What should I do? A friend, attending ITT

[1milecrash]

A group of my closest highschool friends and I all went to college right out of high school. Most of us all went to the same small state university an hour away, and one by one we transferred to larger universities.

One of these close friends went to work after high school, and had a pretty good job.

I think in a way, he wanted to fit in with us and attend college. I could tell, I hoped he would.

So one day, he said he was going to attend ITT Tech. I saw their commercials, I didn't know anything about the place. I thought it was weird, to be honest, a college that runs for profit and has prime time commercials. However, it never crossed my mind that it was.. what the people on this site say it is. He's been attending for about a year now, I think.

At first, we made jokes about his tuition bill, which was $47,000 for two years. We're all attending state universities and are paying maybe 5000 a year - tuition alone. However, we thought it was at least going to an education.


Now I'm reading all these things, facebook groups, this forum, and I'm really getting freaked out that he may have made a huge mistake. Is there really no hope that his degree in video game design from ITT will land him anything? He is under the impression that he won't even have to worry about money after he's done - he's set. We usually don't say anything.

Now I'm weighing the idea of telling him or showing him these things. I just know he'll be mad and think it's some kind of way to put him down for his school choice.

[Krugg]

In short no employer will take him seriously with his "degree" from ITT Tech. Its usually agreed that if you went to ITT Tech in the IT field you are labeled as an idiot no matter if you are a computer/design wiz.

[sevenalive]

Most likely he will be defensive and dismiss it. Nobody wants to be told they are throwing away money. It's like those stupid power balance bracelets that are just holographic foil and rubber. It's hard for them to believe they wasted money and in this case time.

I was in a similar situation when I found out some co-workers went to a similar school called collins college. They love to run the video game angle.

At best he might get some experience in a few programs but they won't go into nearly enough detail that he would need to do a job. He might even have trouble getting an internship, which would be highly beneficial. He will need experience. That is a big problem with these for-profit schools. They pretend you're going to get hired making 60K+ a year. A beginner doesn't make nearly that and it's hard to find entry level professional jobs, all the employers want 5+ years job experience with several different programs.

Then again, he has been there a year, his eyes might be opening. Most don't seem to realize it until they are a few months in. Most of the time it's a year, that is part of the reason behind the site name.

When I told these co-workers what I knew and my own experience, they got defensive. They said "well it's not like that", etc. I asked them what projects have they done, how many games have they completed. They couldn't answer, they brushed me off but I think I made an impression. The only good gaming school that I know of is DigiPen because Valve hired some developers from their that came up with the concept of portal. I'm not sure about Full Sail.

Just search on youtube, some students post videos of the work and even the advanced stuff is very primitive.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noq1wULl ... re=related

He should be doing projects at home and not just relying on ITT, he should start learning on his own with the internet and tutorials. No school by itself can get you a job, especially with the IT field. It also comes down to how much he is really interested in the field. If he really was interested he would be doing it at home and learning as much as he can. He might also just think "Hey I can get a job playing video games", something the commercials just love to promote.

I wasn't in animation, I am a software programmer but it's still the same. I was programming years before ITT and the students who never touched it were just a tad better off than when they started. They still wouldn't know how to make a useful quality program and they never even touched GUI's in the classes.
When I went to community college, I learned more in a week, than the students learn in a year going to ITT.

People think ITT is more fast pace but it isn't. The classes are 4 hours long once a week, all year round with 2 week breaks in-between. You would think you would learn a lot, but you don't.

Good luck and if you decide to talk to him, let us know how it went.

[ITMonkey]

You definitely should talk to your friend, the money he's going to own on his loan is reason enough to talk to him. $47,000 + the capitalized interest that Sallie Mae tacks on when the grace period is over= your friend paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $400/month for between 15-20 years. He really should get out while he can, owing part of that amount is a lot better than owing all of it.

I "graduated" last September. I listed my ITT "degree" on my resume and I didn't get one call for an interview, not one. I then took ITT off of my resume and started applying to Entry-Level positions in my career field and I started to get a few calls, but they were for jobs that hire people off of the street, my "degree" was useless and I was actually laughed out of two of those interviews once they learned I had attended ITT. ITT Career Services was useless, they did manage to get me an interview for an entry-level warehouse job at a company that refurbished older PCs, and they heavily encouraged me to take that minimum-wage job because they wanted to be able to say that I was "working in the industry". No one is set money-wise after earning an Associates Degree no matter where it's from.

I did finally manage to earn a couple of pretty decent technical certifications, but I had to go buy the study manuals myself, and about 90% of the material was not covered at ITT. I could have earned these certs for about $800 at Borders instead of $800 at Borders + the $19,000 I ended up owing because of my time at ITT.

No one wants to be told that they made a bad decision but a friend would at least try to stop someone from throwing a lot of good money after bad.

Also, the game design field isn't exactly the most stable career field out there. Can your friend find even one grad from his campus who is successful in that field?