I am currently enrolled at Triangle Tech in the Maintenance Electricity (ME) program. I am in my mid 20's and I am in my fourth, and last, term at the school and I have seen a lot to write a very complete review.
Now, this review is based off of my experience at this one particular location. I am not speaking on behalf of every other location in the state of Pennsylvania, only the Bethlehem campus.
I have been at this school since October and since then, I have seen much more negative things than positive. It's sad when I have to sit here and think to myself, "where should I begin?"
I will begin with the one positive constant. We have one teacher (and we'll call him Mr. X), in the Electricity program that has stayed since I've been there, and he's the only bright spot in a very dark situation. Why? Because every other teacher besides him has either quit or has been fired. So there's the first problem. None of the teachers they hire ever live up to the standards of Mr. X at all, and it doesn't help that our class has been through at least 6 different teachers. There is absolutely no consistency with the teaching staff. We've had 3 different teachers for one class in my third term, so we learned nothing and wasted our money on that class.
Speaking of our class, when I started there in October '09, there were only 16 students in that class, but there was also another Maintenance Electricity class with about 16 students that had started when I did. At first they had not been prepared AT ALL for the amount of people that were enrolling into this school, because when we started, they absolutely HAD NO MATERIAL AT ALL for all of the students. We were waiting months until they had enough material in our first term to get us started in our Residential classes to even wire up receptacles and lights.
But then here's the kicker. Once people in our class and their class had started leaving or quitting for whatever reason, they found it necessary to combine our classes mid-2nd term for an astounding 24 students in one classroom. That was absolute chaos, because everything had to change, even how the teachers taught because they lost much more one-on-one time with students cause the class had enlarged. I'm not positive, but i'm sure they stretched the state laws for the amount of students in a tech school classroom, because I believe 24 was the maximum, and we definitely had 26 at one point until a couple more people quit. I'm not complaining at all about the people I have class with, we all became friends, but it's hard to go into the workshop and expect to work on a project at the same time because 20 people can't get their hands on anything all at once.
Speaking of the workshop, it is way too small for the amount of people that go to school there. The carpenter's build a house that takes up the small amount of space in there, and the electricians are forced into a tiny corner to do their wiring.
Both the director and assistant director do a terrible job with coming down the same level of the students. They might be very knowledgeable on their respective subjects, but they run the school like high school. There are some guys in my class that are 30 or 40 years old and they have kids and families and other responsibilities in life to take care of other than being treated like kids in high school. They make a bigger deal about having drinks and food in the classroom than they do about our education. It's pathetic. They take advantage of having your $30,000 in their pockets and throw you around like you're nothing. You always get treated with a bad attitude, like you can't complain or else they will kick you out. Last time I checked, I paid them $30,000 for an education, and I can complain all I want. If they don't like us complaining, then fix it.
Oh and by the way. Our Bethlehem campus is going from our 14,000 sq. Ft. Building, to a new 42,000 sq. Ft. Building after I graduate, and all I've heard since I've been there is "keep your eyes on the prize" and our prize being our degree.
I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable having a degree not knowing how to wire some of the things I am supposed to know about that I never even touched.
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