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California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

latimes.com

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Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#31

Post by jorts »

increment_i wrote: post #8
jorts wrote: post #4

At my last company we had a slew of ITT graduates apply for a role one time. I talked to probably 10 or so of them. They seemed to have received little to no educational value from their time at ITT. I assume they were all promised great jobs, but all of them were not remotely qualified to get even a basic entry level technical role. I felt terrible for them paying money for the "education" that they received.

I'd be interested to hear what you would expect as bare minimums for a "basic entry level technical role." I've heard of recruiters being dumbfounded at CS grads not being able to code FizzBuzz and to be honest I can't believe it.

The role we were hiring for was for tier 1 desktop support. It involved basic Windows and network troubleshooting. Most of the people we hired for this role were self taught and picked up their skills troubleshooting issues on their home machines.

I also would be shocked if a CS grad could not complete FizzBuzz, but apparently that happens.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#32

Post by twunde »

gdwatson wrote: post #3

Does anyone have references to more specific accusations against ITT? There are lots of vague claims in the article, but the only semi-specific ones -- misleading students about program quality and pushing them into irresponsible loans -- could just as easily be laid at the feet of public and private nonprofit colleges. I have no particular reason to trust or distrust ITT. But it strikes me as a trade school that pre…

The earlier Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/2... mentions a fairly large list of investigations and lawsuits. Yes there is some political pressure on for-profit colleges, education always has some politics involved, but this long list of investigations and the seriousness of the allegations paints a picture of a company that has utterly failed to meet regulations and likely has massive financial improprieties. Most companies with regulatory issues, even fairly major ones will settle the multiple lawsuits and then put in place controls.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#33

Post by douche »

imh wrote: post #29
gdwatson wrote: post #3

Does anyone have references to more specific accusations against ITT? There are lots of vague claims in the article, but the only semi-specific ones -- misleading students about program quality and pushing them into irresponsible loans -- could just as easily be laid at the feet of public and private nonprofit colleges. I have no particular reason to trust or distrust ITT. But it strikes me as a trade school that pre…

The gist is that they let anyone in (and advertise heavily to try to let everyone in), regardless of their ability. They also charge exorbitant amounts that students can only pay because of their government loans. That might sound a little like the general complaints about college, except that they don't really offer anything in the way of actual education, and the costs are really high, even for U.S. colleges. So wh…

> (and advertise heavily to try to let everyone in)

Notably, they advertise heavily on Comedy Central and Cartoon Network during the Adult Swim "burner hours". It's not a good look when you're targeting the same demographics as phone sex lines...

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#34

Post by jmcgough »

electic wrote: post #11

What about coding bootcamps? Aren't they worse? They try to make you a "coder" in a couple of months and promise people jobs if they finish the course. It sounds eerily the same thing as ITT...

Depends a lot on the bootcamp, and how motivated the person participant is. Some of my coworkers are bootcamp graduates and all are fantastic.

I met someone when I was at college who went to ITT and said that he paid $30k and learned nothing from unqualified instructors, he felt (and clearly was) scammed.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#35

Post by zitterbewegung »

rdtsc wrote: post #18

Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams. I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans). Would it be ha…

Digipen has some alumni in Valve that worked on mechanics for portal and portal 2 http://digipen.edu

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#36

Post by pmichaud »

rdtsc wrote: post #18

Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams. I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans). Would it be ha…

This is a classic problem.

You have a situation where the quality of the thing (in this case teaching) isn't easily known ahead of time, so the success of the organization isn't dependent on the quality of teaching, but instead is dependent on the quality of marketing (roughly).

So now you have a bunch of organizations with limited resources competing in the same space, and we'd like it if the organizations who provided the best education were winning. And providing a good education isn't opposed to also having good marketing, in principle.

The problem is that the organizations that try to be good at both teaching and marketing are competing against organizations that are trying to ONLY be good at marketing. The marketing organization will tend to win over time because it's easier to be good at one instead of being good at both, and the organizations that are just good at teaching die because they are bad at marketing.

tldr; Teaching is hard. Marketing is hard. Both at the same time is hard squared.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#37

Post by swingbridge »

electic wrote: post #11

What about coding bootcamps? Aren't they worse? They try to make you a "coder" in a couple of months and promise people jobs if they finish the course. It sounds eerily the same thing as ITT...

I think it's hard to lump them all into one bucket. One still needs to be quite ambitious and have a good CV going into the bootcamp, but I've seen people come out of these programs that have landed good job. Are they the world's best coders, no but they know enough to join a team and add value.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#38

Post by dmix »

rdtsc wrote: post #18

Are there any good ITT / University of Phoenix type schools? They all seem like scams. I don't count community colleges here, I know those can be very good. My wife went to one, got great education, was able to pay it by just budgeting money every month out of her part time work. Then switched to a 4 years univeristy, transfered credits and graduated with honors after 2 more years (with minimal loans). Would it be ha…

Besides the financial issues that these companies created, the main issue is the quality of teachers.

There are so so many of these colleges that the pool of quality teachers are almost all going to be in universities.

I took a business course for a year and all of the teachers were at most middle managers, marketing managers, or long retired company-men from IBM or other big corps.

They all just read off of powerpoint slides and rarely provided any valuable insight on their own, by design.

Mostly just a sea of mediocrity by people who were well intentioned but never made it far in industry so they got an easy job that's likely personally rewarding but not exceptionally valuable to the students vs reading a few books or any level of experience on the job.

And besides 50% of my class was Chinese kids who paid 5x as much as me in tuition to be there and had a poor grasp of English. These kids were the real target market. So quality wasn't necessarily the goal. Just filling seats and offices.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#39

Post by rahimnathwani »

jmharvey wrote: post #22
electic wrote: post #11

What about coding bootcamps? Aren't they worse? They try to make you a "coder" in a couple of months and promise people jobs if they finish the course. It sounds eerily the same thing as ITT...

I'd imagine it depends on the "bootcamp." It seems like many of the more reputable ones don't charge tuition and make their money on referral agreements for successful placements.

"It seems like many of the more reputable ones don't charge tuition"

The only one I know which doesn't charge is 42. Are there others? Which ones?

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