I am a former Al Collins Graphic Design School Student from 1992-1994. I was only 20 yrs old fresh out of working part time in a lil store back home I was a very niave small town student and thought every school out there was legit. Everyone on here is talking about the cost of books and supplies costing way too much but when I went to school there the tuition was $11,500.00 but by the time I finally left AZ about 2 yrs later the cost to attend was way over 16,000.00. I don't know what I was paying for but the supplies I did get there at that school amounted to about 600.00 I always wondered what happened to the other 10,000.00 dollars or so of the money I spent. I will admit the level of classes were more than what I expected but the quality of instructors and class interaction was not up to standards for what I was expecting. Very Disappointing
For expample In my secound class I think the class was Rendering 2 where we took what we learned in Rendering 1 was finally applied our instructor advised us not to worry about our grade for that course we were going to design a dog food bag along with the name of the product and the over all design so we got split up into seperate groups and each group was told to design a certain section of this product which was very interesting and inciteful. Well neeless to say eventually we finished the class went on with our other courses only to find out later that the instructor had given certain students a variety of grades ranging from C - - A - when everyone was promised a B or higher further more the students had been working for her business designing products actually doing her freelance work after this scam alot of students complained and demanded that we be given a chance to take this course over again with the school being charged for this, again like most of you out there the school denied everything and told us if we wanted to take a course over we would have to pay for it out of our own pockets. There wasn't much we could do but move on to the next class with heavy hearts and a very bitter taster in our mouths with the school, a few months later after moving on with classes and living our lives a couple students I was living near came by 1 day to tell me that they had actualy found 1 of our projects in a store for sale on store shelves. After this alot of students left the school I stayed and kept giving this school a chance after all I was 20 yrs old how bad could this be.
Well it gets to be a lil over a year now I had taken a leave of absence and came back after a 2 couple months I was raring to go and kind of excited to get back. Well that didn't last long after being gone I found out that my portfolio was not what they required they didn't like the variety of my work and told me that I had to take courses over in order to comply with the new requirements then come to find out they had done this to everyone who had started the same time I did needless to say about 70% of the people I had started with quit they were just fed up with the school, instructors and new tuitions costs.
The job placement was a joke as well their idea of job placement was looking in a phone book or the students calling business' to see if they were hiring, and all along the tempe area we would run into former graduates working in circle K stores and fast food restaurants still looking for a job in graphic design fields. I had the most deversified portfolio of anyone in my class but after all this info I got from former grads and current students I walked into the office and gave them my reason for not returning to finish my other courses I gave them a really immature responce but it was the truth and needed to be said.
I'm not bitter just disappointed in the whole aspect of spending your hard earned money to get nothing from it and now I see this site many yrs later with the comments I felt almost 13 yrs ago really pisses me off to see the school still hasn't changed and is still the same old scam just with a diffrent name. Ok maybe a lil bitter. As Far as a class action lawsuit i'm all for it
Erik
Erie, Colorado
U.S.A.
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