I attended an A certification class at Abco Technology, and what was supposed to be a 6 week class turned out to be about 2-3 months long. It was an evening class, and about a 45 minute drive for me, so I had to make the time count. However, we would always start late, at times end late, and the instructor would pause and start over if a student was tardy.
They charged us $150 for a $30 book that was an abbreviation of the actual version of the A text, and so I ended up looking most things up on the internet on my own time because the explanations in the book were not meant to be long or particularly comprehensive, creating a lot of confusion for a student who was trying to learn a completely new subject.
I realized that I was getting a less than stellar education when I enrolled in a MCSE class, and they offered to let me sit in on the A class. They had up-to-date technology, and hands-on opportunities, while at Abco all the equipment was old and outdated, and I didn't get to see anything except broken parts stuffed into a plastic bin that the instructor was throwing away. It was very frustrating.
How can a computer hardware student learn anything if they don't have the tactile experience of looking at the parts, and actually seeing them put into action?
They also made us purchase two CDs for $150 each, and I never used them. They didn't even work! They were burned copies, and I was finally mailed the working copies (also burned) 3 months after the class was over, thereby wasting $300 dollars for these CDs! I don't even know why we were made to buy them!
All in all, this school was a waste of my money, and time. Now that I have to take the A certification class, I'm trying to learn the information again and fill in all the gaps, because I realized that I was absolutely not prepared for the certification tests after looking at the test questions. I spent just as much time in class and out of class because I had to look everything up on my own since there wasn't any computers or recent computer parts to handle or look at during class. We may have sat in front of them, but we didn't use them at all during instruction.
I'm very disappointed by the quality of the education. The building itself was awful, and the rooms were small and unventilated. The only redeeming quality was the instructor who taught the A class, who met with me one-on-one frequently to help me with any questions I had. But everything else was severley disappointing.
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