Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 325 posts

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#71

Post by JackFr »

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…

So basically its a scam to defraud the government, in which students are merely the conduit for the money

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#72

Post by gohrt »

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 do private lenders lend to ITT students?

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#74

Post by selectodude »

gohrt wrote: post #72
jmcgough wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do private lenders lend to ITT students?

Because student loans are guaranteed by the federal government. Student can default and the bank will still get their money.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#75

Post by gohrt »

jessedhillon wrote: post #69
colordrops wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What bias? You can't get a degree in HVAC repair at a traditional university. It's a different labor pool.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#76

Post by geomark »

buddylw wrote: post #47
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…

The quality of education varies between institutions. I graduated from DeVry a little over 10 years ago. I got a decent education (ABET accredited B.S. Computer Engineering Technology) and was able to put myself through school and get a good job. I could have done it a little cheaper in a state school and a lot cheaper with a community college, but for what it was I don't really have any regrets. My only critique is…

I also graduated from DeVry quite a few years ago. I attended on a FISL (Federally Insured Student Loan it was called then). The FISL was easy to get because the school had a track record of nearly 100% hire rate for graduating students.

A few weeks before graduation an army of potential employers came and interviewed at the school. I received three offers. Everyone in my class who graduated had at least one offer. The education we received was solid, as evidenced by the demand from employers who knew the reputation of the school. I got a good job and paid off my loan.

It is true that the attrition rate among students was pretty high. Lots of people were admitted who weren't the least bit interested in attending class. Some even repeated a term a couple of times while they hung out and partied. They shouldn't have been there. If they were on a FISL they probably either defaulted or someone else paid it off.

I don't know what DeVry is like these days. But if I had to do it again in the same situation I was in back then I would do it. It opened a good career path for me.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#77

Post by flukus »

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.

Are 9-volts not around anymore? I haven't seen one, but I don't use anything they used to be common in like toys and radios.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#78

Post by gohrt »

pmichaud wrote: post #36
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 provi…

You're missing a key component: ITT and Phoenix recruit students who don't gain admission to any other public and private schools, a group that is generally of lower general intelligence and critical thinking ability than other college students, and more susceptible to marketing lies. These schools are unlike competitive non-profit and public colleges, in that they are delighted to enroll wholly unqualified students.

Re: California bans ITT tech from accepting new students

#79

Post by WhitneyLand »

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.)

totally agree. also most CS degrees don't have a ton of EE courses, I only had a handful.

even better, learn programming on your own before college. then hacking out assignments is easy, and you can form a great appreciation for the theoretical work.

Focusing on practice or theory alone misses some of the magic, imo.

Post reply on HN