Well I made the mistake of trying out the Art Institute of Pittsburgh's Online division. I thought I had done my research but obviously I made a huge mistake.
I don't know why I didn't find out the truth about this place on the web before they soaked me for over $5000 but after further research I can see that I am not the only one who has nearly identical allegations to make.
When they got ahold of my telephone number they began calling me up to 5 times and sometimes even more a day. During these phone calls, they try to make you feel completely comfortable and at ease. They entice you with all kinds of promises and talk about how they're in the programs themselves, how great they are, how much they enjoy them, and all kinds of other comments designed to make you feel like this will be the best choice you ever made. It doesn't matter what you say to try and get out of it, they go out of their way to try and accommodate your needs to get you enrolled.
Finances, no problem, they will find anyone the funding. They give you this cute little test to "assess your skills" and it does not matter how poorly you do because if they can get you the funding, they will do everything they can to enroll you. And they almost always get the funding, I can't get funding for anything anywhere else ever, but this school managed to get my horrible credit to work.
Speaking of skills, I explained to them that I needed something that was going to help take my 12 years of experience to the next level. I really stressed how important that was and the sales staff assured me that this would be very challenging and demanding. It was the exact opposite, I felt like I was stepping back in time to 4th grade computer class, and even that was more challenging than the 1st grade level assignments they give you. It was complete nonsense, and I took offense to how dumbed down the classes are once I was trapped into experiencing them.
By the way, those sales people that called me all the time every day suddenly were no where to be found once I enrolled. I never heard another word from either the guy who tried to get me enrolled or the financial aid lady in there who called all the time after they had me tricked into signing up. I even called the one guy (I'll leave the names out for now) and asked him what was up with that? I told him I thought it was pretty uncool to just blow me off and not even follow up to see how I was doing after over a month.
To participate in this "Online School", you log into this crude looking message board of sorts to view and post your assignments. Trust me, I was already getting concerned about this place but when I logged in for the first time and saw their website design, I really began to worry since that's what they were supposed to be teaching me.
There aren't teachers, they don't have teaching degrees - they call them facilitators and they are nothing more than someone who barely interacts with you. When you turn in your assignments, many of them barely look at them, there can be all kinds of things wrong and you'll still get an awesome grade. Sometimes if you do too good of a job, you'll make the facilitator look stupid and then they will give you a bad grade for doing too good. I'm dead serious, this happened to me a lot with one instructor I had for a PhotoShop class. I took two classes and in both of them I felt like I was teaching everyone much more than the school, the book, or the facilitators were.
I finally had enough after two classes, and they are doing everything they can to collect money from me. They keep harassing me for some enrollment fee or something and now I have a huge student aid bill to pay.
I need to know how I can dispute this with FAFSA or Sallie Mae or whoever it is that had to pay this school money that I have to repay because I don't feel I should have to owe them anything. It's not fair to the people who truly need student aid to get swindled like this. Now I have to put my education on hold once again, and money went to a school that should immediately lose their accreditation. The government should get their money back, I shouldn't have to repay it, and I would like the opportunity to go to my local community college instead. I'd also like to sue the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for damages because of lost time, lost opportunities, & etc., this seriously derailed a good year and counting of my life and finances.
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