I would like to ask the editors of this site to plz take this and all other inquiries about ITT Tech SERIOUSLY! You are our ONLY hope for helping us get justice.
I have paid $35000 for a piece of paper that symbolizes nothing but a bad experience and a reminder as to why I had to go on to pay $60000 for a REAL degree from a REAL University, and there are thousands more out there giving this company ESI Millions if not Billions of dollars a year to only give students a temporary feeling of hope and realize later they have been ripped off.
If you or anyone you know has stock in ESI, please read my story or inform them of my story and all the stories on here about ITT and SELL, SELL, SELL and not to BUY, THAT STOCK plz stop making money off us poor students who got suckered in, it's the one of the only ways to shut this company down. If a lot of people knew ITT was ESI they would have reconsidered there decision to enroll and now reconsider hopefully buying that stock in the future
Here are some things to read before I start my horror story at ITT that has cost me lots of cash and could have ruined a lot of people's lives. This is a true story and I have tape recorded classes while attending that all have the instructor's permission that is proof of my story that can be used in a court of law as evidence. If hopefully a suit is filed
ITT is not a school; it is a corporation currently trading at 45$ a share on the NYSE as ESI. A goal of a corporation is to of course make profits. Unfortunately this company does it by trying to offer a bogus education, through lies, fraud, false promises. The University I attend now is not on the stock market and none are! Real schools aren't traded on the stock market and make there money because they're credible and give good educations, at ITT you are all PAWNS to anyone who owns stock in the company THEY DO NOT CARE about your education they care about making money in the market!
The teachers at ITT do not have teaching degrees and do not know how to communicate in a class room environment, and most don't even speak English. The credits earned at this school are useless NO SCHOOL WILL EXCEPT THEM EXCEPT DEVRY so don't even plan to go to a university if you want to continue your education unless you want to start over which I unfortunately had to do.
If you are really considering ITT for a school please read this as well don't them use there bullshit lies, and tactics into suckering you into enrolling, you can teach yourself more in 6 mo by some good books I could even recommend for you than going to this place and ill do it for free, its wrong, its fraud and the GOVERNMENT needs to step in and shut this down. Financial institutions need to drop ITT and stop borrowing money to students to pay for this bogus education that's the only way ITT be shut down, financial institutions should not fund students
My story is 100 percent true, you might think how that can go on in a school, well it does and it will if you enroll! If you are a former student, current student, employee, former employee please come forward with your story. I know there's a lot of people there that have similar stories all over the country; we must unite and stop this from continuing.
In March I had received a brochure in the mail about attending ITT for their new up and coming Computer Networking Systems degree. I had recently attended community college at a reputable school in Illinois, (College of Dupage), but wanted more of a direction to the right path. I always had loved working with computers so I thought I'd give ITT a call and set up an appt for further information. I was figuring the appt would be a simple meeting, discuss their programs, and maybe tour the school.
When I arrived at the corporation or so called institution, I was immediately greeted by the recruiter and brought in his office. We had simple conversation at first and then he started asking me more personal questions. Like what I want to get out of life, how proud do I want to make my family, if I want to be successful; all this seemed to be nonsense. If I had dreams of these goals the only way was to become a student at this school. He was telling me about their job placement and all the credentials the school has, (which I found out the hard way it's not true). At one point he even showed me projections of what I could expect to make when I graduate and they were not small numbers $45000-125000.
Thinking he was sincere I responded by telling him id like to take the placement test, and what the school seemed to have offered sounded fantastic. He then asked me if I had $100 to take the entrance test and apply for admissions on the spot. He seemed really concerned that I did not, and started questioning my seriousness about attending the school; it felt like he was putting me on a guilt trip. So I told him I'd go home talk to my parents and come back, so he gave me a deadline of 2hrs, which seemed kind of strange.
(I'm positive now that I look back at it he was receiving some sort of commission). I told my parents how incredible the school seemed and it was just what I was looking for. My mom wanted to do so thinking because we really could not afford it but I had begged (not telling her about the deadline which I should of) her and being so happy for me she gave me the money for the test. I arrived back an hour later with the money to show them I was serious and wanted success. They had told me to do the best I could do and that the test wasn't easy.
After taking the test it seemed too simple but was curious about my results. After the results were in they had told me I had passed with a fantastic score, one of the highest that has yet enrolled in the class. I asked to see my results and they told me that it's not policy and they can't.
I started class in June and reported to the bookstore first day of class to get my books, half the students were denied because they had not gotten their stock and it would take a few days Note - this happened every single semester I could never understand it, 35000$ we pay and there's no books???). We also received these 20 gig hard drives that could only be used at ITT because of the SCSI connectors with key lock on them. These were so we could supposedly load all these different operating systems and keep our work on them; we got to class about 15 of us all males and 1 female. We noticed that the equipment was way out of date, running nt4.0 and win98; on top of that we were all connected to the internet through an ISDN. 20pc's running on a network just as slow as a dial up connection.
The teacher walks in Mr. Raj and begins to teach class. Only problem is that he did not speak proper English and had a degree in RADIOLOGY not in anything related to the subjects he was teaching. He was Indian and had broken English so bad I would often tape record our classes so I could go back and prelisted because his English was so bad (With his permission on the audio tape to record, I have about 10 different classes during different semesters on tape, in them you can here what went on in class PROOF of what we went through. I originally saved these for study notes but later decided to save for evidence because we as a class were thinking of filing a class action suit; I do still have the tapes and can produce them upon request)
On our first break of our first day I was talking to Mike (a student) and asked him about his enrolling, he experienced the same thing. He was asked the same questions about wanting success and how only through ITT you can do that, the same load of crap they told me. Not only had that he told me he scored one of the highest scores on the test. Another student heard him (Jim) and said what "they told me I had the highest score". I also interrupted telling him I thought I had the highest.
We come to realize that about 8 out of the 15 students enrolled were all told that, and could not believe it, that's either the biggest coincidence ever or they made it easy on purpose so students can pass and get financial aid. I'm positive if one were to fail the test he would not be told.
The rest of the day we were given a lab, and the lab was not organized. We were supposed to open a computer and disassemble some basic parts of the pc and label them. Well first off there were only 6 pc's so we had to share some of us had to share 3 ways (35000$ were paying and not enough pc's???)
Mr. Raj was busy helping Patty the only female the entire time and would not get around to anyone else. We all eventually just wasted time till class was over but what we did what we were capable of by sharing books and since they don't tell you the names of the books you have to purchase them there. After the day was over we did not see another lab day until almost the end of the semester (what happened to hands on training they speak about?) Through my entire education we had aprox 30 days of lab out of 2yrs! After class I came home and I was questioning whether this was a good idea or not, not wanting to be a quitter I decided to stick with the program. (biggest mistake of my life to this date).
Mr. Raj ended up teaching all 3 classes that semester.infact the third class on the first day Mr. Raj walked into the room and all told us he should not be teaching this class because he knows nothing about the subject, (which later on we find out another teacher ends up telling us the same thing) and was kind of joking about it. (NOT FUNNY were paying $35000 for someone who knows nothing about what he's supposed to teach us???)
If Mr. Raj knew a student had knowledge in the subject he'd often ask the student questions about how to do things. He even let Eric (who was really knowledgeable get up and teach for a quarter of the class) he would often know more than the teachers and would correct them often. It just got worse as time went by.
Books did not arrive until 2 weeks into the semester and by that time we were finding it hard to catch up on our reading and what we were supposed to do. After the first month of class the recruiter who enrolled me I noticed was gone, he had left, along with most of the staff. Not only that they had gone through 3 financial counselors while I was there which messed up allot of students because one counselor would tell a student one thing and when he'd come back the next semester to take care of it the counselor who helped him would be gone. The new counselor would give him a different story and wed always be ending up owing more money then told originally.
I talked to many students when I was there about this and most were troubled kids from the city who were minorities (90% of the school), who could not afford it (ITT targets minorities and low income family's because they give them hope for a future. Most students I talked to while there could not get accepted into a university because of there grades and ITT was there only choice. I felt really bad for them because they were often threatened about being kicked out for not being able to pay and many went on payment plans. They wanted to turn there lives around so bad that they were willing to pay anything, and a most of them could not even get into a college because there educational level was so low (due to respect I won't mention his name) but we had one student who when called on to read would give up half way through cause he had just learned to read, we often wondered how he got in. We then had a clue; some of us did not get such a high score said on our entrance tests which really upset me.
In-between semesters I checked out the career service lady sue. ITT guaranteed job placement for life and I needed a job. She had me give her my resume so she could pass it out to potentially hiring companies, and handed me a 2nd quarter job packet.
It was insulting when I opened up and the first page had job openings for McDonalds, and Jewel (grocery store) all the other jobs in the packet were for administrative assistants (secretaries) and the ones that were in our job field of computer networking were for senior administrators needing an applicant of at least 7 yrs experience. Sue had never got back to me about potential jobs and had the nerve to tell me I needed me to redo my resume so I could really impress these employers. This was just a delay tactic because she had nobody to contact. She told me to turn it back to her next semester which I did and never heard about it since or any employer for that matter. 7th semester when we had a resume class I remember going to her office and she handed me my old resume and it had looked like it collected dust.
The next semester rolled around and the same situation happened with the books, Again 2 weeks late, and this semester the teachers had no organization or structure no labs either, but we were just thankful NO Mr. Raj. A counsler came into our rooms during the first few weeks of class and told us all that the names she calls on the list must go with her into a different room for some sort ceremony. 75% of the students names were called including mine and we sat down. I felt like I was in high school, the teachers called us up individually to present these awards that are so useless if they weren't on such rough paper id use them for toilet paper. Some were awarded Perfect attendance, honor roll, and several others.
They really did a good job at making people believe they were on the right track even if they really weren't. The funny thing is, during 5th semester I had missed about 9 days of class, because I was doing better teaching myself and I was still awarded perfect attendance!!! How's that possible? After the silly ceremonies were over they gave us all cake and soda and told us to just relax and reward ourselves.
The problem is we had no books, no structure, and we needed all the class time we could in order to actually learn. I didn't pay 35000$ for cake and soda or a perfect attendance certificate. I paid that for an education I was hoping would someday be meaningful. Yes they did this EVERY SEMESTER!
Third semester rolls around and 3 weeks late this time on books, we were all fed up by this point (we had college algebra which some of us had not taken in a while so we needed books.) We talked to other students in different programs and they didn't seem to have problems with books, (they had worse situations though in different areas) but ITT fed us some more BS about how since there networking program is so new their constantly changing the curriculum and the distributors didn't get the order in time for the books, just another damn excuse.
Once again we paid $35000 GET US THE DAMN BOOKS ONTIME!!! I wish I could say I was kidding about this but im not, we were supposed to take a test one week and we all failed miserably! So the teacher ended up making us correct our test with the CORRECT answers, I went to put them in my folder thinking it was for study, and he told us to resubmit them. I could not believe it. We had 2 other tests and the same thing happened and yes I got honor roll that semester along with the majority while knowing I must have failed miserably due to there teaching techniques. Problems also occurred all the time with the hard drives we got. There was only one key that could be used to install in the computer and it was a very small key, half the time students could not find the person who had it so they were not able to complete there work
4th semester came by and the book issue was somewhat resolved but still not complete a few students were still without and it was becoming ridiculous.in walks Mr. Green!!! He was teaching us a networking course and had told us he was from Silicon Valley. He had transferred specifically there just so he could help out and change the curriculum. Word was going around about how unhappy we were so they had to change things around.
I was excited to finally have a teacher who knew what he was doing, spoke perfect English, and agreed how screwed up the school is and how he had hopes to change that. (Just a plan to get our hopes up) 3rd week of class we heard a phone ring while Mr. Green was teaching, it was his cell. He excused himself from class and answered. This is going to sound so unbelievable but I swear on the bible this is true. Mr. Green had asked us "Hey you know it is Friday, would you mind if we cut class short this week, I got some problems with this HOE who called so if you don't say anything Ill let ya guys out cause I need to leave. (ITT policy is that we cannot leave early and yes he said hoe) I was in shock what I heard and walked out of the school and went somewhere for a beer.
I had not learned a damn thing and was getting really concerned so I started to stop showing up for class and started teaching myself. When I did show back up for that class Mr. Green was gone, word was going around that he was fired because of misrepresentation of himself, he never was from Silicon Valley, and lied about all his credentials. You could feel the tension in the air on the schools part. You could almost feel like they had really exposed who they really were, (how can a so called school not due these kind of pre-employment screenings? Hence so called is how) the entire class was getting A's and B's so it was pretty much hush hush about the situation. Remember for a lot of students this was there only opportunity for an education and to get an A was all that mattered to them.
A lot of the class you could tell was just giving up, knowing they could get away with murder and still receive A's. I felt like I had to tell someone my concerns so I contacted Tina Harding board of directors at ITT or could I say puppet to a higher company power. She had told me that they would talk to other students and see whets going on and take care of it and not to worry, its all under control. (Another way for ITT to give me hope that things will turn around) No other students were ever contacted and it was left a dead issue.
I also checked out the career packet they had for that semester and SURPRISE McDonalds was still hiring on the first page. I threw it out and I never got another one again. As I threw out the packet I couldn't help but think I'm going to throw away my future if I really feel I can count on ITT to help me out
By the end of forth semester all of us were becoming very suspect on what was going on. Students were still getting A's and B's and not handing in any work, it was really out of control. A few students dropped out at this time because they knew what was going on, on one occurrence a student was going to drop and the counsler told him "Do you really want to be a quitter" and talked him out of it.
I wasn't going to do anything just yet, I still wanted to give it a chance because I really liked computers and almost felt that I would let myself or my family down if I did, it would of hurt me to tell them what was going on because they knew how excited I was about enrolling and were so encouraging to me. I'm now thinking was I brainwashed by that stupid recruiter?
Nothing changed by the 6th semester except we got to load windows 2000 which took 2 weeks because there was only one installation disk available at ITT. How can a school only purchase one commercial copy of win2000 (where is the $35000 were paying for going, not to the improve the school or upgrade) they hired some more teachers who could not communicate in English and it was turning into a joke by this point. It was basically a half-life (computer game) tournament every class, and our teacher you could tell was having a hard time. Joe (whose real name was 18 letters long so we called him Joe) would often come to class and tell us how much he didn't want to be there. If the teacher doesn't want to be there how can he motivate us to want to be there? So he'd jump in and play computer games after making a brief 20 min lecture (remember class is 4hours long and in order to leave you had to sneak out)
One day posted on the doors to the classrooms there was a notice of a huge job fair that ITT was conducting with over 20 participating companies. Everyone who did not have a job or wanted to change careers was encouraged to go. So as a class we all go together and decided to check it out. A few students even took off work that day in hopes to starting a new career.
The job fair was held about 30 minutes away at a holiday in. We all car pooled together so we could save on gas and met up around 30 min prior to when it was supposed to begin. The career service lady was there and was giving us tips to tell help us with our on the spot interviews. We were only allowed to go to a certain point in the building and where the fair was held was closed off for the time being until it was time to begin.
Well a half hour went by and the fair had not opened. Wondering when this was going to begin we started asking around. According to the career service lady (sue) they were still waiting for a few employers and it would open shortly. After another 25 minutes went by the fair had finally opened. We walked in and I am not kidding when I tell you only TWO EMPLOYERS were there UPS and some company not even related to the computer industry.!!!
We were so angry, some people took off work for this, and we drove 20 miles to the city. So we went to the holiday in lounge and ended up putting down a few drinks feeling worthless, and wondering if ITT was just lying about the 20 employers or debating if they just didn't show because the companies knew ITT students were not worth hiring because they're aware of the way they teach. To me it was only disappointing, and I was almost expecting something like this to happen I was able to laugh off but it's not a funny situation. One student was so upset he was talking about how he should never have signed up and continued to deal drugs.
7th and 8th semester we had our good friend MR RAJ teach us Cisco routing, nothing beats learning one of the hardest computer standards the industry has to offer and not understand 1 word the man is saying. We all signed a petition regarding our concern and I brought it to Tina Harding, She basically accused me of racism and would not resolve the problem. It was now too late to drop out and I had wasted 2yrs of my time learning about 5 percent of what was told I would learn, due to there poor curriculum, having no organization and having not real teachers teach the courses. Not to mention barely any hands on.
During 7th semester Mr. Raj had asked us if wed seen the new so called photo of Britney spears topless and went on a tangent for about half the class, the other half students surfed and tried to find it or use it as an excuse to look at porn online (I do believe that is on one of my tape recorded classes)
In the end I had gradated with HONORS that I feel I did not earn because the quality of education I received was not even close to my expectations and deep inside I know I did not deserve honors. The only one who could answer the questions when it was time to get serious was Eric. 8 semesters and the class had no idea of what was going on. I really felt duped after I started applying to real universities and they all told me one thing WE DON'T EXCEPT CREDITS FROM ITT, I had asked several real counselors why they don't and they had apologized to me for having gone to that school, and they cannot except them because they are aware of the low quality education they give. That hit home and we started talking about lawsuits.
Well everyone pretty much agreed to put the past behind us, people were still at there current jobs (NONE FROM ITT OR THAT WERE RECOMMENDED BY ITT) I got so frustrated I left Chicago the following summer to move to Arizona so I could start over fresh. School is so much harder now as well, after going to ITT and seeing what everyone got away with, it was hard to adjust to all the real studying that goes on in Real schools. I am currently still unemployed!!!
Now tell me after what you just read would you pay 35000$ to go through that. HELL NO, The only thing that ended up being of some use was the 20 gb hard drive after I took it out of the SCSI case and installed it on my home computer so I paid 35000 for a hard drive, and all because some asshole recruiter wanted to make commission on 100 bucks for the entrance exam, and would not tell me the truth.
Thanks ITT, for wasting 2yrs of mine and others lives and $35000$ Hope your houses that you bought with our cash were really worth it but remember all good things come to an end!!!
0 comments