I would like to begin this 'complaint' by making it clear that I am a College graduate (University of Oregon—Honor Student) with two bachelor's degrees. That being said, I entered Ashworth due to the fact the I live in a small "over educated" college town with few job opportunities.in addition, I am currently unemployed (worked with developmentallly disabled people) and believed that studying Basic Electronics from Ashworth would broaden my employment horizons in this economically depleted region of Oregon. Well, of course such a study would help... If I had studied in a real College.
Ashworth, for me, has been a tremendous disappointment. To begin with, their shipments of electronic equipment are of the cheapest material available. I know, I checked other stores such as Radio Shack, for equipment value. Furthermore, in both of my shipments (I quit before I received my last two shipments) I discovered that I was missing expected electrical components. To further my frustration, I noticed that the projects presented by the school in their own study-guide were completely unappropriate. What I mean is that, the equipment shipped (when shipped) was not always the same equipment suggested in the assigned project. This is strange in that the study-guide would tell me to use the equipment shipped me to complete the project. I called them, of course, and they would simply state that they were trying to update their material, and that they only had to send me the material originally agreed upon. I don't know who agreed to what, it sure wasn't an agreement settled between me and Ashworth at any time.
But wait, there's more. Another problem I faced with Ashworth became clear in their online tests—besides the fact that they are ridiculously easy—and how they were written.in Ohm's law, you have to have two facts to be able to deduce the third. There were times that test-questions of such a nature were asked with only one available fact. This, of course, is a waste of effort and energy. The pitiful point here is that these test-questions were drawn directly from the outdated literature sent—these books are from the late 20th century—and they could not even translate this information to a simple test. Time for another phone call.
Of course, I called them and was told, again, that they are working on this problem. Yeah, sure! Keep in mind that, like many students of almost any subject, my interest was high, while my previous experience in the field was, well, null and void. For this inexperience, I was expecting a well developed method of teaching a rather challenging field such as electronics... I was wrong again. I was taught virtually nothing in the reading of schematics, or how to translate what I don't know about schematics to a breadboard—another subject I was taught nothing about. And when I would ask them a question on the above subjects, their emailed answers were brief and lacked any terminology or concepts relative to electronics. I would write them back messages that sounded like I knew more than they did. This is a shame, as I only had about eight months of personal study. It's time to bring this rant to a close. I could go on for quite some time because I still have many complaints I would like to share, but the grand finale is rich enough.
On the same day that I am writing this, I cancelled my program with them, and this is what they said: If you have worked more than 50% of your lessons, you owe us the remainder of the full financial agreement. To this, I made it clear that I had never received such a contract, nor had they any such contract with my signature on it. Moreover, I pointed out that if I had to pay for the full course, I should be due every shipment and book the tuition covers. She didn't like that statement. As a result, she continued forcing the idea that I had to pay for the full tuition even though I had only used about half of the lessons; lessons fully paid for. The counselor (or whatever) then told me that this agreement is on their website. I looked it up, and here is what I found under their "Cancellation Policy":
"The cancellation policy entitles the student to initiate the cancellation procedure. Only the student may initiate this procedure. If you cancel your enrollment, you may be entitled to a refund or you may owe the school additional tuition. This is based on the number of lessons you've completed and tuition you've paid, and how long you have been enrolled as a student".
Stated simply, it says that if I cancel I owe them only for the amount of lessons I have taken, not the full tuition. As is said in Latin, my Friends, Caveat Emptor, or, buyer beware. Stay away from this school, and quit reading the rebuttals that are, I imagine, written by Ashworth's employees.
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