4 years of CEET

[chupa]

Its nice to find a place with people who feel the same way I do. It will feel good to get this off my chest.

I wasn't a great student in HS. I had a sub 2.0 GPA. I was the kid that barely passed every class except computer class. President of the Tech club for 2 years, etc etc. After being denied admittance to USF (big shocker, right? heh) I panicked as to what to do next with my life which is when I first steeped into ITT. I have no idea why I didn't even think of a community collage. I guess I just thought ITT would be the better choice.

I started right out of HS, in the summer of 03. The first class was big. maybe 35 kids. which quickly dropped down to 25, then 20, then 15 by the end of the first quarter.

Thankfully I was able to test out of a lot of the first classes. Algebra and some computer classes. At least I saved some bucks there.

I don't remember when it was exactly but I would look around and see some of my class mates and wonder why the hell they are still around. They show up for class maybe every other week and when they do just sleep the entire time.

There were a couple classes I would call non important, things like networking or something not totally related to the CEET program where it was totally obvious that the instructor had no idea what he was doing and was just reading from the book. I didn't mind this that much because as I said I didn't care about the class that much.

For the core classes (AC/DC theory, active devices, etc) the instructors seemed to know what they were talking about. I have nothing to compare it too unfortunately. I had the same teacher for AC theory as I did in the networking class I spoke of earlier. After seeing him teach in bother classes it was very obvious that he was there to teach electronics not networking. Fortunately that didn't happen too often, but it did happen.

Fast forward 2 years and I was done with the program. It was at this time when my eyes started to open up that this was a bad idea. I felt like I was trapped though. I had made up in my mind that those 2 years of my life were wasted if i didn't finish out the 4 year course. My line of reasoning was; ok i wasted 2 years of my life here, I can walk away now or put in another 2 years and come out with SOMETHING at least. So I regrettably signed up for another 2.

The online classes were such a pain. So much busy work. But i suspect that any remote class like that feels that way. There was one writing class where we were forced into teams for a group final research paper on a topic. Me and 5 others. 1 of which was in my core classes. The other 4 were somewhere across the state, people we never meet. The project was for everyone in the group to do a research project on a specific something or other relating to the group topic. In the end we would combine all our papers into one massive one. The problem is (as with most people enrolled in the online classes) a couple people in our group only logged in to the course once every 3 weeks. So essentially we were always missing 2 peoples work in the weekly turn-ins. The instructor of the course punished the 4 of us in the group who did the work as instructed with the justification that it happens in the real world at work so get used to it. To which I say if this happened in the real world those 2 people would of been fired and replaced 2 weeks ago. That was not a pleasant course.

At the beginning of the 4th year it was clear to me that at this point there was no way you would be failing out as long as you paid your tuition. The teacher would massage the grades and issue extra credit when needed, anything to keep a student from failing. it was frustrating seeing this when you bust your butt and one of your peers gets a free ride.

I very much enjoyed the last couple classes as our instructor was a very dedicated teacher and a star in his field. He taught because he wanted to and did a great job. If you showed interest in the subject he would go out of his way to teach you. After all students just there to pass left it was nice just having the people that wanted to be there and him. That's probably the single good thing about my 4 years there.

So anyway. in '07 I "graduated" the BSCEET with honors and the alpha beta kappa award whatever thing.

Career placement consisted of a flier sent to me every week with WERE HIRING fliers from best buy and other entry level jobs which I was qualified for 4 years prior. There was 1 job prospect I found there that I applied and interviewed for and was hired. Shortly after working there for 3 weeks I realized what a shady place it was and quit after management fed me lines about why things where the way they are there. ITT career called me up a week later to follow up on my employment (for their stats im sure) which I told them I had quit and explained to her the shady business going on there and suggested the place should be removed from the job lists. She said she wont do that because they were partnered or something like that to get new grads. I received the weekly flier for about a year after that until a new career placement head took over and asked everyone to send in updated information which I didn't do.

So 3 years later I am unemployed. I don't necessarily blame ITT for this, but they sure didn't help to the standards that I was expecting. I do freelance consulting work when its available. I specialize with microcontrolers and similar digital engineering. Most of it is self taught.

The most frustrating thing is I feel like a total Idiot for sticking around there for the full 4 years. I feel like it would be better to not mention it in an interview rather than say I spent 4 years at ITT. Because anyone who pays their tuition is just about guaranteed a diploma, it makes the diploma worth nothing. I'm a smart guy. Smarter than everyone else I graduated with at least. Most of them are working as installers for the cable company or lead solder whatever. Jobs that you don't need to go to school for. I cant do these kind of jobs, they bore the hell out of me. Thats why I went to school, or so I thought, to avoid these jobs. I guess they are doing better than me though :-/

I guess to summarize everything Ill say this; Did I learn from ITT? Yes. Was it comparable to what I would of learned at a university or community collage? Probably not. I cant compare because Ive never been. Do I feel like I was ripped off? Yes. Would I do it again? No, defiantly not.

Ive been kicking around the idea of going back to school. Community collage or University to essentially try and redo it all over again. The thing is with the student loan debts from ITT there's no way i can afford it. I would need a full ride or its not happening. The thought of having to sink another 4 years makes me cringe enough as it is.

Thanks for reading my book here. It feels good to get it out there.

[Bootsy]

The only reason ITT has online classes is because they are jumping on Phoenixes bandwagon. Whenever my fellow students complained about the online classes we were fed a lie. ITT stated, “Graduating students were losing jobs because employers were asking graduates to complete online classes upon condition of employment which they were not prepared for.” Then ITT stated, “These online classes are an absolute necessity and mandatory for the student’s success. “

Personally I think that ITT is suffering from a monstrous case of penis envy when it comes to Phoenix online. ITT just simply wants to be thought of as an enterprising 21st century school of tomorrow. It has nothing to do with student success and everything to do with swelling enrollment numbers and increasing profits. ITT is just as happy to see their graduates working at Taco Bell or Best Buy as they are with Cisco or Samsung.

There are a lot of students that don’t drop out because they feel they are in too deep. There is irony in this. If ITTs tuition cost was less they would probably have more dropouts. If a student was in debt 4700 dollars and wasn’t happy with the quality of his education he would just blow it off as crappy year. But the reality is that students are in debt up to 12000 dollars and you can’t just walk away from that and call it a crappy year. So what we see is ITTs bogus and bloated tuition rates dragging students ever deeper and ever further down.

I am not surprised to see at least some success coming from what you have taught yourself. There were a few successful people in my class but that was only because they already knew most things. There again, self taught individuals.

Most of it is self taught