I have been attending ITT-Technical Institute for 2 years now. I am enrolled in their Multimedia program in the hopes of obtaining a career in the field of Web Design.
When I first came to the college back in 2007 I spoke with the admissions advisor about what I wanted to get a degree in, and he said that ITT Tech would be the perfect place to go. He showed me the cirriculum of Multimedia which had classes pertaining to 3D Modeling, Web authoring and Scripting and Flash to name a few.
I worked full time and needed very limited work interruption for my job, so I decided going part time was the right way to go.instead of taking 3 courses a semester, I would have to take 2. The best news for me was that I did not need any ACT or SAT scores to come to the school. All I had to do was to take an entrance test and get a certain score to be enrolled.
I took the test and passed.
Now was the fun job of taking care of my financial aid. I originally started working with a man named Dan. I got all of my paperwork filled out, and all that was left was to get a cosigner on my private loan so that I could go to school without paying any money while I was attending. When I came back to the school about a week later for orientation I saw financial aid so that I could get my cosigner information worked out. I sat down with a lady named June and she said, "Are you aware that they lost all of your financial information?" Shocked and amazed, I told her, "No.." She said everything should be fine, I just needed to fill out the paperwork one more time. I asked her where Dan was, and she said that he was no longer working there. So my very first week there, all of my financial information got lost. I attemtped on several ocassions for anybody in the financial aid department to tell me where and who had my original financial information. There is personal information on those papers that I don't feel should just be dissapearing into thin air. Nobody could give me an answer and nobody really seemed to care. To this day, I STILL have no idea what happened to my orignal financial aid information.
The first semester went smoothly, as did the second semester. I started getting notices in the mail every week from ITT informing me that I still owed them more money, and that I would be unable to attend classes if I did not pay the 700 sum odd dollars that I owed. It turned out that they were missing my initials on some paperwork and they had not sent out my information. Once they received my initials, I continued to get these notices for another couple of weeks, until I finally went back to them and demanding to know what was going on. Turned out that they just forgot to send it out. I told them to remember, and to stop sending me these notices.
In the two years I have been attending ITT I have gone through 5 different financial aid representitives, and my financial aid amounts are changing every single time I refile. One year I will need a cosigner, and the next year I won't. One year I will qualify for temp credit, the next year I won't. I've never gone to any other schools, but I'm not sure this is normal. You would think because they are handling 40 K dollars from each student a year, they would be better able to handle the workload they're given.
That is just the financial aid concerns.
After taking 4 classes, that didn't seem to have anything to do with Multimedia, I went to my program chair (whom is no longer there anymore) and asked him to place me in some programs that were actually crutial to my Multimedia degree. I told him that I wasn't quite sure exactly why I needed to take a 3d Modeling course if I wanted to do Web Design. He gave me some silly reason like, "If you're going to make banners for websites, 3d Studio Max is a wonderful tool to use!" Which may be true, but after sitting in the class, all that is talked about is game design, game design and more game design. I have no interest in game design. I was hoping for some hands on teaching, but it seems like all anybody in Multimedia cares about is video game design.
There were a couple times in my 3d Modeling class where my instructor was unable to make it, so they gave us a substitute teacher who knew nothing about 3d Modeling. So there we were forced to teach ourselves the material. If I'm going to pay as much money as I am for this class, I better have an intructor who knows that they are doing.
Now apparently a while back they switched the Multimedia program into Visual Communications. They are similar classes, but a lot of the Multimedia based classes are becoming obsolete. Due to the fact that I was a part time student, I was behind all my other classmates. I didn't think this mattered. I joined the school for Multimedia, I'm going to get a Multimedia degree.
I've been told on several ocassions that I should be going full time, because it's getting harder and harder to schedule me for Multimedia classes. I fail to see where this is my problem. I pay the money to get a degree in Multimedia that this school offers, and they're telling me that they can't schedule me for classes because they no longer offer the degree because I'm only part time and not full time? I think there is something wrong here. So i switched to fulltime, in the hopes that i can get done with this degree and get the hell out of this school.
Some other issues that come up are things like never having books in the book store every semester. I needed books for three classes this next semester and they only had one. I got a note on my schedule that says, "Come back in March." That's great... But my classes START in March. I begin my classes on Monday, and I don't even have a book for it. This happens EVERY semester. It's a school that has a bookstore the size of a broom closet. I might be wrong, but a school should have BOOKS.
The Multimedia instructors are very friendly, in fact they are people that you can really get along with. However, the school is having a hard time keeping program chairs. At the current moment I don't even have a program chair. There is no head of my department.
Another concern, is that whenever you have an issue with something like finance or getting your books, it's IMPOSSIBLE to get any kind of straight answers. My boyfriend goes to ITT as well and is enrolled in the Multimedia program and they just switched his program from Multimedia to Visual Communications without asking him. He ended up taking a class that wasn't even necessary for Multimedia, it was VC specific, and now he has to pay the extra money for a class he didn't even need to take. When he went to talk to the financial aid, or the registrar, or the head of VC (which there really is none.) they just kept telling him, "We can have an answer for you next time you come." This went on for WEEKS. He had to nag almost every administrator he saw until he got an answer WEEKS later.
It seems like the administration has no concern for the IMPORTANCE of what it is exactly they are selling.
I have read so many of these reports of people who feel scammed by ITT Tech, and how they have wasted SO MUCH money on an institution that just SELLS degrees, and doesn't really teach them.
It pains me to say it (because I really do enjoy my multimedia courses and teachers) but I really do feel cheated by this school wholeheartedly. My boyfriend I both get the run around day after day whenever we need answers to our questions about money and courses and scheduling.
It seems as if nobody really has a clue what they are doing in the administration office. All they know how to do is charge you more and more money for books you don't even receive on time, and classes that don't even pertain to the degree you even want.
If you go into the Career Services office all you see are jobs posted for things like UPS or Truck Driving or McDonalds... Very very very rarely do you actually see job postings for things relating to the field you wish to get into.
I am still enrolled because I am sticking it out. I have gone this far, and I'm going to get my degree. Whether this degree is going to actually get me somewhere is a question I really don't have the answer for. From the looks of the people whom have already attended, it doesn't really seem like it's looking good for me.
I just want this to be a warning to anybody who is thinking about enrolling in this school. If you are smart, you need to try community college. Matc or wctc. Or anything. You will save so much money and time in the long run, and you will probably end up with a much better career at the end of it.
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