-an-hour telemarketing job. Her assessment of ITT? "It was totally worthless."

Comments

How is this different from any university?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how few people call out universities for their bullshit marketing and loan sharking. Is it a Stockholm Syndrome among you geeks?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[binarylarry]

That's exactly what I thought....

"So.... just like our entire higher education system?"

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "You want some cheese with that wine?".

Re: How is this different from any university?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because jobs acknowledge the degrees when you apply for them.

Having a "for profit" degree actively hurts you. I'd rather have a self taught programmer than one dumb enough to get a degree from ITT Tech.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[aaarrrgggh]

It amazes me how high tuition has gone. $12k for top tier state schools, and $5-10k for "second tier" universities. Out of state $30k+, private higher still. $30-70k per year with housing.

Bottom line is that it simply is not worth the cost for most careers.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[rholtzjr]

Just because an organization is considered a "not for profit" does not mean "someone" is not making a decent amount of money doing what they do. Take a look at any Charity, foundation, donation organization, etc. and take a look at the person running it. In most cases that person is making millions.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Opportunist]

Mostly 'cause my degree costed like 5000 bucks. Our universities challenge your brain, not your wallet.

It's easy to get in, IIRC the financial investment is roughly 500 bucks a semester. Most of it is state funded. You'd assume that everyone and their dog takes that offer? You bet. So the university has zero, none, nada requirement or even interest to hold your hand and carry you through. You make it, great, if not, step aside you're holding the line up. Dropout rates are "insane" by US standards, but it has its advantages. First of all, those that do manage to get through this are good. Really, really good. And second, nobody has time for bullshit like "microaggressions" or "safe spaces".

Re:How is this different from any university?

[tburkhol]

Take a look at any Charity, foundation, donation organization, etc. and take a look at the person running it. In most cases that person is making millions.

In "most cases," charities, foundations, etc, are small, local organizations with budgets in the tens or hundreds of thousands whose principals are frequently unpaid. Even in large, international organizations with budgets of billions, like the Red Cross or United Way (both often cited as "bad" or "misleading" charities), Gail McGovern of Red Cross made $600k in 2014 and Brian Gallagher of United Way made $1.5M. Big numbers, certainly, but they're each running $4B organizations. Same basic size as Bose or Petco; Fortune 150. If the directors are making "millions" with an s, your nonprofit is probably not a charity.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[hey!]

Well, the number one thing is that a degree from an accredited university marks you as middle class and therefore gets you through at least one round of filters for jobs. That works out to a difference in starting salary of about $17,500 more for the college graduate on average, which extended over a lifetime works out to be a big difference, even if you count four years out of the workforce and an average debt of $29000 on graduation. So on average it's a win.

Of course many people differ from average, and quite a few college grads may find themselves below average for salary and above average for debt. People in this category will of course feel very much like you do. An electrical engineering grad starting at around $60K at the start of his career probably won't.

Now there are a number of for-profit universities which have transient adjunct faculties and predatory marketing practices that aren't that different. But I guarantee if you got into an ivy-league school you'd get a very different experience. Or one of those historically Quaker institutions. Or MIT. It's not all the same thing -- although what is available to you financially and academically might not be so diverse.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[MightyMartian]

Bullshit. It was a diploma mill

Re: How is this different from any university?

[jellomizer]

For Profit, NFP, self taught... I have had good and bad experiences with them. It really comes down to how willing they are to learn after school.

I found For Profit there is less hand holding in teaching on how to use the app but covering theory and concepts are hard.
For NFP the theory and concepts are easier but getting them on different tools and showing them when you need to break the rules gets harder.
Self taught are often experts in some areas however they will have unpredictable gaps in their knowledge.

Now if the person is willing to learn, ask questions, and think about what they are learning then in the long run their education will not matter much.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[StormReaver]

My university years were good for a few things, but major career training was not one of those things.

My university degree, though, was essntial for opening doors.

Every useful thing I learned about writing software I learned on my own -- all the core, and much of the advanced, stuff I learned before I ever set foot in a classroom; all the rest after I started my first job. None of the time between those two points yielded much of anything useful, but all the desirable jobs required a 4-year degree from an accredited university.

So yes, universities are a huge scam; but most businesses are in collusion with the universities to make them, for all intents and purposes, a required rite of passage.

Fortunately, though, I had the good sense to live with my parents until well after I graduated, so I paid off my entire student debt in about six years.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[ArmoredDragon]

Not for profit doesn't necessarily mean charity either. I work for a nonprofit company and we don't do any charity work (other than the usual fundraiser type stuff that just about every other company does) and we don't take donations or government money either. It also doesn't mean that the services we provide don't yield a profit or are somehow less expensive. All nonprofit basically means is that the company doesn't have shareholders of any sort and doesn't pay dividends to anybody.

We do have a system though where when the company revenues go a certain amount above its expenses, it's dispersed to ALL of the company's employees as a bonus. Since we're a pretty large company, it doesn't amount to anything huge (I think last year's was about $300) but it's purpose is to be an incentive for everybody within the company to feel responsible for the overall goal of customer satisfaction, thus driving results.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[binarylarry]

In my experience, only a small minority of businesses require a degree. Those that do are typically stuffy "must wear suit" places or old school mega corps from the 40-50's

Re:How is this different from any university?

[lucm]

The starting salary may be higher but the difference disappear over time, it doesn't last for the whole career.

I remember having this exact discussion with a HR person while looking for candidates for my team. I was surprised by the salaries so she explained that junior people with a degree from a prestigious school started higher on the salary scale to recognize their investment and possible better education but that someone with a community college diploma would catch up within a few years.

This being said does that mean it's a bad investment? If salary and job opportunities are the only factor then no it's not worth it, but if you consider the education itself and the boost of confidence it can bring in the first years that could be valuable. Personally I'm more in favor of the strict minimum education in terms of time and money to get to work as soon as possible and earn as soon as possible without any kind of debt but that's a matter of preference.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Zontar The Mindless]

The most significant difference is that ITT attempted to allow the plebes into the middle class.

How exactly would that be different from the "plebes" attending community college? Other than that they'd likely spend less money and obtain a degree that might actually be worth the paper it's printed on?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[hey!]

Well, I've made the same argument to my kids about why they should choose the school that is going to serve them best; that the salary premium you get for that MIT degree goes away when people are comparing track records.

But there is absolutely no doubt that a college education on average is an economic benefit. The lifetime earning of people with a bachelor's degree are 1.66x that of someone with high school diploma -- again on average. Someone who starts out as a tradesman and ends up with a successful contracting business can do very well for himself, obviously.

But college is about more than economics. It's the last time in your life that your job is to learn stuff; you don't realize what a luxury that is until you miss it. It's a time to make friendships and have experiences good and bad that you couldn't have had any other way.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[0100010001010011]

I found For Profit there is less hand holding in teaching on how to use the app but covering theory and concepts are hard.
For NFP the theory and concepts are easier but getting them on different tools and showing them when you need to break the rules gets harder.

Broken down it's the technicians vs the engineers.

The "For Profit" colleges filled a niche which was the fact that we forgot about the skilled trades in the US. Everything taught at ITT tech is a trade option in Germany. You don't need 4 years of theory you need a hands on approach to learning what you need to know to get the job done.

"Not for profit" colleges are how they've always been, theory based academia. If you don't want to learn the theory and learn stuff unelated ("well rounded student") then college isn't for you, try a trade.

Both are equally important jobs. But they're separate. You don't hire an electrician when you need an electrical engineer and you don't hire an electrical engineer when you need an electrician.

The same applies to computer based jobs. Despite what eveyone says on Slashdot a handfull of "code bootcamp" would do wonders in some organizations. If HR hands me another CS graduate that can tell me the *theory* behind Python's design and not actually write Python I'm going to raise hell again.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Mostly 'cause my degree costed like 5000 bucks. "

I'm guessing U of Appalachia ("Home of the Cookers!")?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because an organization is considered a "not for profit" does not mean "someone" is not making a decent amount of money doing what they do.

Are you kidding? Non-profits make massive amounts of money for their management, and usually overwhelmingly from government funds.

The point is: that makes them worse than corporations. It's only a subset of corporations that are crony capitalist and depend on government handouts, and even those that do still make most of their money from products.

In the US, non-profits and public corporations really are the most corrupt organizations around among those that are legal. US schools and universities are at the top of the list, and not only do they wreck lives with useless degrees and student loans, they also indoctrinate their students and produce bogus research results to make their political masters happy.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[0100010001010011]

major career training

College is not on the job training It never has been. It never will be. If you want career training they have those, they're coincidentally called trades.

College will not teach you C. College will teach you the theory behind C.

learned about writing software

Because if a CS curriculum spends any time on how to write software you're in the wrong place. The largest complaint I hear out of CS and Engineering students is they feel like they were sold something else. College is NOT a 4 year degree on how to write Python and C. (or what ever else you want to learn).

Re:How is this different from any university?

[ArmoredDragon]

Because the other universities and colleges are "not for profit", i.e. government run so off the hook. They know how to play the crony games with the politicians and bureaucrats.

Even though many are grade inflating diploma mills who graduate students with worthless degrees and lots of debt as well.

Regardless of whether or not a college is for profit, there are a lot of really stupid people out there who don't belong in college at all but go anyways because there's this overall mantra that "you must go to college". Contrary to popular belief, college is NOT for everybody.

I can't tell you how many people I've met that get either completely worthless degrees (i.e. being a history major) or degrees that are legit but are in professions that are over-saturated (i.e. law degrees.) You can get these degrees at what are otherwise good state universities, and, it's not the university's fault if you fail to make a successful career out of it, even though you were (in a sense) doomed to failure before you even took your first class. However we should probably stop sending the message that college is for everybody, lest these people go deep into debt for no good reason at all, and worse, since there's a lot of them, they put upward pressure on tuition costs that make it more expensive for those who should be going to college.

And on that note, I think student loans are a really dumb idea, no matter what college you're going to or what degree you're getting (unless you want to be a doctor, which most med school students I've spoken to said it's just not worth it and if they had to start over again, they'd have done something else.) Furthermore I have almost no sympathy at all for anybody who has a huge amount of student loan debt. Why? Well, if college costs you so much that you have to borrow, you're probably doing it wrong. Community college is dirt cheap, so you should be taking advantage of that for as long as you can.

I personally spent about $14,000 on college, with 75% of my bachelor's degree credits coming from community college, (my graduate's degree is from Northern Arizona University) and two years after graduating I'm already within the top 30% of income earners in the Phoenix area.

Then again I'm also the kind of guy who believes that if you need to borrow money to buy a car, then you're paying too much, so maybe I'm biased.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[ShanghaiBill]

... or United Way (both often cited as "bad" or "misleading" charities)

The United Way is not considered "bad" just because of where their money goes, but also where it comes from. Every year they run a "Federal Campaign", to collect money from government employees. When I was in the military, each unit had a quota of contributions to collect, and commanders were judged on their ability to collect. This led to a lot of coercion and abuse. Anyone who didn't agree to sign up for a monthly payroll deduction was assigned to clean latrines or given guard duty when everyone else had a 4 day pass. There were privates with families to support, barely making enough to survive, getting their pay docked every month despite needing the money far more than most United Way recipients. United Way collects contributions, skims administrative fees off the top, and then passes the rest on to the actual charities. It is far better to contribute directly to deserving charities, and leave United Way out of the loop.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Hognoxious]

Did someone say DeVry?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[twistedcubic]

Recruiting people with no programming experience into a degree called "digital entertainment and game design" is a little suspect, in my opinion. You all know the story: a young kid loves playing video games, so he wants to become rich writing the next blockbuster. But alas, this requires programming skills, so instead he changes his major to sociology...unless, he is attending a trade school with no liberal arts majors, in which case he just walks away with huge debt.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[twistedcubic]

Honestly, I don't think you read the article. Using Blockbuster and Gamestop as evidence of students being employed in fields related to their degree is not an honorable practice. And that's just one example.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[MightyMartian]

A good, the Icke Crowd add their doubtless well informed view to the discussion.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[ArhcAngel]

I graduated from ITT in 1989 so I have first hand knowledge of their practices. I actually had an instructor who was an electrical engineer. He was quite adept at discussing electrical theory but ITT made him a lab manager against his protests and he was unable to build the simplest of circuits. Another instructor taught us how to bluff our way through an interview to get a job you weren't qualified for. He did encourage us to study the subject material of the job if we happened to get it. And I was speaking to a classmate once about what he planned to do once he graduated. It turns out he was a professional student. He was easily in his 50's and simply took classes full time to get a government stipend. I was pretty naive at the time so it was actually quite an education.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[Joe_Dragon]

unable to build the simplest of circuits but good at discussing electrical theory sounds like the gap that places ITT do fill.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[hey!]

Well, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I'm sure many people do. No institution is for everyone. I've known people who've loved working in the military and made a career out of it, and others who did a hitch and were miserable. And it isn't just the luck of where you're assigned -- although that makes a difference. I knew guys who ended up at a desk job in Hawaii and hated it, and others who were infantry in Vietnam and decided to re-up. It's an institution where certain kinds of people thrive and others will probably never be close to content.

But you're missing the point. I'm not saying college is automatically a peak experience; I'm saying to any young people here (as I say to my kids): do everything you can to make it a wonderful experience. Get everything out of it you can. That of course can be said of every phase of your life, but college provides a number of unique opportunities that are likely not to come again.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[HornWumpus]

Same thing happens in many fortune 500s. Reward for the corporate CEO that collects the most is a turn at the United Way president tit.

Terrible pass through % for a corrupt racket that does nothing.

You can use it to your advantage. Checking if a prospective employer is a 'united way partner' is a quick and easy way to filter out political hell holes. Fish rot from the head down, if the CEO is participating in that racket, (s)he is rotten. So is the rest of the org chart and almost certainly the board.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[AK Marc]

United Way is not a charity. They are a donations clearing-house. They don't "do" anything, certainly not anything charitable. They just collect and re-distribute funds. They take a portion of donations, to be wasted in overhead (like private jets), then pass on some of the donations to the charities that do what they want. If the amount donated were to not change, the world would be better off without United Way. If you can say that about a charity, that's pretty damning.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[AK Marc]

All nonprofit basically means is that the company doesn't have shareholders of any sort

Incorrect. A nonprofit does have shareholders. I know. I've been a shareholder in more than one non-profit. A non-profit means that the shareholders can't get dividends (or other payouts of profits), nothing more. A charity can make a profit, but it's not a legal profit" so long as it's held by the company, rather than paid out. A surplus isn't bad thing. It means they are solvent. Nothing more.

All the successful charities are run like a for-profit, where you have lots of accounting and such to make sure you have enough money to operate. Those that don't all fail.

"Shareholder" is another word for "owner", and everything must have an owner. The founder of a charity lists themselves as the owner, and they can split that ownership up into parts, and have others as shareholders. This is common in trading "ownership" around, and such between mutual boards of directors. Yes, the boards of directors of large charities are as insestuous as wall street boards.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[jellomizer]

I agree that the US has a gap in vocational training. But ITT wasn't really stated as a vocational school but as a college.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I checked, newly graduated Stanford undergraduates with CS majors were getting an average of $85K starting salary. Often with additional bonuses.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Hognoxious]

I was surprised by the salaries so she explained that junior people with a degree from a prestigious school started higher on the salary scale to recognize their investment and possible better education

That's ridiculous. I don't know why it should be the company's function to do that.

Do they pay extra if someone came to the interview wearing $500 shoes? If you called a cab and a Rolls-Royce turned up would you expect to pay twice as much per mile to "recognize their investment"?

If these people are really better they'll demonstrate it on the job and get promoted quicker.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[Hognoxious]

He probably meant alumni, but I don't see what's got to do with a much-hyped Bengals running back who did a silly dance.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[colinrichardday]

Notice the desperation, as black people are now being told it's a betrayal to vote for the white man who's not part of the political class.

Is voting for Trump in the interest of most black people?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[rickyslashdot]

Sadly, and with more than a bit of embarrassment, I worked for a few of these 'diploma mills' - - - and know that they are bound by a legal statute known as the '70-30 rule'. ONLY (lol) 70% of the funding can be government subsidized through loans and grants, the remaining 30% MUST be from 'paying' clients. This number is referred to in the source post - 70% being government assisted. A couple of these schools actually taught some real-world applicable skills and knowledge, but far too many were nothing more than 'suck 'em in, spit 'em out, let the lenders deal with collecting the funds already collected by the 'school' through grants and loans. Hell, one of the recruiters I knew actually 'worked' the bus station to solicit and sign-up people that had no real chance of completing the course, or even getting hired into any decent job related to the course of study (hence my real embarrassment and shame - but a job is a job - and I NEEDED the income I earned as an instructor - and a damned good one - using the training and skills I received from my service in the USAF from 1970 through 1976). Seriously though, the only significant difference between the privately owned schools and the state owned colleges is that the privately owned schools PROMISED a 'great career opportunity' with their associate degree program. In other words, they were guilty of ACTIVE solicitation of their student body, and were never really held accountable for the actual job placement statistics of their graduates. The legal 'weasel' term is the word __OPPORTUNITY__, and was used to justify the lack of job placement effectiveness because it was just an OPPORTUNITY, even though the promotional material APPEARED to PROMISE this type of career advancement - but was really falling back on the legality of the word OPPORTUNITY ! THIS is NO DIFFERENT from state colleges - with the ONE BIG ISSUE of ACTIVE RECRUITMENT promising great careers (opportunity) if they would just sign on the dotted line for their 'government loan' debt. BECAUSE these types of privately owned schools drained the market of students from the student-body pool the state owned colleges wanted, they (the state owned colleges) continuously fought tooth-and-nail to keep accreditation and acceptance from being granted to the private schools, and consistently refused to honor credits earned from the private schools - for one reason - TUITION FEE$ - and the state / federal lockin on the educational system. I saw the result of a school failing (in the mid 1990's) . . . and the totally WRONG actions of the lending agencies, who held the student liable for their loans, even though the school didn't exist, nor was there anything the poor students could do about it, since they had signed the loan agreement papers WITHOUT a bail-out clause to release them from their debt in case of the school going tits-up ! Now, for the realistic view, we can see that community colleges are - BY FAR - the cheapest and most effective path for obtaining an Associate degree, which is USUALLY accepted by most colleges/universities for advanced placement towards a Bachelor's degree program. All it takes is a phone call to the local 4-year colleges to identify the courses that WILL transfer towards a Bachelor's degree.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[R3d M3rcury]

I'm not going to sit here and listen to you bad mouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!

Re:How is this different from any university?

[mlts]

It depends on countries. When I was in college, I had classmates from Germany, China, and Chile. The Chinese government paid for the education for their citizen. The German had his paid for. The Chilean had his paid for by his government. It was the people in the US who were paying for their own education in a STEM major. The US needs to stop eating its seed corn.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[mlts]

I've wondered about this myself, because I took some time out of my career to pursue my degree full time. Are companies using a B. S. or a B. A. as a filter these days, or has the filter mechanism moved to the keywords and/or certifications like a MCSE? Times have changed. About 10-15 years ago, in a recession, you could sidestep stuff by going back for a M. S., and when you got the degree, it would mean higher pay. Now, I don't see that being the case.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Darinbob]

You don't see it like that at full respected universities. Yes the loans may be big but the rates are (or were?) reasonable and not unlike loan sharks.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[DarkVader]

Tell me what those people do that somebody making $80k can't do.

There is never a justifiable amount of work that any human can do to justify a $500k+ salary. It's just not possible. I don't care if it's the director of a nonprofit or the CEO of a Fortune 500, there is no possible justification for any one human to be given that much money in a year.

And the United Way isn't even a charity. They don't do anything for anybody. All they do is move money around and take a huge cut.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Darinbob]

Changed too much then. My Univ. of California was the best deal I ever had. Worked part time jobs, got loans, a few grants but those tended to be small. The loan itself I paid off in a couple years. And yet if you don't have the degree, your career will suffer, you'll miss out on promotions, be stuck in phone support, grunt roles, etc.

And believe me, as an engineer working with software, I seriously wish more programmers understood simple theory but I am amazed at how many try to reinvent the wheel, design protocols without knowing the firs tthing about about queueing theory, try to optimize their code without understanding algorithms and complexity theory, and so on. Even EE people I see goofing up with basic EE concepts. And still you get the people whining "the hard classes aren't worth it, we'll never need to know this stuff, skip school and just read a book".

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Darinbob]

Every single class I had in computer science I have used in my career. I have used my physics courses in my career, my math courses, my EE courses, my writing courses, etc. And my music courses can be good for discussions in the break room...

If your classes were a waste of time then either you're in a simple job or you never actually learned anything in them.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[DarkVader]

Absolutely untrue. A nonprofit has no owners, therefore it has no shareholders.

http://cullinanelaw.com/nonpro...

You may have had shares in a for-profit company that did some charitable work, or you might have been part of a nonprofit organization that had members, but you were not a shareholder of a nonprofit, there is no such thing.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Darinbob]

Engineering. You don't learn that from a book then hope to get a job, period. Even programming (not coding, people who use the term "coding" need to remember that this was the term for people who transcribed code from the programmer onto the computer, so using that as your career title seems bizarre). You can get a book about learning FashionableLanguage in 21 days, but you will not learn much about programming that way, you won't learn the complexities, etc.

An important thing about universities that you don't get learning on your own is the hard stuff. Self taught people tend to skip a lot of the hard stuff, they'll skip whatever they think won't ever be used in the future, etc. So you get self taught people with extremely narrow focuses instead of a broader set of education, skills, and experience. This is NOT universal however, I know some very good self taught people, but they intentionally spend a lot of their time continually learning new stuff. But that's a minority of the self taught people I know.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[HornWumpus]

In general; you will get a better offer if you dress nicer.

It makes little sense. But $60 t-shirts aren't about anything but 'tribe'.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[AK Marc]

"The parties responsible to operate the organization for the stakeholders are the members of the board of directors." By the definitions of Capitalism, those who control the capital "own" the capital. So, anyone who sits on the board of directors of a nonprofit is the "owner" from an economic definition, even if not a "legal" definition. The descriptions on the site you gave seem to be simplistic and incorerct, but designed to counter the idea that someone like Trump could start a non-profit, collect charitable donations, then use that donation pool to pay off personal debts. Since things like that actually do happen, those in the charitable circles improperly state reality, to give a better impression than the impression of reality.

Also, note that the billionaire's charities are almost always described as belonging to them. Perhaps that's one reason why so many try to over-simplify the "ownership" question to "none".

Re:How is this different from any university?

[No Longer an AC]

It's the last time in your life that your job is to learn stuff; you don't realize what a luxury that is until you miss it.

This really hits home to me. I was a poor student in college living in a crappy apartment with no car, but I really didn't know how good that was.

I thought being in the workforce earning a salary would be so much better. It certainly has given me nicer more expensive things and a car, but there's a certain freedom to being a student that I just didn't grasp at the time.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[tlhIngan]

But there is absolutely no doubt that a college education on average is an economic benefit. The lifetime earning of people with a bachelor's degree are 1.66x that of someone with high school diploma -- again on average. Someone who starts out as a tradesman and ends up with a successful contracting business can do very well for himself, obviously.

Actually, it's not college. Or university. It's any post-secondary education automatically gives you can economic benefit over a high school diploma.

Your skilled tradesman has post-secondary education - in their trade. Be it electrician, plumber, welder, carpenter, etc. There's post-secondary education attached to it. Even the journeyman status is still education - many other professions have a residency or practicum part of the training.

Because the jobs for high school diplomas is very limited - and the supply is wide, so they pay very little. Think janitor or housekeeper, and even then, you're doing minimum wage. There's also retail. All these jobs are unskilled.

Oh yeah, it's possible to make a lot of money as an unskilled labourer - but that's because the job has an element that makes it less appealing - usually a danger element. Crab fishing, say, an industry with a practically 100% injury rate, nasty weather, 60+ hour workdays, etc. But you can easily earn $50K in 3 months. Then there's oilman, working on oil rigs in terrible conditions, but you can get high 5 digits or 6 digits.

But there are plenty of post-secondary education opportunities - college, university, trade school, etc.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Opportunist]

Sorry, meine Grammatik ist um einiges besser in Deutsch.

Then again, my degree isn't in English, so maybe I can get away with not knowing the finer nuances between having "cost something" and "something cost".

Re:How is this different from any university?

[speedlaw]

As someone paying for a kid in school, here are the numbers..... 30k-State School 40k State School for out of staters 60k Name Private University. I went to Name Private University AND professional school for less than my kid is going to State School for out of staters...and she gets credit, literally and figuratively, for an academic scholarship getting 10k off the tuition price. A 4 year degree is a stamp of 'middle class' , although certainly not a guarantee. Schools know this, and the question they are asking is "How much would you pay to make sure YOUR kid stays in the top 10% ?" It is for this reason I will have bought a Ferrari, for cash, for the cost of college, but it is worth it so MY kid gets out with degree and no student loan ball and chain. (and make no mistake, student loan debt is debt bondage) The educational system has gotten seriously phucked in the last 30 years....

Re:How is this different from any university?

[quetwo]

When I helped run our Boy Scout troop when I was much younger, I learned some things about the United Way. In order to become eligible to receive a donation, you have to sign your organization up to volunteer for the United Way. In our case, we had to help run one of their call centers for I think three or four weekends. THEN, after you become eligible, you then have to buy their merch -- things like United Way flags, shirts, etc to promote them. Finally, the donation will usually come at an awards dinner -- which a few people from your org have to attend (and pay for).

They gave us a check for $1,200 for a new trailer. Not counting volunteer time, the troop ended up paying about $1,000 in fees, merch and expenses to participate. Sure, next year it would have been better but to tie up 8 guys for 4 weekends for $200, there were much better ways to get donations or raise money (selling popcorn would usually net us about $8,000 and selling Christmas Trees would net us closer to $10,000).

Re:How is this different from any university?

[quetwo]

According to the IRS, Non-profits (501(c)3 organizations) are owned by the community and are for the greater good.

501(c)3's don't have owners or shareholders. They can have a board of directors (and should), and they can have employees. Those employees can be paid like in any other business.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[quetwo]

A lot of it has to do with the states dropping their support of higher-ed. In Michigan, as recently as 2000, 80% of the major Universities' operating budget came from the state. In 2015, it was down to 15%. Costs to educate each student (budget / number of students) has been flat, without considering inflation. Funding sources from outside the state have gone up, but not enough to offset the difference. Consequently, tuition used to cost $135/credit hour for in state, and now it costs $375/credit hour.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Karl Cocknozzle]

...You mean other than the fact that real universities deliver actually valuable education from skilled professionals who know what they're talking about and ITT handed out degrees that meant nothing beacause their cirricula are a joke and served as a money-laundering platform for slimy executives?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[EndlessNameless]

Want to know what makes a good university? If they're willing to flunk out the students who can't hack it, they're fine.

The problem with ITT was that they offered almost nothing in terms of education and would "graduate" an idiot as long as they got their money.

Meanwhile, in legitimate higher education, we still have lots of students coming from abroad to study at our universities.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[lucm]

Let's say you want to hire a junior fresh out of school. You have two candidates: one who went to MIT and one who went to community college. Odds are, the company will be ready to pay a bit more for the MIT candidate.

On the other hand, let's say you're looking for a solid developer with 5 years experience. Again you have two candidates, with similar job titles on their resume. One candidate went to MIT and worked at some local consulting firm in Pennsylvania for the last five years. The other candidate went to community college, then spent two years at Amazon and three years at Netflix. You really think the company wil roll out the red carpet for the MIT guy?

A prestigious school only helps early in your career. After that it's all about where you worked (at least in America, I heard it's different in Europe). Worse than that, a candidate that says things like "back at MIT..." in a job interview for an intermediary or senior position sounds like that guy in Napoleon Dynamite who can't let go of his high school football days.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[DarkVader]

It's not an oversimplification, it's the legal definition. And the law is not capitalism, I don't understand where that even comes into play. The legal system of the United States is not capitalism, it's a constitutional democratic republic.

A nonprofit in the United States does not have owners. Control is not ownership, the two things are distinctly different concepts. And the board of a nonprofit does not have unlimited control, they could not legally, for example, simply liquidate the assets of a nonprofit and give it to themselves.

Trump is breaking the law. He may or may not ultimately be subject to penalties for that, but what he is doing with the management of the Trump Foundation is illegal.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[0100010001010011]

Ah yes. Why not just pay for people to do it in assembly! That's the solution. It'll be exactly what I need.

Sure development will take 40 times as long but it'll be worth it!

Re:How is this different from any university?

[JustSomeProgrammer]

The answer to this is it depends. I'm sure there are lots of shops where the dev team don't care where you got your diploma from, but in honesty a diploma from a prestigious university DOES open doors for you that are normally closed. I used to work at a job board website and recruiters (read people who paid us) really did care about making sure we parsed the school from the resume correctly and ranked in search results. We would receive complaints if person who didn't list their education and had 10 years of experience was ranked higher than someone who listed their education as MIT degree with 10 years of experience and MIT should be ranked higher than no-name state college. I could understand somewhat needing that for entry level positions, but these weren't entry level positions that the recruiters were trying to place. And I'm using recruiter in the broad sense as in HR person at company and drone at recruiting agency. The request came from both places. And even if you claim that you wouldn't want to work for someplace that did place value on the level of education you achieved; having more doors open to you results in more opportunity and unless you actually talk with these people who can't *know* that they aren't good.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Rakarra]

Blah blah blah, class warfare bullshit, blah blah blah.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[DarthVain]

Education and Job training are not exactly the same thing.

Universities usually make no bones about it, though some do with special co-op programs for example.
I imagine when employers look at folks that have graduated university they don't really assume they know anything really applicable to doing a particular job. They may assume the person is perhaps focused, dedicated, fundamentally able to apply themselves, and overcome challenges. i.e. it at least gives them a bit of an idea of the temperament of the person they might be hiring.

Colleges like ITT sell themselves as training for work to help you get a job. You're expected to know things. You have experience in doing a particular type of work or job that is directly applicable to what you are applying to. When this isn't the case, and everyone is accepted and passed, well it isn't really a useful tool or gauge for employers to base anything on. Which means you get a bunch of debt for nothing. In the US this seems particularly the case (ITT had campuses in Canada as well I believe), whereby they specifically target and take advantage federal funding programs to turn a profit. At a certain point you are less a collage or training institution and really just a shell to more less milk a broken system.

I remember ITT and others like it advertising on TV, and their targeted demographic was really down right racist. Just brutally obviously racist.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[DarthVain]

Yes I always thought it was (is) very weird how the United Way is integrated within government somehow. I suspect you might be from the US (only because most on here are), but it is the same in Canada (can't speak for military however). At any rate it seems some peoples jobs are to actively campaign for the United Way and get paid for it.

You also forgot about the largest and most annoying trait among large charities like United Way. That being how much of the money being collected for people in need actually gets funneled back into the campaigning, advertising, and promotion machine in a continuous feedback loop. Some are down right parasitic/vampyric. There was a interesting news piece done a number of years ago, that went through a lot of the accounting documents that charities need to submit to government and make publicly available to be a registered charity (unfortunately you really need to be a forensic accountant to understand it). They looked at the ratio of money collected VS what actually made it to whatever they were collecting for, and what the rest got spent on. It was pretty disgusting. I'm very particular to what I donate to now. There are CEO's of charities that make millions and million of dollars, every penny of which was promised to someone/something desperately needy.

Re: How is this different from any university?

[DarkVader]

And how exactly does paying someone millions of dollars a year keep them from having a psychotic break?

Because of course it doesn't. Somebody making $150k is no more likely to do that than somebody making $150 million.

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Coren22]

The descriptions on the site you gave seem to be simplistic and incorerct[SIC], but designed to counter the idea that someone like Trump could start a non-profit, collect charitable donations, then use that donation pool to pay off personal debts.

Kind of like the Clinton Foundation?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[AK Marc]

No, nothing like the Clinton Foundation. I've seen no reports accusing them of fraud and embezzlement from the Clinton Foundation. There are accusations of bribery, but that's completely different. That's accepting bribe money and spending it on charity. Trump was accepting bribes and illegally paying off personal losses.

Trump was stealing from charities, Clinton was giving to charities.

But that would be the same to a Trump worshiper, right?

Re:How is this different from any university?

[Coren22]

Because clearly, pointing out issues with another candidate means I worship the one on the opposite side?

I HATE them all. I think that all four would make terrible presidents. Why must I like Trump to criticise Clinton?

This is stupid

[binarylarry]

The problem isn't ITT, it's that people think some school (or ANYONE ELSE) will make you successful.

You make yourself successful. Only you.

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah seriously. They did zero research before taking on 70 thousand dollars in debt? And then they relied on the school to "place them" in a job (what the actual fuck?!), and made apparently no effort to find something better than telemarketing? Those people sound completely useless to me, if they didn't get shafted by this school they'd still get taken advantage of by someone else.

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you like living in a society that's a minefield?

Re:This is stupid

[OrangeTide]

Places like ITT give you quite the song and dance when you visit their campus. And "walk you through the process". The simple mistake people make is not getting a second opinion. Are students responsible for their own mistakes? Sure. Is it fair? No. Should we shut down those who exploit other people, that is gain profit without offering something of equivalent value in return? Absolutely.

Re:This is stupid

[Calydor]

Please point me to one person in the past 100 years that achieved success with exactly no education at all and no help from anyone else.

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

No one likes it, but only fools think it can be changed. As long as there are idiots, there will be people that will take advantage of them.

Re:This is stupid

[drinkypoo]

The problem isn't ITT, it's that people think some school (or ANYONE ELSE) will make you successful.

Eh, yes and no.

You make yourself successful. Only you.

...and mostly no. You have to take advantage of opportunities, but you don't create opportunities by yourself. It's a group effort. Sometimes, others work against you, whether intentionally or incidentally. ITT deliberately defrauded students. Willful fraud is wrong because we know that it's possible to take advantage of people, and when that happens it harms society. It's expensive for all of us when people's lives collapse.

If you go to a school it's reasonable to expect (if not assume) that you're being provided useful education. It might not be moneymaking in itself, but if they promise that it will be, then it had damned well better be. If they are promising job placement, then they need to deliver. If they don't, they're committing fraud, and they rightfully should be held accountable.

Tech schools are mostly garbage, which is sad because if they were any good, they'd be great things. Being immersed in a learning environment solely with other people studying the same sort of things you're studying could be a massive boon for some people, and in some situations. Alas, they are mostly garbage, and you'd do yourself and your community (and by extension, your country) more good by simply going to a community college. They have their flaws to be sure, but they are still better than technical schools on average. They're a fairly poor place to get a good quality education and a degree on the same schedule, because good educators come and go from them somewhat irregularly, but a lot of them have fairly fantastic programs of various types — especially in the applied arts.

The problems with ITT tech equally apply to pretty much any of these technical schools, and they're pretty much all the same deal although they are not all equally sleazy. The automotive institutes are very much the same story; for less money you could attend a community college and actually get a legitimate degree along with a pile of ASE certifications, while learning from people with at least as much experience as those teaching in the purely for-profit technical schools. If you want to become a smog technician or a master auto body tech you don't want to go to a tech school, as they will rob you blind. But you can bang the former out in a couple of years (starting from scratch) and the latter out in three or four and for comparatively very little money by just going to a CC.

We all need help in our lives. Apprenticeship used to be popular, schooling still works... and sure, trial and error is a thing, but let me tell you, it can be more expensive than just going to school.

Re:This is stupid

[__aaclcg7560]

Please point me to one person in the past 100 years that achieved success with exactly no education at all and no help from anyone else.

A successful person doesn't have to be the smartest person in the room. Here's a list of 100 entrepreneurs who succeeded with little or no education, including a half-dozen who dropped out of elementary school.

http://elitedaily.com/news/business/100-top-entrepreneurs-succeeded-college-degree/

Re: This is stupid

[Jfetjunky]

People without goals are used by those that have them.

Re:This is stupid

[plopez]

Nice job blaming the victim there. That;s sort of like saying, "It was her mistake to enter a bar and have someone slip her a date rape drug, so the rapist should go free".

Stop and consider that these people are (well duh!) uneducated and often first generation students. They have no one to train them on how to find a decent school. They often don't have a clue as to what questions to ask or how schools are rated.

If exploiting the ignorant and naive is your idea of the proper functioning of a society then you do not belong in a civilized society.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

Why would anyone with more than 1 brain cell not do some research before visiting a campus?

Now, the faculty were in on the scam, so why aren't the students suing their teachers asses for fraud?

They sought out people who thought that this was their only option,” a former Charlotte campus faculty member says. "[The students] were really trying to make a difference in their lives and trying to make a difference in their families lives," she says, adding that the campus reps saw them as "cash cows".

By the time most students realized how bad ITT was, it was too late. "The credits that they earned couldn’t be transferred anywhere," she explains. "They were stuck. They needed to graduate. It worked out for some people, and they were able to move on. But they were some of the few." (According to a 2012 Senate investigation of ITT, about 52 percent of students who enrolled in 2008 dropped out by 2010.) "I know a con when I see one."

You could not work there and not be aware that you were part of the scam. RICO for everyone involved. Sending 1,000 faculty to jail will send a message to the other crappy diploma mill scams, as well as alert the pubic, which seems to be sleepwalking.

Re:This is stupid

[__aaclcg7560]

I have a friend whose niece got sent to New York City to become a Broadway musical star at $30K per semester. She spent four years at college, had bit roles in off Broadway productions during the summers, and, the summer after graduation, she came home after being unable to find a Broadway job. She now works at Staples and performs in local productions — just like she did before Daddy dropped a quarter-million in cash on her education. Meanwhile, Daddy and Mommy are disappointed that they won't be getting free tickets to Broadway musicals in their retirement years.

Re:This is stupid

[umghhh]

I was wondering where you were going with this - after second bullet I was good and wondering what else you can add and woooops Turmp supporters. Now I know. Maybe it is even true - the guys that were grouped raped by this 'school' could possibly be angry. Judging by the numbers there are also some that looked at that and said - fuck we have to rape back. Or do you think that this school was big enough to debt rape all these people?

Re:This is stupid

[jellomizer]

Research skills are taught in college.
Most ITT students come from homes where they are no college grads so such research skill are not available so they need to rely on the marketing as being truthful.

Re:This is stupid

[__aaclcg7560]

Do you always refer to parents as "Mommy and Daddy" or just when you're being a condescending dick?

Only when I'm an asshole (which is why I work in IT).

Re:This is stupid

[Hercules Peanut]

The problem isn't ITT, it's that people think some school (or ANYONE ELSE) will make you successful.

You make yourself successful. Only you.

I wonder how you parents feel about that?
Orphan? Legal guardian, then.

Did you learn nothing in K-12?
No college education, I assume, or it was totally useless.
No professor or teacher ever added value to your life.
You were just born with all of the tools you needed to be a self made success.

Have you EVER worked as part of a team...on a project, perhaps?
Did no one other than you do any work?
Have you ever been a part of anything bigger than yourself?

No one does it completely alone. I suspect you have had more help than you are willing to admit.
5, Insightful?

Re:This is stupid

[Zontar The Mindless]

As someone who's actually emigrated not just once but *twice* I find that your diatribe rings a bit hollow.

For one thing, I think you're taking quite a lot of advantages in your own background for granted that are not likely typical for immigrants from many African or Asian countries.

Re:This is stupid

[rwyoder]

The problem isn't ITT, it's that people think some school (or ANYONE ELSE) will make you successful.

You make yourself successful. Only you.

Wrong.
Watch this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontl...

The problem is the for-profit "schools" who:
- Admit *anyone* with a pulse, regardless of qualifications.
- Charge tuition that is multiple times what a real school charges.
- Do crap like sending nursing students to a Scientology museum and call it "clinical hours". (They graduated w/o ever being in a hospital).

Re:This is stupid

[naubol]

Here's a list of 100 entrepreneurs who succeeded with little or no education ...

I suppose it depends on your definition of education.

Abraham Lincoln is the first gentleperson on your list and I would submit that he is one of the most educated presidents the US has had. He managed to become educated without much formal schooling, which is quite the accomplishment. This is based on my understanding of the word educated, however.

If you define an education as the transmission of wisdom or knowledge from those who have it to those that don't, I can conceive of few better ways to acquire an education than to spend one's youth reading books, provided one has the appetite for it. Mr. Lincoln seems to have been no slouch in this regard! Not to say that a great institution cannot generally out perform reading to one's self if the student maintains an equal appetite.

On the other hand, quite a large number of people attend school without receiving much knowledge or wisdom, and I concede some would claim they received an education. I wouldn't agree. If ITT was giving people an education, as I define it, I suspect the value of the experience would more easily subsidize the cost, regardless of the reputation of the degree.

I strongly believe that no one is really successful without an education, and many are able to achieve great things by acquiring an education in an unusual manner. Lincoln is no exception.

Unfortunately, I think the modern conception of education serves institutions, more than the population, who charge tuition and distracts from the original intent and meaning of the word.

Re:This is stupid

[__aaclcg7560]

Wow, 100.. That makes it less likely than winning the lottery.

Students are trained to beat the test (i.e., always having the right answer), which inhibits risk-taking because they don't want to be failures. Students who are already considered failures by the education system aren't afraid to take risks. You can't succeed in business unless you're willing to take risk and hire people smarter than you.

Re:This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an interesting puzzle. The mentality is "I want to get ahead. How do I get ahead? I need a degree to get ahead." Then it nosedives into the "we have to do something. x is something. therefore x must be done." (In this case x is attend ITT.)

These people also have an allergy to academia, which is why ITT appeals to them. It's not that they're low-information people in spite of trying. They're low-information because that's how they want to be. It's an important part of their identities. The last thing they want to be is a limp-wristed effeminate liberal. (Just an observation. I'm fairly liberal myself, but that's their perception of what they think a liberal is.) So here comes ITT, promising them a degree without risk of identity contamination.

Mostly what I'm saying is that in their minds, what they're doing should be working. It should be getting them a high-paying job. But it doesn't. It's magical/cargo cult thinking at its finest. Just like cargo cultists, they do everything correctly and exactly as they've seen others do it, but they just cannot understand why the planes don't land.

From there it turns all tribal. Maybe it's Muslims. Maybe God is keeping the planes from landing because there are too many blacks who don't know their place. Of course, we know that God will likewise withhold the planes if gays have too many rights. Hell, I've known people who believe that we need to bring back race-based slavery in order to appease God. So on and so forth. They'll never understand why the planes aren't landing, so to speak.

The thing I don't understand is why these people would support Trump, since despite being crass, he's never struck me as overtly racist, etc. Something resonates there, however, perhaps just the pure aura of assholian fuck you.

So no, I'm not saying that all Trump supporters attended ITT. That would obviously be a crazy claim. I'm talking about the mindset that would cause somebody to think that attending ITT is something they should do when they'd be better served by a community college (in terms of cost, location, course material, etc).

All in all I'm divided on where blame belongs. Heads need to roll at ITT. But that couldn't be possible if a lot of people going to ITT knew how to use their heads in the first place.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

And what is the problem with that? Non profits are among the most profitable businesses going.

Re:This is stupid

[DerekLyons]

If your sample size is large enough - eventually you'll collect enough outliers to make an impressive list.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

The faculty are still there, and they knew it was a scam, and still profited. The "Ich vas chust followink orders" excuse is no excuse. Neither is "everyone was doing it."

Re: This is stupid

[theArtificial]

My hat is off to you, sir.

Re:This is stupid

[drinkypoo]

For one thing, I think you're taking quite a lot of advantages in your own background for granted that are not likely typical for immigrants from many African or Asian countries.

People who are raised to expect things to be handed to them are at a disadvantage in the real world where you have to go get things. So yeah, what you're saying is absolutely true on one hand, and yet not the whole story on the other. Also, the advantages that we enjoy from our own backgrounds aren't necessarily the types that get you a job. They can help keep you out of prison, and don't think for a second that I want to diminish the value of that, but it's not exactly the same as helping you succeed. Once you're successful, it is pretty much exactly the same, because the goal then is to hang on to what you've earned.

Immigrants have access to programs designed specifically to help them. Locals (of the "proper" color) are not subjected to abuse to which others are. Those things lead to different ends.

Re:This is stupid

[binarylarry]

Did you get your reasoning skills from a for profit college?

Re:This is stupid

[Solandri]

You make yourself successful. Only you.

...and mostly no. You have to take advantage of opportunities, but you don't create opportunities by yourself.

From what I've seen, it's mostly yes. I've worked with multi-million dollar company owners, and people working minimum wage. In both cases there were plenty of people who had the same opportunities presented to them. The successful ones took advantage of those opportunities to better themselves (one of the millionaires used the exact idea I had thought of in 1994 when the web was new, except I decided it was too much effort and didn't bother trying). The handful of people I've seen claw out of family poverty and minimum wage jobs were the same way - they were eager for the chance and did everything they could to do a good job, and were quickly promoted. The others just wanted to clock to hurry up and hit 5pm so they could get out of there.

There is an element of luck involved so you're not entirely wrong, but self-drive makes a huge difference in my experience.

If you go to a school it's reasonable to expect (if not assume) that you're being provided useful education. It might not be moneymaking in itself, but if they promise that it will be, then it had damned well better be. If they are promising job placement, then they need to deliver. If they don't, they're committing fraud, and they rightfully should be held accountable.

That's pretty much my conclusion about this whole ITT thing too. Like the housing loan crisis, you have to expect that there will be unscrupulous people who will try to take advantage of others through fraudulent self-promotion. To counter these folks, you set up accrediting or appraising organizations. The average person only goes through each level of school once, and a sample size of one is not sufficient to properly appraise if a school is effective at providing an education. Same with mortgage-backed derivatives, which most people have never even heard of. In both cases you have to rely on "experts" who've studied the fields and have enough experience to properly appraise the school or the investment instrument. When these experts get lazy and just start rubber stamping schools or investments as OK because "nobody is gonna know the difference," chaos ensues.

It was a failure of the accrediting organizations which precipitated both messes. They were being paid for a professional opinion, and they collected the money but didn't put in the effort to provide a professional opinion. In ITT's case, ACICS lost their Education Department recognition. In the housing collapse's case, unfortunately nothing has happened to the rating services which told investors that securities backed by mortgages in danger of default were in fact solid investments.

Re:This is stupid

[jeffb (2.718)]

my credit rating is around 875

That's quite an achievement, considering that FICO tops out at 850. I guess that means you're in the 100th percentile. Bravo!

Re:This is stupid

[Whibla]

There are probably a dozen credit rating 'models', and, while FICO is considered one of the more popular, some of them go up to 990 or so, including ones advertised on tv in the UK, so it's quite possible gp does have a score of 875.

Re:This is stupid

[zerocommazero]

As someone who started his career going to one of these places, I really take offense to your comment. These schools definitely bilked people, taking ANY applicants even though they said that they would test your aptitude first. It got way worse when they were able to get governement funding instead of just plain tuition. I took an MSCE class that barely anyone completed the ceritificate testing for. I was completely green and hadn't even worked in basic tech support. I busted my ass studying and getting hands-on, thinking it was my own lack of knowledge and scored higher than others even though I had no formal background in IT at all.. There was an older guy in the class who didn't know the difference between Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer for christ's sake. My dad paid for the schooling and I felt obligated to make it work. Recently married, I also was on the verge of becoming a dad, so i felt even more pressure. So yes, while the basic idea of your comment is definitely true, you clearly don't realize the extent that these schools went to to take just about anybody. It's easy to assume self-entitled whelps are complaining because actual work is involved but there definitely was foul play as well. I got lucky in that my first job was for a fledgeling mortgage company with no servers (which I was really not for at that time), doing tech support and I was able to grow with them as they expanded with more branch offices, etc. The old me finishing school was in no way ready to be responsible for server/network equipment at that part of my life. But the school sure as hell set me up for that idea. And yes through hard work to learn the proper way to do things instead of hacks and through tons of googling, I've found success and have advanced.

Re:This is stupid

[jellomizer]

They use search engines but they don't know how to research.
Search engine will find what you are looking for. Research finds what you didn't know was there.

Re:This is stupid

[axlash]

It's not stupidity, it's ignorance.

How would you know where to research? How would you even know whether research is necessary?

Sometimes, you don't know what you don't know.

Re:This is stupid

[starblazer]

or that's his fako score on creditkarma

Re:This is stupid

[NormalVisual]

FICO Score 8 (scores range from 300-850) is not the only credit scoring system out there. VantageScore, for instance, goes to 990, and Fair-Issac itself provides a number of different scoring products for different uses (auto loans vs. credit cards, for instance). FICO Bankcard Score 8 ranges from 250-900, and it's a real FICO score.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

So you never ask anyone before taking on $70,000 of debt? You never buy a new car without asking friends or family what they think? You never ask for a second opinion at the doctors before they cut you up?

It was massive stupidity on the part of the students. Someone studying I.T. must certainly know what google is, at the very least. Searching these schools names brings up tons of complaints. These suckers were willfully blind. Still doesn't change the fact that the faculty is also culpable for fraud, not just the people running the schools. The faculty knew it was all BS, and the individual teachers should have their asses sued off.

Re:This is stupid

[Darinbob]

When I was a senior and looking at colleges, long long ago, a DeVry salesman came and gave my parents the hard sell. It was "practically" guaranteed that all DeVry graduates got a job. And that's what my parents wanted. That's what a lot of parents want. And my parents tried really hard to get me to go there even though it did not teach the stuff I wanted to learn. I stood my ground but my brother went there. And a couple years later he quit and went to a real school instead because they were still teaching him remedial stuff that he already knew from high school (imaginary numbers). My father later said he felt lucky that I didn't give in and do what they wanted.

The point though, is that there is still a lot of fear out there about how the kids will do in their career. Parents want the guarantee if they're middle class and college sounds extremely expensive. Apple famously fed on this with their advertisement in the 80s showing the returning home after dropping out of school because he didn't own an Apple II.

Re:This is stupid

[Darinbob]

Remember, Gates and Zuckerberg actually went to school. They didn't drop out until they were making decent money on the side.

Re:This is stupid

[plopez]

What's wrong with my reasoning? A person is seduced and lied to and it is their fault for everything? The ignorant and naive are exploited and that is good?

Where exactly is my reasoning breaking down. Do tell...

Re:This is stupid

[plopez]

So what if you shield companies from the consequences of their actions? If they mis-represent themselves, what they are selling you, and fail to fully disclose are they not in the wrong? Should they not suffer as well? Or do they get a free pass because they are a business?

Re:This is stupid

[plopez]

I would say anyone who tries to further their education is not typically someone who expects something handed to them.

Re:This is stupid

[pnutjam]

I attended ITT tech, my education did little but provide a degree. I learned on the job and at home, I've been fairly successful despite ITT. There are a couple benefits to a place like ITT that I don't see anyone talking about.

I was married with a child on the way, doing temp office work and warehouse work, usually 2 jobs. I had been attending a traditional University's local campus, but working full time and taking classes is difficult and takes more then 4 years. In hindsight, I probably should have tried for an Associates through the regular University, but it's difficult to find those sorts of opportunities. Everything is geared towards a Bachelor's degree. Required classes are usually offered at very specific times and may not have enough sessions. You can easily burn a semester or two waiting on a class opening.

In comparison, a place like ITT tech has every class you take offered at the same time, same day of the week. It's an easy progression without breaks or scheduling problems. To someone working a full time job, this is very tempting. Too bad it's literally too good to be true. I graduated in 2001 and still have about $40k in student loans...

Re: This is stupid

[pnutjam]

Not to mention the scheduling issues you run into at any CC. Required courses that fill up a semester or two before you need them, other courses that are only available at times you usually work. Bosses of white collar workers can be assholes, but it's nothing like the kind of bosses you can find in low level retail or food service work.

Walk a mile in my shoes.

Re:This is stupid

[pnutjam]

I feel you, I worked my way up from help desk and making that transition from help desk to anything else is pretty difficult. I know I could have performed any of my first jobs without the ITT education, but I'll never know if I would have had the chance without it on my resume.

In hindsight I should have dropped out as soon as I got my foot in the IT door, since I got my first helpdesk job when I was barely into the first semester.

Re:This is stupid

[Shortguy881]

Are students responsible for their own mistakes? Sure. Is it fair? No.

Since when is being responsible for one's own actions unfair?

Re:This is stupid

[OrangeTide]

Why would anyone with more than 1 brain cell not do some research before visiting a campus?

Some people are intelligent but overly trusting of people who seem nice.

I've been taken in by actual con artists before, not a huge amount, but they did abuse my overly trusting nature. Otherwise I am quite a rational and intelligent person.

Re:This is stupid

[OrangeTide]

It kind of creeps up on you. You sign a bunch of papers, and the deal is done.

If any of us actually read the fine print, we wouldn't sign anything. Not even an NDA to get a job interview. These days you end up having to believe that someone isn't going to totally screw you over even if the document you sign seems indicate that they will. Not signing any documents is not realistic, if you want to go to school or have a job.

Re:This is stupid

[OrangeTide]

Or replace it with one that is more transparent and perhaps spends less time trying to regulate individual behavior and more time organizing the infrastructure that is beneficial to all. I want a small government that stays out of my day to day life but also gets stuff done. (maybe strong local government and weak federal government, but that is not it exactly because most of my local government is ran by busybodies who worry about how many plastic flamingos I might put out on my lawn)

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

If they were that willing to suspend disbelief because they wanted an easy path to success, they would never have passed a real set of classes anyway. If it hadn't been the schools scamming them, it would have been used car dealers, or hot tips at the racetrack, or surefire stocks.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

Why would I sign an NDA just for a job interview? They're looking at what I can do, not vice versa. If they can't evaluate that without revealing their secrets, their metrics are f*d up. Sign one, and you can't even apply to another job in the same field without having the treat of a lawsuit over you. NDA for a job interview? No thanks. Never signed an NDA for a job interview, and if anyone did, they're naive, or somehow it makes the job seem more important or some other crap.

Re:This is stupid

[sjames]

Stupid or inexperienced?

Even back when I was about to graduate high school, the message was clear that the next step is definitely to get into a school (any school) and you will be needing a student loan or three. That was a strong message from pretty much any and every "adult influence" in your life. And that was before helicopter parenting and other think of the children measures had removed many of the opportunities a teen might have to operate semi-independently where they would gain some experience that might help them see through the scam.

Re:This is stupid

[Carewolf]

Wow, 100.. That makes it less likely than winning the lottery.

Students are trained to beat the test (i.e., always having the right answer), which inhibits risk-taking because they don't want to be failures. Students who are already considered failures by the education system aren't afraid to take risks. You can't succeed in business unless you're willing to take risk and hire people smarter than you.

Depends on where you go to school, and what you expect to get from it. But all studies show that education is one of the strongest links to success that exist, and lack of education one of the strongest correlations of failure and poverty. Now statistics isn't logic, but it sure does show the majority of the well educated does better than the majority of drop outs.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

No, it's not clear. A job evenings and weekends, go to an ordinary school instead of some fancy name-brand, study hard, work hard, and don't waste the money on crap like iPhones and beer pong. Not as fun as frat life, but you won't be paying for it for the next 20 years or more.

Re:This is stupid

[__aaclcg7560]

But all studies show that education is one of the strongest links to success that exist, and lack of education one of the strongest correlations of failure and poverty.

For entrepreneurs, a little education is better than too much education.

Re:This is stupid

[OrangeTide]

Why would I sign an NDA just for a job interview?

Because that is how it is done, and I've never been given any alternative.
The NDA is that you cannot disclose, it is not the same as a non-compete agreement. Which I agree you wouldn't sign, but also I live in California where non-competes are usually not valid.

Re:This is stupid

[sjames]

I'm not speaking of the right answer, I'm speaking of what teachers and councilors are saying to the students (many of the parents as well).

Perhaps they SHOULD be talking to graduating high schoolers about the substantial risks of student loans and the benefits of avoiding them even if it means taking an extra year or two, but they're not.

Re:This is stupid

[Rakarra]

The faculty are still there, and they knew it was a scam, and still profited. The "Ich vas chust followink orders" excuse is no excuse. Neither is "everyone was doing it."

So basically, only the fall guys take the fall, like that one Wall Street executive who went to jail for the fraud resulting in the 2008 Housing Crisis? Funny how that one guy at Credit Suisse caused so much trouble..

Re:This is stupid

[yithar7153]

Totally agree with this. I'm glad I'm actually attending a real university instead of a tech school like ITT, because I had so many opportunities, and I'm actually marketable. I feel kind of sorry for those who attended ITT, because they were lead to believe they would land a job, and they spent so much money in vain. That being said, universities are pretty expensive too, but at least you gain marketable skills and the chance to get a good-paying job. My school had a computer science career fair last week, and about 100 employers or so attended. I doubt that happens at tech schools.

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

Who said anything about only the lower workers? Not me, so please don't put words in my mouth. Thank you. :-)

Everyone who knowingly profited from the fraud should be prosecuted. What better way to flip more witnesses against the big fish?

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

And yet you knew they were being defrauded and that is was all a joke. How can you deny any sense of culpability? Sure, trying to mitigate the damage is one way to see it, but not when you know that it's hopeless from the outset and that they're not receiving anything like fair value for the money spent. Otherwise, it would be easy to justify keeping ITT open using those same arguments - that they'll al least get something for their money.

You were part of the problem. Why didn't you quit as soon as you realized that?

Re:This is stupid

[BarbaraHudson]

So what? You're just as guilty - worse, because without you and others like you, the fraud wouldn't have been possible in the first place. You enabled it. Nobody was holding a gun to your head, but I guess money was more important than integrity, same as the higher-ups. The only difference I can see is a matter of degree.

Don't forget about DeVry

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pile of shit also... always has been. They thought getting accreditation would make them more reputable, but lipstick on a pig and all that.

For Profit Education is a Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Unwitting students,
lax regulation,
guaranteed student loans,
PROFIT!!

though one could say the new business model for "non-profit" educational institutions is mirroring the for-profit ones in administrative bloat. The whole thing is about to tumble.

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that's the conventional wisdom and it's wrong. States spend more on education in real dollars than they did 50 years ago, students pay much more tuition, and the colleges and university spend a lot more of it. The increase in tuition has largely been paid for by the "cheap" money of student loans, which maintain their low interest rates by being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. So the debt-servitude of the students directly pays for the much greater overhead of schools nowadays.

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[Joe_Dragon]

You used be able to pay for state schools by working part time at retail / fast food level jobs back then.

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[tburkhol]

States spend more on education in real dollars than they did 50 years ago, students pay much more tuition, and the colleges and university spend a lot more of it.

You have to take into account enrollment, or count per capita cost. In 1965, there were 6 million college students; in 2015, 20 million. If you look closely at your NYT article, you'll see that total spending increased by 5x between 1965 and 1975, then by not-quite-2x from 1975 to 2015. Nor is the NYT article distinguishing among dollars spent on classroom instruction, sports programs, or housing and campus security.

The sixties were a good time for education: people still believed in the future. It's since then than things have stagnated

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[DarkVader]

Sure. My father could pay his tuition for a year with money from a minimum wage summer job, and have money left over for gas and food.

By the time I went to school, the same school could still be paid for with a summer job and part time work during the school year.

Today, tuition at the same state school could not be paid by working a full time minimum wage job all year long.

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[dywolf]

ITT Tech:
aka the libertarian wet dream of free market based education
aka what everyone else views as a scam that only further entrenches the already rich and powerful.

Re:For Profit Education is a Scam

[dywolf]

actually yes, legally it does mean no profit.
as in it is physically illegal for a nonprofit to make a profit and report it as such.

This is victim blaming.

[Anonymous Coward]

Victim blaming? No wonder corporations get away with so much. There's always someone to turn a blind eye to their behavior.

Re:This is victim blaming.

[aaarrrgggh]

Yes, it is victim blaming. People are told to go to university to be successful, so they do. Without a plan. Or, with a plan that they don't realize won't work until it is too late.

I have real sympathy for people in nursing programs that get ripped off: education is required, and it can be a well paying position. People waste their money going to DeVry or ITT to learn CAD and the like; we need to do a better job creating internships for people to learn job skills, and focus university on expanding general knowledge.

Re: This is victim blaming.

[aaarrrgggh]

Companies choose to outsource based on two (often realtors) issues: talent availability and cost. Some jobs have a rational pay ceiling; when you exceed this they are ripe for outsourcing.

Suppressing pay is not a noble goal, but if an employer can reduce the education debt that an employee has then maybe the salaries can be kept closer to the break-even point for outsourcing. Maybe we can increase the talent pool as well...

Re: This is victim blaming.

[thundercattt]

Completely agree. When I went I knew quite a few in my course taking it for the sake of going to college. They got their diploma at year 1(year 1 you get a basic diploma, year 2 a better one, year 3 a better). Then they said now they can start their life (family influenced college). They took it because their folks influenced them to go and they just wanted to experience college(binge drinking and partying).

Re:This is victim blaming.

[umghhh]

We have lots of problems in Europe too but somehow such a rip off were rather difficult here. Then again we take over all goof things USicans tried so people choosing schools here must do it very carefully.

Re: This is victim blaming.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it completely backwards. There is no pay ceiling, only a pay floor corresponding to the absolute minimum employers can get away with to obtain someone with a given skill set. If they outsource, that pay floor is quite conceivably below subsistence wages in a non-3rd world economy.

Re:This is victim blaming.

[aaarrrgggh]

Personally, I find the victim blaming to be neutral. Employers (myself included) have a stigma against these for-profit schools. We also have a stigma against community colleges for the first few years of school, which is borderline illegal and technically baseless.

There has to be a better way, for the students, their eventual employers, and society as a whole.

I find this hard to believe

[SecurityGuy]

Valladares took out $65,000 in federal and $7,000 in private loans to pay tuition. Four years later, he now owes more than $200,000 on his loans due to compounding interest.

That's 29% interest. Who out there is actually offering student loans at 29% interest?

Re:I find this hard to believe

[iggymanz]

the dumb fuck put it on his credit card, then cries that ITT screwed him.

As I pointed out in other comment, plenty of people took their ITT degree and have a good job. Why was ITT singled out by the Federal Government when no different than many other places?

Re:I find this hard to believe

[iggymanz]

I already stated clearly what my interest is. If you are wondering, I did not attend ITT, I never recommended the place to anyone, and I had no financial interest in it. I don't even know if the curriculum was better or worse than other tech schools. I don't know any teacher or administrator or even janitor who worked as employee.

I only know people that went there have job similar to mine that pays pretty well for the area in which I live. I know those people were ok with attending there. Apparently it is possible to hold degree from that place and have useful skills and after time, 5 years or more, have an IT job paying over $120K a year

I also know ITT singled out by the government even though similar to a lot of other places. I'm just curious why, suspicious of possibility people in government were in someone's pocket who wanted competition removed

Re:I find this hard to believe

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

That's 29% interest. Who out there is actually offering student loans at 29% interest?

Probably a combination of credit card charging and private loans. You might be surprised at the terms allowed under private loans for schooling. Extreme variable rates happen a lot where the student gets suckered into signing it for very low interest rates at first but by 10 years into the loan, the interest rate could be triple or worse if it's still not paid off. Many students grossly underestimate the time needed to pay off these loans and fall hopelessly behind.

Re:I find this hard to believe

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Almost all student loans charge rip-off interest, and some private loans are little better than usurious revolving credit cards.

Student lending has become predatory--it's as bad or worse than the mortgage industry was a few years ago because these lenders know, with absolute certitude, that these debts cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so they'll loan you as much as you want and charge you infinity interest if you'll sign to it because they know there is no escape from paying besides death, and even that sometimes can still not be an obstacle to collecting from an estate.

Re:I find this hard to believe

[SecurityGuy]

You do realize thats not 29% apr right?

Nope, I don't know that. That's what he said.

- repaying 70k over 30yr @ ~8.8% interest (total repayment ~200k)

That's plausible. The highest I paid for a student loan was 6.8%, but I can see somebody paying 9. In that case the statement in the article, "he now owes more than $200,000" is false. He'd owe 98k, assuming he hasn't paid back anything yet.

Re:I find this hard to believe

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Why was ITT singled out by the Federal Government when no different than many other places?

There are explicit rules for the for-profit institutions to gain access to student loan funding form the feds. The one that ITT specifically ran afoul of is their "job placement" claims were basically bullshit. They claimed a 90+% placement rate, but the truth is they couldn't substantiate that with actual paperwork and documentation, and many of the people they could substantiate placing weren't making jack-shit.

They were operating an ongoing fraud, and were validly and correctly "singled out" for doing so. They repeatedly, for many many years, lied to their accreditation body to continue their access to the federal student loan program fraudulently, despite knowing they legally didn't have any business getting funds through that program.

In short, there's a gulf thousands of miles wide between what ITT did and what "many other places" are doing. And I'll note: With the demise of the ACICS we're going to find a lot of these for-profit "schools" can't get a new accreditation and end up shutting down. This is, in broad strokes, a "good thing," and you should assume ITT is the first, not the last, school of this type that will end up shutting down.

Re:I find this hard to believe

[Karl Cocknozzle]

I'll also note it's possible both narratives are correct--that ITT at one time provided a quality-enough education to get your coworkers into the good part of the job market, but went down the crapper after they all left. Because the descriptions I'm seeing of their practices mark them as just another predator in recent years, even if they previously did their level best to help students grow into young professionals.

Commercial "education" generally fails

[gweihir]

Education is one of the things that if done well requires a high level of skill and dedication from those doing the education. Hence if done well commercially, it becomes too expensive for almost all people.

The solution is to have the state do it and to draw the teachers from qualified idealists and let them do it how they see fit. Sure, this has its own set of problems, but it is vastly better than the capitalist way of doing it, because that does not work at all. The authoritarian way (curricula specified in detail by the state) universally fails nicely as well.

Incidentally, this is that standard situation in Europe and it works reasonably well. It does require a large enough supply of smart, capable, idealistic and non-greedy people though, and that may be hard to come by in the US, especially the "non-greedy" part as US society is pathologically focused on money. With a candidate that ran his own scam of this type (Trump "University") having a realistic chance of becoming the next president, I do not think the future is bright for US academic education.

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[Salvage]

That was roughly the situation in the U.S. long ago (at least for lower levels of education), but it was built on the how the culture of the time effectively restricted certain social classes (women) to certain job sets (education), which led to a relatively high number of smart, capable and at least somewhat idealistic applicants for relatively low cost (essentially by forcing greed out of the picture).

This was not, however, a bound relationship, so as the culture changed and employment opportunities broadened, the pool of quality applicants spread out over other jobs, and the educational system didn't adapt to find new ways to draw people in.

The capitalist approach in general is probably the result of someone looking at the above issue and, well, grasping at straws for some way to change things.

I've worked in a different field where my peers were mostly smart (90th percentile plus, we checked), capable (regularly tested), idealistic (audited) and non-greedy people. When polled for why they were working there, no one mentioned money. But when presented with the idea of working without pay, most countered that the requirement of having to pay the bills would force them to work elsewhere. "Greed" can be a relative term, and in the strictest sense you'd probably only find non-greedy people among those who don't have to deal with paying the bills.

Another aspect to all this though, is that even if you take money out of the picture, you're still changing this from one form of capitalism (money based) to another (capable people). After all, capitalism is fundamentally about leveraging resources. By de facto default these days, that resource is assumed to be money, but that's not always the best fit.

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[kenh]

Incidentally, this is that standard situation in Europe and it works reasonably well. It does require a large enough supply of smart, capable, idealistic and non-greedy people though, and that may be hard to come by in the US

One big difference, "everyone" doesn't get a chance to attend "free" university" in most European countries, it is a meritocracy - poor students aren't coddled with remedial math and English classes. In America, anyone with a desire can find SOME university that will take their federally-guaranteed student loan dollars and let them pursue a college education.

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[gweihir]

I take it you have never actually taught anything, because your "ideas" have no relation to this world. Education beyond rote memorization (which barely qualifies as "education", if at all) cannot be provided cheaply, and, unless we get AI that is both as capable as a good human teacher and willing to work for free, this is not going to change.

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[gweihir]

Which is another drawback of education for commercial gain: The providers of this sort of "education" have strong motivation to allow anybody in that can pay. This is not a good idea, as it waters down skill levels and degrades grade quality. A society dependent on technology cannot afford that in the long run.

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[misexistentialist]

until the "idealists" unionize, running the schools as a for-profit business, but with the ability to force non-customers to pay

Re:Commercial "education" generally fails

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Well, here in Sweden that has changed as well. Since the government wants more graduates in certain areas (engineering), for example, the number of seats have "exploded" in the last ten-twenty years. When I was an undergrad you had to be as near as dammit an A-student (well, 4.7-5.0 on a 1-5 scale normally distributed with a 3.0 average) to get in. Today you'll get in with a 'C' average (but you probably won't graduate!).

And if you didn't do too well in high school there are remedial classes available. If you chose the wrong "track" in high school and hence haven't studied prerequisites, then there's an extra year at university that lets you study that as a preparation.

But of course, it's in general, sort-of-kind-of a meritocracy. For the subjects with strong professional organisations, I'm looking at you in medicin, there hasn't been an increase in the number of spots, so you still need a perfect 'A' average to be admitted. (And with the increased focus on theory at the lower levels, girls now make up a majority overall, and are at 60% in medicin. Not engineering though...)

I have to post this

[Opportunist]

Was this their ad?

Re: score inflation

[johnsmithperson123]

An A should not be the standard grade, ever. A C is an average grade.

Usenet memories

[grub]

I remember way back that when you did an alphabetical dump of usenet groups there were several that when listed said "ITTSUCKS" in large block letters.

Re:score inflation

[BarbaraHudson]

If at least one student isn't being held back per class every year there's something wrong.

Comuter programming redux

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago (1960s), there were these tech schools for people to learn how to become computer operators and programmers. They were also known to be ripoff scams. I talked to one and then interviewed with a major computer company just afterwards. The company told me that they would never hire anyone who went to such a school because it showed that he was not very informed concerning the world and/or smart. They actually hired me on the spot because I told them that I had heard that these computer tech schools were a scam. The company put me through their own training program in computer operations and after moving to another company, I was trained as a computer programmer.

Re:Comuter programming redux

[__aaclcg7560]

Back in the 1960's, corporations had training programs. The bean counters in the 1980's eliminated everything that didn't add value directly to the bottom line. The cost of training people to become employees got shifted to the public school and colleges. These days you need a college degree to get hired on as a filing clerk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree-required-by-increasing-number-of-companies.html

Re:Comuter programming redux

[Salvage]

Yes, when I was looking for "entry level" positions, I was hard pressed to find one that didn't require a doctorate and "eight years of experience" with a given technology.

The job application system, of course, would require this even for technologies that were newer than that.

I ended up doing a lot of work outside my target market (developer) and ended up pigeon-holed into a different line of work (security admin).

Re:Comuter programming redux

[kenh]

Years ago (1960s), there were these tech schools for people to learn how to become computer operators and programmers.

My, how the world has changed in the last half-century!

outsourcing killed the value of the degree

[Anonymous Coward]

ITT Tech was meant for common folks below an IQ of 120 to get into the tech boom gold rush. Before QA, tech support, and basic website work completely got outsourced, places I worked for actually hired ITT Tech folks to do these things. But most of those jobs dried up in the last decade as it is now really easy to get smart people in India to do it through some outsourcing firm for a fraction of the price.
So I'm not too hard on ITT Tech. It didn't start as a scam but inadvertently turned into a ponzi scheme just due to "free" market dynamics. I still know one ITT Tech guy who survived because he did eventually work his way up to software engineer since he was actually smart with an IQ of >=120. (Now if the current rich guys have their way of forcing coding onto every kid in the world through public policy, even software engineers will see the day the value of their degree becomes nearly worthless; only thing stopping it right now is not many high IQ people out there.)

Re:score inflation

[Zontar The Mindless]

You really think stack-ranking is the solution here?

ITT Tech Graduate

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon due to mod points.

I have a degree from ITT Tech and there were plenty of people who where never going to cut it in IT or their selected field. However, there were a lot of us who were already working that really liked the night class schedule. I paid off my loans quickly and I was able to test out of a number of classes and unlike community college if you could pass the mid-term and final you did not have to pay a set albeit lower credit hour rate on the class you tested out of.

tl;dr version:

I choose ITT Tech because I went to more than one community college due to life circumstances (moved locations to find better work) and found out that if you did not have a block transfer degree (which if I had I would have gone to a university) your credits were worthless at another community colleges. After a year and half of computer science class work I would told at the local community college where I now lived that I could have 4 elective credits towards a computer science degree or 8 elective credits towards an electrical engineering program (not my chosen field and the previous classes had nothing to do with electrical engineering).

ITT actual sat down with the course catalog of the two community colleges I had attended and evaluated their curriculum and then allowed me transferred credits to my chosen degree where the classes aligned. It was not a 100% credit transfer but I was able to test out of the remaining basic course work when they didn't let me transfer in credits.

Funny tho, now that I think of it the ITT I attended (Portland Oregon) was raided by the postal service while I was attending for an investigation about mail fraud (overstating incomes of their graduates). I guess my experience may fall under the "results not typical" disclaimer.

My ITT experience

[Anonymous Coward]

The recruiter came to our house and put on a hell of a show. There were videos of a campus where people were working on server racks, satellites, and all sorts of high tech equipment. Hell, it was only 2 years, and they talked a big game about job placement. I could commute and live at home and save money! A degree is a degree right?

Fast forward to about 3 months into the program (Electronics Engineering) and they were teaching us basic electronic formulas incorrectly!. The most high tech equipment in the entire campus was an old school oscilloscope. Several of the other students and myself began to complain. Several of the "instructors" were replaced. Then those replacements got replaced. Our class started grilling any of the people they trotted out to "teach" us as to their qualifications, which did not require any sort of teaching degree or experience. We gave one of them a heart attack, no lie. It got worse after that.

Around 9 months in, I put up a geocities webpage telling my story and asking for the experience of others who felt they were getting a raw deal. Almost overnight, I got flooded with emails. As the page started getting way more hits than I expected, I was called into the office and threatened. They said that they didn't have any more room in the daytime class and they were moving me to the night class. They knew I got a ride with another person in the day class, and that I wouldn't be able to attend the night classes. A deal was struck where I would remove the website and be allowed to continue to attend classes, and not waste the $12,000 already spent.

I graduated after learning nothing of value. After defaulting on loans and long periods of joblessness, and over a decade of rebuilding my credit, I still have about $6000 to pay off. I consider this a victory after all these years. Fuck ITT Tech. That was a $25,000 mistake that at least no one else will have to make.

Double Standard

[kenh]

From the /. posting:

"Like all of the former students interviewed by Gizmodo, he was placed in a job that did not require professional training" -- specifically, a game-testing position that didn't even require a high school diploma, while ITT "placed" another student in a $5.95-an-hour telemarketing job. Her assessment of ITT? "It was totally worthless."

At least ITT "placed" them in a paying job, compared to countless tens of thousands of "non-profit" college and university graduates that got no help finding work after graduation.

Ever wander into Barnes and Noble or Starbucks and learn that the clerk or barista graduated from a Ivy League university? And the kicker is the university didn't even help them land the job! At least ITT helped them find a job.

I can't wait for the feds to "crack down" on so-called "non-profit" colleges and universities that take in countless billions in federally-guaranteed student loans and offer many, many students little hope in finding gainful employment with their degrees...

(A few years ago I saw a graduate of Brown University, with a major in Theater management, openly cry when he found himself applying for a part-time $75/day substitute teaching job because he couldn't find work and payments on his $240,000 in accumulated student debt were about to start being due.)

Re:score inflation

[BarbaraHudson]

If the alternative is to pass everyone, even those who haven't learned a thing, why not? Put a bit of fear of failing into them.

Laureate University

[Anonymous Coward]

The other day I was attempting to find out why this ITT thing happened now, and so quickly. Same thing pretty much happened to Everest (I think thats the name) last year. Why are the largest for profit colleges getting hammered by the Feds suddenly?

Laureate University, thats why.

Laureate is one of the largest for profit colleges in the US, but they only started a few years ago? Wha? Oh, I see, the State Department directed $55 million to them while Clinton was Secretary of State, after all the guy running it is her buddy. But wait, there's more... Bill Clinton was on the board of directors at the time and got over $16.5 million for doing basically nothing.

Yep, the feds are attacking any competition for Laureate University to get federal money. If you don't play ball with the Clintons, they will attack and destroy you if they can, all the while feeding millions in taxpayer money to your competition.

No that's BS

[aepervius]

That is what I would say the typical "american dream" BS of the self made man. Most successful people are a mix of luck, good networking, chance of opportunity, and a bit of their own effort. 2 of those are out of control of anybody. Heck I would arguably add networking to that too. (and that does not even count things like wanting to do a carrier in science which pays shit).

Re:more anti-ITT FUD on slashdot

[iggymanz]

similar places also get those

again why the special focus. I'm wondering if someone with government in their pocket had competition removed or wanted to change landscape of IT education for some agenda.

Note I didn't attend ITT, don't know any employees there, had no investments in them nor anything that depends on ITT, don't even know anyone hurt by this since the ITT grads I know already have good jobs

I don't know if ITT classes worse than normal or better than normal, nor the quality of the teachers. Only know some grads that are doing very well.

Credit Scores Big Part - also Compounding

[mx b]

That's 29% interest. Who out there is actually offering student loans at 29% interest?

The interest rates any bank advertises always have asterisks next to them. The 3% or 5% you see marketed is only for people making certain incomes, with perfect (800+) credit scores, etc.

Someone with lower credit (~600 or under) easily gets a "penalty" of >10%. When they apply, they don't get 3% for a loan, they get 12-15%. Yes, they get sometimes maybe 20% interest. And what are they going to do about it? They have low credit, and no one will do better. Hell, finding the bank that even gives them the 20% loan is amazing. Most people with low credit scores don't have any ability to get credit; everywhere they go, they are told they are losers because their credit score is low and no one helps them. This is why pay day loans have become a thing: banks have stopped serving an entire portion of the population that still needs loans for emergencies (the heater goes out, etc.) just like the rest of us. Except because of credit scores -- which are calculated by a proprietary formula we're not allowed to know, and are crazy hard and expensive to appeal even when the company makes a mistake -- they have to pay higher rates than the rest of us, contributing to a further debt spiral. It's really obscene and needs to end yesterday, but many elected officials such as Debbie Wasserman-Shultz prop up the industry and profit from it.

Keep in mind that low credit DOES NOT necessarily mean someone made mistakes or defaulted on debt. If you are a young then your score relies heavily on your parents, and while the young person may have done nothing wrong personally, they immediately start life with a lower credit score because of the parents' mistakes. Even if both the child and parents did all the right things, there may still trouble for them: the exact formula is proprietary and secret, but we know that things such as yearly income and how often you change jobs impact your score. In fact, NOT taking out debt and paying everything cash actually HURTS your score! If you are a waiter without debt, you still will have low credit simply because you don't make enough money. Likely because banks don't like you if you don't usually take out debt or have lots of free money to take out the debt; the credit score is NOT a measure of how trustworthy you are, but rather a measure of how likely the bank will profit off of you. Credit scores should not be used to judge people for rental properties (becoming more common) or jobs, and probably not even most loans honestly. It's a false measure.

Also, the key word is compounding interest. The on-paper rate might be 15-20% or even lower, but since the interest is then added to the balance when calculating the next interest payment, you're paying interest on interest, making the effective rate numbers like 30% or higher. So even if you pay all of your minimums, the interest can still go up! To my knowledge, there are laws protecting mortgages from this sort of behavior (and other things like balloon payments...), but student loans do not have those legal protections. (In fact, student loans are the only type of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Some jerk that bought a half million dollar house he couldn't afford can get that discharged, but someone with $50k in student debt can't.) My wife had a private loan that compounded daily. This wasn't from a loan shark either but a major bank, and she and her family had excellent credit. When she made a payment, the next day she already had interest rack up, and it was compounding. She was not told that up front. No other loan does that! Not a mortgage or anything. Again, it's a disgusting industry of middle men bankers taking advantage of people with the least money and least options.

tl;dr: compounding interest means the real rate is much higher than what is advertised, and poorer people (ITT's clientelle) tend to get terrible interest rates to begin with. It's a p

Re:Credit Scores Big Part - also Compounding

[SecurityGuy]

Someone with lower credit (~600 or under) easily gets a "penalty" of >10%.

It's not a penalty, it's a higher charge because people with lower scores are more likely to default on their loans.

If you are a young then your score relies heavily on your parents, and while the young person may have done nothing wrong personally, they immediately start life with a lower credit score because of the parents' mistakes.

This is completely false. Your credit has nothing to do with your parents. Your loan rates will have nothing to do with your parents UNLESS they cosign a loan for you. When you start out, you simply have no credit record, and yes, that means you're viewed as riskier.

Also, the key word is compounding interest.

Thanks. I first unlocked the mysteries of compound interest in elementary school. It's not as nefarious as you think.

The on-paper rate might be 15-20% or even lower, but since the interest is then added to the balance when calculating the next interest payment, you're paying interest on interest, making the effective rate numbers like 30% or higher. So even if you pay all of your minimums, the interest can still go up!

A 15% APR compounded daily is 16.1798% effective. 20% is 22.1336%. What you're describing has nothing to do with compounding, it's called negative amortization. I often think that should be illegal.

My wife had a private loan that compounded daily.

This is actually pretty normal, and as I posted above, doesn't have a huge impact on loan rates. Personally, I don't think anybody's trying to screw anybody here, it's a pretty natural consequence of figuring out how to charge interest. If I charge you X% at the beginning of the year, I'm charging you for a full year of borrowing money when you don't borrow all of that money for a full year. You pay some back each month. I can charge you 1/12th of the interest every month (compounding monthly), but not all months have the same length, so that's not quite right. The thing that works and is always correct is compounding daily.

There's even a thing called continuous compounding that reduces that compounding interval to zero, but it doesn't have much effect at all on the rate. 15% compounded continuously is 16.1834% vs 16.1798% for daily compounding.

Predatory lending is definitely a thing and should be stopped, but predatory schooling is the problem in this case. Institutions that offer valueless degrees while lying about the value of those degrees for a lot of money are a problem. Lenders, federal or commercial, who give people money to spend on valueless degrees with no regard for whether they'll get the money back are a problem, too, and should be stopped. Yes, that means some people aren't going to college, but that beats the heck out of sending those people to college for $100,000 that isn't actually worth $100,000.

We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get a p

[Joe_Dragon]

We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get a piece of paper.

We need people with real job skills that don't have to go to 2-4 years of class room with little to no real job skills for hands on fields.

How do you want working the backhoe some one who knows they are doing or someone who was years of theory but never worked one in their years of class room?

sounds like full sail university the 3rd Most Expe

[Joe_Dragon]

sounds like full sail university the 3rd Most Expensiive College in America. But it's backed by Mitt Romney

Re:Itt

[Joe_Dragon]

why not just say will hire H1B's only?

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[lucm]

I guess it depends on the industry, but I've been in this one for almost 20 years and anywhere I've been, the best technical people I've met always had either a community college diploma, were college dropouts or even had some vocational school training.

I can't explain it but it feels like those people are more willing to try things, to venture out of their zone of comfort and to deal wih conflict. Meanwhile, the whizz kids with degrees up the pooper sure know a lot of theory and can excel at some things, but they usually behave like union people, never willing or open to set foot outside of their job description. And while the industry sure needs warm bodies to write test cases and optimize loops, it's not the Mr Propers showing up to scrum meetings only to babble about having one too much item in their kanban that make things move forward.

There's something about higher education that seems to suck the creativity and open-mindedness out of people and replace it with a mild form of entitlement.

Well that's my take on this based on my own experience. But I guarantee you that 9 times out of 10, I can spot a self-made developer or sysadmin because he's the one willing to solve an urgent problem without asking for a fucking ticket number.

Caveat Emptor

[slasher999]

Before giving away your money, make sure you're getting what you actually need. There are always lowlifes around preying on the desperate or uninformed. This isn't the first time nor is it the last time people will get screwed by these kinds of dirtbags. Protect yourself folks.

Are you an idiot?

[rsilvergun]

Sorry, I don't normally ask that question, but seriously, are you? Do you seriously believe that somebody going to ITT tech has access to the same level of resources and instructors as someone going to MIT? Do you value education and educators that little? Do you not even know what the words "Teaching" and "Teachers" mean?

Christ, what is it with people who can't accept that they can get useful help from other people...

ITT will pass anybody

[rsilvergun]

a real University won't do that. That's just one of the more obvious differences. Recruiters know this. Even in the mid 90s ITT was worse than useless on your resume. It told recruiters you were gullible and possibly lazy. Nevermind the fact that rampant H1-B abuse, automation and the shit economy caused by income inequality has let employers be so choosy about employees that you either get a degree from a major university or a McJob.

Yes, real University's will lie about the real cost of college. My kid just hit college and I can personally confirm that. They'll also lie about how much financial aid you can get and hit you up for more $$$ 2 months in. They suck. But they suck because we let the right wing in this country defund them in a vain crusade against gov't waste that started in the 90s.

Restore the federal funding that was pulled to line the pockets of the 1% and problem solved. Public Universities go back to being an extraordinary value for everyone (including society at large) and b.s. diploma mills like ITT wither and die in the market (and not just because Obama calls them on their scams).

Yes, there are plenty of them

[rsilvergun]

If you're parents make $49k/yr you won't get the super low interest loans. If their credit is good (like mine) you'll get 10.5%. I just did this for my kid. If their credit is shit (say because they've been living off credit cards and scored an OK job 1 year before the kids hit college) you are all kinds of fucked. There were plenty of folks offering me 15% loans. The worse your credit the higher the loan amount.

We've been gutting education funding for 20 years. This is the result. College really is un-affordable for some. But since it's been affordable for most for 50 years nobody believes you when you tell them that. Humans only seem to learn from direct personal experience. When the economy tanked and outsourcing accelerated I remember seeing all these guys I know go off and try to get some of that gov't cheese they were sure was out there for them to snack on until another gig to come along. You wouldn't believe how bitter they were when they found out it wasn't there.

Re:Yes, there are plenty of them

[SecurityGuy]

We've been gutting education funding for 20 years. This is the result. College really is un-affordable for some.

Yes, it's not affordable for some, including my own kids. It's not because we've been gutting funding, though. It's because prices have been increasing stupidly faster than inflation with no real justification. Part of the problem is actually that we keep throwing money at the problem. We need to start saying "NO!" to colleges that want $50,000/year in tuition, and even $20,000 IMO. The solution isn't finding more of someone else's money. It's asking why it costs so much in the first place, and fixing it.

To take things old school...

[buddyglass]

Caveat Emptor.

Re:Really too Difficult to Happen in Europe?

[cf91993]

We have lots of problems in Europe too but somehow such a rip off were rather difficult here.

Just because education in Europe is "free," that does not mean that somebody is not paying for it! Society-at-large does through forceful taxation. You say that such a rip off cannot be pulled off in Europe, then? Tell that to the masses of unemployed youth in the EU's southern flank (the so-called "PIGS" nations; I don't know much about the situation in Germany). And I am not talking about women's studies majors; I am talking about graduates of hard-core STEM subjects. When a student's education is wasted, somebody always loses, be it the student himself and/or society-at-large in the case of Europe's public education. Unfortunately, it seems that the situation in the US, too, is getting bad, even for honorable STEM graduates, thanks to outsourcing. Virtually all colleges, not just of the ITT and DeVry milieu, inflate their post-graduation employability statistics by counting graduates who got any odd job, even if that job requires no diploma, as "success" stories. That's fraud! (And if academia is not supposed to necessarily provide employment but, rather, some sort of intellectual enrichment and teach the student how to think, etc., etc., why bother with post-graduation employment statistics in the first place?) Professor Doom's blog (example link below) details how college admins rake in the cash, while much of the real teaching is done by adjunct profs who are underpaid and may be disposed of easily. (I don't always fully agree with him because his blogs tend to lump all professors together, while, e.g., a professor of medicine usually earns a lot more than an English professor, but his blogs are full of facts and statistics detailing the rotten state of the so-called higher education in the US.) Overstaffed and overpaid college administrations, useless glitzy buildings, athletics... —everything but real education and all fueled by student loans. A bubble waiting to burst! http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2015/12/higher-ed-as-speculative-bubble.html

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[hey!]

We need people who have been exposed to different ideas and know how to think critically and express themselves.

We also need advanced vocational training (e.g. in engineering, business, and applied art)..

These are two different needs that are not always both (or either) satisfied by college. But it's safe to say it works for some people. It is still theoretically possible to become an architect in some states through a ten year apprenticeship, but the paths to most advanced professions include a bachelor's degree somewhere along the way: engineer, physician, lawyer, teacher, accountant. The kind of person who successfully becomes a well-rounded autodidact will do even better if he can find a school that caters to his type of thinker.

The fundamental problem with higher education is the model is medieval. Five hundred years ago a gentlemen could go school for a few years as a young man, purchase a library on his way back home and spend the rest of his life surrounded by as close an approximation of the sum total of human knowledge as one can wish for. Modern higher education should probably be life-long.

A lot of what they try to teach you in a liberal arts education is wasted on the young anyway. Trust me, when you're forty you'll be able to appreciate what a great book has to say about the human condition a lot more when you're forty than when you're twenty. Think of it as something to look forward to.

Vocational knowledge needs continual touching up too, but beyond that people should strive to become ever better-educated in general throughout their lives, a task that universities aren't particularly engaged in. It seems to me a foolish oversight, since once you graduate as a 23 year-old they spend the rest of their lives trying to finagle their way into your will.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[hey!]

Reallly, the best people? Like Linus Torvalds (U of Helsinki), Guido van Rossum (U of Amsterdam), Larry Wall (UC Berkeley grad school), Ken Thompson (UC Berkeley too), James Gosling (Carnegie Mellon),or Dennis Ritchie (Harvard)? Those kind of "best technical people"?

I expect by "best technical people" you mean "best at the places I've worked", and I'm guessing they draw from the middle of the deck: people with a university degree and mediocre talent, and talented people with a partial university degree. Someone with two or three years of college and real talent is bound to trump someone with no talent and as many years of schooling as you care to.

There are real problems with the university education system, no question. One of them is that it's slanted toward people with lots of money. Even with financial aids and many tens of thousands of dollars of loans, that doesn't help nearly as much as having enough money to pay for an extra semester, which is why many working class people I know found themselves in a position where they weren't quite able to finish their degree. Kids who were just like them, except they had well-heeled professional parents, finished much more often because their parents kept pouring money into their education.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[hey!]

Not exactly rocket science working that out, given that the phrase "the best technical people I've met" appeared in his post.

You stupid Belgian twat.

Which would normally be .. where? You know I worked for a number of years without a degree, before going back to school, and I joined IEEE (as an associate member) and ACM. The best technical people I met were through there, not work.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[lucm]

It's the first time I see someone bragging about being a member of the IEEE, so let's see what they have to say about "associate members":

Associate member grade is designed for technical and non-technical individuals who do not meet the qualifications for member grade but who wish to benefit from membership and partnership in IEEE, and for those who are progressing, through continuing education and work experience, toward qualifications for member grade.

So in a nutshell, you're paying them $200 a year to be a wannabe IEEE member. Sounds like a great investment, although I'd personally spend that money at a stripclub, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[lucm]

So you have physically met how many of those smart IEEE people? And how long has that interaction lasted?

Larry Ellison is on that list!

[RuffMasterD]

Please, for the love of humanity, I beg you, don't drop out of college.

Let's be honest...

[PortHaven]

The same claims are true of many colleges, especially community colleges. Furthermore, can we nix the non-profit vs profit criticism. ITT, Phoenix, etc. Sure, they're for-profit learning centers....how about we just call them "honest".

Yale University sits on a $20-$25 billion savings. They earn something close to $1.5 billion a year. How is that not profit?

How many universities force transfer students to take classes over, just for added revenue. In fact, one of the biggest nightmares is dealing with credits and credit programs. Folks like me have 5 years of college credits, but no degree....you can look to transfer, but your 5 years of college credit boils down to 1 1/2 years of their program. Your 4 biology classes don't count, they want you to take a different biology. Oh, and you have to re-do freshmen chemistry...again...mandatory.

It's ridiculous. And the truth is, the entire university model is going extinct. It used to be the place to learn, the gatekeeper per say. But now, the internet can teach you almost everything you'd learn in basic 4 year college, and likely do a better job. In 20-30 years, 80% of colleges will be gone. The premiere colleges like Yale, Harvard, etc. will remain. But they will educate differently. Degrees will be cheaper, largerly online, and on the crème of the crop will be invited to actually reside on prestigious campuses.

That is the future.....it'll arrive in a couple decades.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[hey!]

Over the course of decades.

No different than vocational school

[Not-a-Neg]

What ITT and similar places provide is education similar to what any teenager could get at a vocational school. The problem is that applicants read the pamphlet saying ITT has placed students at companies like IBM, Apple, and so forth but fail to realize those students got entry-level temp work like Administrative Assistant, QA Tester, etc... When they find out they have no chance of getting a 6-figure senior level position they feel like they've been lied to, in actuality it was just the school not volunteering to tell them the reality of what types of jobs they would be employable for. While the financial predatory practices are shameful, the instruction provided by ITT was legitimate just not what students believed it to would lead to.

I considered going to one of the competitors of ITT after my Senior year of High School but I had already been working in the real world for 2 years at that point and realized the cost of the education was high, the jobs were ones I had already been working and I could get a much cheaper and transferable education from the local city college that would leave the option of going to University available for me. The downside to not going to the vocational place was missing out on the far superior hands-on courses they provided that city college did not.

I do not think less of anyone for going to such a place to get their basic training in an industry, so long as they kept their expectations in check. I would certainly hire someone from such a place for an entry level position but that's because I already know what to expect is the limit of their ability.

Re:score inflation

[BarbaraHudson]

Pretty much so. Or do you really believe that classrooms have such a homogeneous group of students? Besides, if they're the bottom of the barrel and you pass them anyway, you're not giving anyone an incentive to try.

Re:We don't need an 4 year high cost party to get

[lucm]

You don't answer as to how many so let's just go ahead and discard your point that my work experience is a less sinificant "sample" than your experience with IEEE geniuses.

Re:more anti-ITT FUD on slashdot

[Rakarra]

And for the way the government killed them: instead of coming up with some meassure that would let the students finish their degrees somehow,

The charge is that the degrees are worthless. So why throw more money into the system to finish the degrees if it's a waste of time?

But they're separate

[DarthVain]

Sort of, but not always.

Some of the better setups at least from my perspective (and experience) is a University education that incorporates (and credits) other technical educational sources. One such method are co-op partnerships between a university and a specific industry (which I didn't do), and another is partnerships with community collages (which I did do).

So for example (taken from my experience), you could take a CS degree at a university, then midway through in your 3rd year, you attend college (in my case for GIS), do well enough (80%) and all your credits from college get applied to your university degree (which I didn't do (79%) and had to take another year more less because I enjoyed my time at college a little too much), which would essentially give you a free year of community collage as part of your degree. Giving you a hounours degree with what they call "a special emphasis", along with the college certification.

So you still take GIS courses for example in my case in University, they are just significantly different than what you would take in college. So it's still separate in terms of content, however it is combined in terms of time and money.

As a side note, community college is a bit weird also when everyone in your program is in their mid-twenties or older (there were post-grads also), while all the other programs are essentially 18 and 19 year olds, makes for some odd and sometimes surreal evenings...

Also well it wasn't so much that I enjoyed myself too much (though I did), one of the primary reasons for my stupid grade was the fact that I'd already taken C programming at the time in university, and they did an intro C course at college also (which was terrible, and the instructor was horrible, made mistakes constantly). So after sitting through a few of his classes I just stopped going just doing the tests and assignments. Had a 90-something going into the final. Apparently the instructor took umbrage to me skipping all his classes and gave me something like 10% or something crazy like that. After when I asked him to specifically point out any mistake I made and explain why it was incorrect, he refused saying it was "just wrong". It wasn't until I went to appeal the grade to the dean of the program that I realized that he *was* the dean of the program that year (years later I heard he was fired, didn't shed a tear). That mistake was on me I suppose. At any rate even with that I still easily passed the class, only it tanked the rest of my scores below the 80% threshold by 1% which was a bitter pill to take. I still had the option to go above him to the dean of the entire school, but in the end I decided to call it a lesson learned and move on with my life, in hindsight I should have just dutifully attended his classes each week and just spaced out for the duration. Anyway despite all of that it was still a good experience, was hired the week after my university exams were done in my field of work, and its been about 15 years or so now working in what I went to school for (more less, more DB less GIS now). A lot of people certainly can't say that.

Re:more anti-ITT FUD on slashdot

[iggymanz]

Not able to get a tech job in early 1980s? you knew some slackers

The only thing a college degree is good for

[Puppet Master]

is to prove to prospective employers that you "can learn or be taught".

Nothing I learned in college I have yet to or have ever used. Each job I have held since graduating in 1989, I have been trained on or have had to teach myself.
I even started a successful side business in 2003 that is still going and bringing in about 65K a year in addition to my regular salary.

None of the stuff I do (geek) I learned in school and I went to a trade school for Computer Science.

The piece of paper that you get at graduation is virtually worthless and only proves that you have the ability to be taught.