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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

#61

Post by gremlinsinc »

jmcgough wrote: post #59
crazy1van wrote: post #51

I agree with a lot of the complaints I've heard about ITT. They seem to broadly fall into three camps: 1) They are expensive and rely on their students getting gov't loans, 2) They don't adequately prepare students for the work place, and 3) The teachers aren't very good. I think those are all great reasons to not go to ITT. But, I think those reasons could also apply to a whole lot of other schools, profit, non-prof…

Yes, these are problems that are present for some other schools, but ITT Tech is far worse. For-profit schools aren't even in the same ballpark as other types of schools, in terms of the default rate. These are businesses where the "admissions counselors" are salespeople who are told to lie to people and strongarm them into attending, taking out massive government loans and effectively stealing money from the federal…

why not allow them to operate instead of force them out--make them pay for all defaulted loans above 8% -- that might make them work harder to get their students gainfully employed so they can cover their loans. -- not that I like ITT, I abhor them, and think that Bootcamps are WAY better in terms of quality education and quality of job prospects.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#62

Post by r00fus »

Kadin wrote: post #54
imh wrote: post #21

I think this is a fantastic step in the right direction, but what is the legal justification here? ITT is in no way alone in being evil and predatory, so I'm surprised I keep hearing about crackdowns for them but not for anyone else. I'd love to see some new rules to keep all of these predatory places from operating instead of what kinda seems like a picking out a scapegoat. (Or is all this recent news more general a…

California would probably like to ban all of the for-profits, but can't. ITT, however, stepped so far beyond the pale that it gave regulators an opportunity to punish them. California is basing its move on a US Department of Education decision, which itself was based on a history of previous litigation, which started because of concerns over ITT's accreditation. Basically: no accreditation, no loans, which given ITT'…

To keep with the analogy, do you think the Robespierre will arrive to usher out the age of neofuedalism?

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#63

Post by neffy »

sanderjd wrote: post #56
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that was also my experience with my degree from a major university. I told them I wanted to be a computer programmer, they said "Oh, you want a Computer Science major, then." I didn't realize until after graduating that I'd learned about electrical engineering and processor architecture and compiler design and lots and lots of math, but almost no actual, y'know, computer programming. Pretty much had to start…

But...if you learn all that stuff, isn't programming pretty easy? It's just specific abstractions on top of the fundamentals you already know... (I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm honestly mystified by your perspective here.)

Not really. Usually you get to learn all that stuff, and you get to learn programming doing the assignments, and projects. But there are some places out there that teach a very theoretical course, so unless students seek out programming experience they won´t get it.

Programming is hard, and for some people it´s hard bordering on impossible. A surprising number of the latter still manage to get CS degrees.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#64

Post by douche »

sanderjd wrote: post #56
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that was also my experience with my degree from a major university. I told them I wanted to be a computer programmer, they said "Oh, you want a Computer Science major, then." I didn't realize until after graduating that I'd learned about electrical engineering and processor architecture and compiler design and lots and lots of math, but almost no actual, y'know, computer programming. Pretty much had to start…

But...if you learn all that stuff, isn't programming pretty easy? It's just specific abstractions on top of the fundamentals you already know... (I don't mean to be dismissive, I'm honestly mystified by your perspective here.)

Judging by the other people in my CS program, no, it is not. I don't know whether they just didn't put any time in actually programming, compared to the more theoretical CS stuff that was explicitly in the curriculum, but they were largely still flailing away at null pointers and seg-faults in the upper-level courses when it came to the final projects that had to have actual, working code produced. These were smart, smart people, too.

I dropped out of the CS department after I screwed up my math pre-reqs, studied history, and spent what time I wasn't drinking beer or playing basketball, fooling with game programming. That actually left me in good stead when I managed to leverage the few programming-centric courses in the CS department into a minor - I still can't do proofs, but I can sling code and I read enough Joel on Software and Coding Horror to pick up some software engineering and architecture by osmosis.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#65

Post by grej »

ITT seems like an easy first place to go because of their shady rep, but I think the risk here is that well entrenched interests in will ultimately give bootcamps and other online training courses the same treatment if they start eating into the educational establishment's pie too much. We have to be careful of a slippery slope.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#66

Post by JackFr »

splicer wrote: post #41
iamdave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me flip that around and offer that I've had "technical" recruiters fail their end of this transaction as well. One experience involved a recruiter who wanted a compete rewrite of a CV portion outlining a SQL project from planning to continuous implementation models I built. This on top of 8 years of other experience in data design and management. The recruiter wanted to pass on my resume because I had failed to i…

> refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA Batteries on his resume LOL! It won't be long before the majority of EEs under 25 won't even know what an AA battery is. In fact, I bet it would be pretty hard today to find someone in their 20s who knows what a 9-volt is.

Let alone experience licking one.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#68

Post by vacri »

splicer wrote: post #41
iamdave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me flip that around and offer that I've had "technical" recruiters fail their end of this transaction as well. One experience involved a recruiter who wanted a compete rewrite of a CV portion outlining a SQL project from planning to continuous implementation models I built. This on top of 8 years of other experience in data design and management. The recruiter wanted to pass on my resume because I had failed to i…

> refusing to hire a qualified electrical engineer because he didn't list AA Batteries on his resume LOL! It won't be long before the majority of EEs under 25 won't even know what an AA battery is. In fact, I bet it would be pretty hard today to find someone in their 20s who knows what a 9-volt is.

A 9-volt is the boxy one you put on your tongue to get a little tingle!

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#69

Post by jessedhillon »

colordrops wrote: post #57
crazy1van wrote: post #51

I agree with a lot of the complaints I've heard about ITT. They seem to broadly fall into three camps: 1) They are expensive and rely on their students getting gov't loans, 2) They don't adequately prepare students for the work place, and 3) The teachers aren't very good. I think those are all great reasons to not go to ITT. But, I think those reasons could also apply to a whole lot of other schools, profit, non-prof…

You're analyses of #2 and #3 are too crude. In the case of #2, there is a difference between teaching subjects that are not in demand and teaching subjects poorly. ITT is in the latter. For #3, at a good university, you may have some bad teachers, but the majority are usually good, and the overall experience is beneficial. This is also probably not the case with ITT.

How can we legitimately know whether an ITT grad is sufficiently equivalent to one from a traditional university? The complaints from the state focus default rates, but if there's a hiring bias against hiring for-profit graduates, then default rates are measuring the strength of that bias.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#70

Post by vacri »

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.

My tech lead was bemoaning a round of applicants for a senior position, where some of the candidates couldn't even conceptually 'get' FizzBuzz, let alone code it.
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