It is with great remorse that I find it necessary to make this grievance, I paid ELEVEN-THOUSAND-FIVE-HUNDRED DOLLARS ($11,500.00) to the OHIO CENTER OF BROADCASTING, in LAKEWOOD, COLORADO, for professional training in radio broadcasting only to find that I have been blatantly ripped off, the school has failed to live up to its end of the agreement. Despite my gradual accumulating remorse, I took it upon myself to give the school an honest chance. My allegations are detailed as follows:
1. Poor climate control facilities. On a regular basis students were forced to sweat out class sessions in over crowded non-air-conditioned classrooms. While forced to freeze in other portions of the building.
2. Insufficient learning facilities. Our class started with 30 students, there are far fewer production rooms necessary to learn and do projects and assignments, this is not including the other class of the same that takes place at the same time during portions of the course, also requiring these facilities. At times students would even fight over studios.
3.50% of the time at the school, was spent doing absolutely nothing. The school would issue simple independent assignments, where students were at the mercy of other students to learn. The instructor would not teach during these periods. These projects were given absurd amounts of time to complete, usually months for a single project that only required days to complete. This was clearly done in an effort to highly dilute the course.
4. Unqualified instructors. Many of the instructors taught without commitment, where students may have several different teachers, to teach a single topic. All of this at the convenience of the school and or teacher as to weather or not to come. At times students had no instructor at all when a teacher would simply not show up. The school found it acceptable that teachers would tell students that they made better money elsewhere and that they only came to teach when they really had too. It wasn't uncommon that a given teacher would start an important assignment with the student, and would be allowed to be let go without any regard to how important it was to have that instructor who was qualified to teach the given topic. Much hard work ended up fruitless because another teacher would be thrown in to baby sit, and the project at hand forgotten, such as with our audition tapes necessary to get a job.
5. False sales practices, claims. Students where led to believe it was a 10 month course, the course was cut short by a month upon the last 2 months of school, and the school did not know when we would officially graduate until the last 2 months of school as well.
The school is not owned and operated by professional television and radio broadcasters, as it tells students. The school director has never worked in broadcasting and regularly tries to impose his supposed knowledge of the business upon the students. I was shocked to realize that this was also the same individual that qualified me to enter the school, and tried to tell me how a person with my qualifications would benefit from the school.
The school president also falls into this category. This is demonstrated by the informational videos the president creates himself and sends to the Colorado branch of the school, (depicting himself talking of the business, to the students) where the videos are of such embarrassingly poor quality production that even those teachers who are actually professionals and teach there, are in openly admitted disgust of how even the president of the school knows absolutely nothing about what he claims to
The school also promised that it would teach me how to create an industry specific demo necessary to get an on-air job, via a professional broadcaster working in the field that authentically knows how it should be done. This was not true. We were given 4 class sessions with a qualified instructor during the very last week of school, and on the 4th day when I had planned on having that instructor determine weather or not my demo was good enough to send to employers, the school once again failed to provide.instead having an other instructor (who did not work in radio and hence unqualified) baby sit the class for 2 hours before we were dismissed 2.5 hours early on the last day because the school wasn't able to provide an instructor at all that evening. The qualified instructor was Instead ordered to teach another class going on at the same time. And hence was not available to our class. When the school was asked for the name of the qualified instructor who would verify my demo, after graduation, it could only offer the services of the education coordinator who has not worked in radio for decades. This causes great remorse - where the sole reason above all else, That I entered this program was to learn ultimately how to create a professional demo that would get me my first radio job.
It lead students to believe they would receive training such as demonstrated in its sales video's, used to enroll students - whereas the training depicted is that of an entirely different school campus in another state.
The last thing I want is to have my career damaged because I sent out a poor product that was not verified by an up-to-date industry professional. For it to be necessary for me to explain why this is important - to the school, would be ridiculous when it should already know the business entirely.
6. The school downsized its qualified staff. When I enrolled it was important to me that when I graduate, I be provided with an experienced industry professional, who knew the business, to act as my placement coordinator to help me find a job. I personally interviewed the placement coordinator at ohio center for broadcasting who would do this for me, before enrolling-this was part of my decision to attend the school. I developed a close relationship with this individual in an effort to find a great job, however in the last 2 months of school, the school decided to do away with its placement coordinator position.
The former responsibilities held by the position were then placed with the school director, who aside from having no knowledge of the business at all, (And never worked in the business) is busy handling the job of school director and can't possibly focus enough resources to the job of placement for all the students it needs to support. The school director has made it clear that the school fully intends to have him be solely responsible for our placement indefinitely.
AND IN ADDENDUM - The school printed out our names on our diplomas with an empty toner cartridge, they didn't even care that our names were faded and that the diplomas didn't look as nice as they could have. A clear demonstration that the school only cares about making millions of dollars from ripping people off. Just Because a school is certified by the Colorado Broadcasters Association and or the State Education Board doesnt guarantee legitimacy!
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