ITT-Tech SUCKS

ITT Capstone - The final course all students must pass in order to receive their degrees.  The capstone course is kind of like the final of a regular course, but instead of it being a test at the end, the whole course is one long test.

The first day students are given a packet with a made up scenario that they need to create a network for. I have heard rumors that there are projects available at other schools that are up to date, but at my school they use the same one year after year. This allows students to do searches for ITT Capstone, or CNS Capstone, and find a good number of pages with completed capstones ready to go. Which I am sure no one reading this now is doing.

Anyway, what is really impressive about this class is that it is supposed to be super important.  Students are always nervous giving their presentations, and the thought of failing and not graduating is there; then everyone passes and graduates, even if they did next to nothing.

Lets take my capstone for instance. A normal capstone group is around four people, my capstone group had eight people. This in theory should be a good thing, lots of people to do research = awesome results, right? Now the fun begins...

Bob #1:
This person came to class for about 20 minutes ever other day, sometimes every two days. This alone should have failed him, luckily ITT's grading system is a bit off.  He never turned in any work until the final week of class, and the work he did turn in was wrong and stolen from online.  I had seen the same work multiple times on the first page of google images. He didn't change a thing, just cropped out the other students names.
--This student passed. 

Bob #2:
This person owned a mac, and for weeks couldn't figure out how to open the word docs all the other students were sharing with each other.  That's right, an IT student about to graduate couldn't open a word doc.  To make it worse he didn't even tell anyone that he couldn't read anything we were sharing until the 6th week! --This student passed.

Bob #3:
The only thing this person had to do was the budget, which happens every capstone.  The laziest, stupidest person can always be found doing the budget. This person did the budget on a piece of paper, did all the math with a calculator, then transferred it to a spreadsheet.  This took him the entire quarter to do, the math he did was wrong, and to this day I can't figure out why he didn't just let excel do the math for him.  Insert data, insert function to add up the rows, done. --This student passed.

Seeing a pattern here?
Students did almost no work, or work that has nothing to do with networking, or straight up stole other peoples work....  and - still - passed.

These students now share a degree with me and are out there, looking for jobs, interviewing with companies, ruining the chances for other students to get interviews.  How many brain dead IT students from ITT Tech does it take before the human resources person ignores people with ITT on their resume?

Assuming you made it this far down, congrats, there was a lot of ranting here.  I also assume you may be interested in seeing the final result of our capstone project.  So here are the final files (power point and documentation) for the cns capstone of the TTI network.

Update! The files were broken temporarily, I have re-uploaded them for your viewing pleasure.
Power Point  -  Documentation

Keep in mind the only reason it looks this good is 100% because of me, I spent hours cleaning up most peoples slides and researching their information. And as I said, this network is terrible and would not ever actually work, and it contains flat out wrong schematics.  

These companies have confirmed:

Staffing Agencies - Because you want to do temp work for shitty pay, right?

• Aerotech
• Hire Tech
• International Rectifier
• Manpower
• Robert Half Technology < The 2nd Google result for this was "Robert Half Tech is a SCAM"
• Talentscale llC
• Volt Work Force Solutions
• Wired Talent
• Work Force Strategies
• Yoh

Security Guard Job - Good thing you went to college!

• Ace Parking
• Allied Barton Security
• Border Patrol
• County Sheriff
• Eminent Security
• GMI
• Securitas
• UCSD Security

Actual Companies - What this entire list should be comprised of.

• Bridgepoint Education
• FBI
• Quake Global
• Time Warner Cable

Other - These don't look like obvious useless jobs, until you see their webpages.

• Waisome Marketing
• MUZAK

Another day of crazy over priced classes.  Showed up at 6pm, class was over at 6:45! 

What You Paid

Amount of Class You Got

Your Picture Here!

If you are like me, you started at ITT because you had a bit of an interest in computers, and you heard that networking professionals can make good money, but where to start? ITT proudly boasts job placement anywhere from 70-90%, and all but promises you one of those high paying jobs within months of graduation.

Even at the low end, 70% job placement is quite impressive, right?  ITT must have a whole team of people dedicated to nothing but rubbing shoulders with big tech companies in your area, that way as soon as you are ready, WHAM!  Instant contact to the human resources hiring manager!  Right?

WRONG

As of this moment, of all the people I have met at school over the 3-ish years I have been here, no one I know has been placed in a job through ITT-Tech. Not a single person. I do know some people who have gone out on their own and got jobs. But they are the same people who could have gone to any school, maybe even none at all, and got that job, because they already had good working knowledge of the subjects.  Some of which was never even covered at ITT.

I don't know a single person who gave ITT their resume, and got a job out of the deal.  I don't even know a person who got an interview as a direct result of ITT.  What I do see happening all the time though is that someone at ITT will log into craigslist, searches "networking", and then copy/pastes all those results into an email, and hits send to every student in the program. So now 100's of students are now fully aware of what 1000's of people on craigslist already knew.

Is that what you thought of when you heard job placement? I didn't.  I thought ITT employed someone who would give me an inside track to a hiring manager, which would let me side step logging into craigslist.  But no, I instead get mass spam emails from someone doing searches I am fully capable of myself. But I should be fair, because ITT has actually sent me more direct emails with an actual phone number to call if I needed work...  There was just one catch...  it was security guard work, starting at $11/hr.

Imagine that brochure?  Come to ITT Tech! Spend $80,000! Find work as a security guard barely above minimum wage!

1. The amount of credits to graduate (180) is the minimum needed to graduate. --Not sure how that can be used as an excuse for me having to take more classes.  I've met the minimum required to graduate, right?  So why do I need, to take more?
   
2.  I graduated from the CNS course and then went directly into ISS, this “path” is different than a student who takes CNS courses directly into ISS. People who take option one need 96 credits for CNS and ISS, people who take option two only need the 180(I think, this was not answered).  --Confused?  I am too.  I started ITT with the goal of a BA in ISS, so how did I wind up on this other path?  Also how does this even matter? All the credits were obtained from the same school, with no gap in attendance.  All the courses I took were assigned by ITT, and are all part of the same program; computer networking, so how do some not count?

Do you like having your time wasted? How would you like to stop everything and drive to school, only to show up to an empty classroom? Ever wanted to just drive in circles when gas is $4/gal?  ITT can help you.

Over the years I have simply lost track of how many times teachers did not show up for class. The first day of school is especially prone to teacher no shows.  Sounds crazy right?  The very first day of class, and the teacher can't show up? WoW!

That actually happen to me the very first day of the first class I ever took at ITT.  The teacher called out sick, and was replaced with some random old guy who talked about his life for about an hour then sent us all home. Since then it's become the norm, and please don't think I mean to say teachers are calling out sick and there is a substitute available.

I would say 9 out of 10 times the teacher doesn't show, there is no one to replace them.  When this happens, the students wait for 30 minutes, then we all sign in on a piece of paper and leave it taped to the door.  That way we can say at least we showed up.  But that time you spent premium dollars on? Yeah, that's gone.

Last quarter my teacher no showed so many times the dean bought every student dinner to try and do damage control.  As if a few slices of pizza really replaces $100's of dollars wasted.

So take a good look at the above image, and ask yourself, do you really want to go to a school that is so desperate for teachers that they allow them to not show up half the time?

Have you checked on your credits to graduate lately? If you haven't they may have changed, and it could cost you thousands of dollars. ITT also most likely forgot to tell you about the change, I can't find anything about it at least.

The Story:
I am supposed to be graduating next quarter, I emailed my school records keeper to get the exact date and in the mean time paid for my final classes. Then I got the response from records, somehow I have an entire extra quarter worth of classes to take.  Clearly this is a mistake, I was just in the financial aid department and their records matched my own, and if anyone is paying attention to dates, it's the people who handle the money.

My Records:
If you didn't know it should take 3 years 9 months to get a BA degree from ITT.  This is advertised everywhere, and was confirmed as correct by the recruiters at my school.

• 3 years 9 months 
• 180 total credits
• 4 credits per class
• 12 credits per quarter

It all works out, and I currently have 156 credits. If you add the 12 from the classes I am taking now you get 168. Which leaves me with one final quarter to make my 180.  But people in records say I need two more quarters for a total of 192 credits, and I am just supposed to eat another $6000? No thanks.

ITT Sucks at Everything:
So I've been playing phone tag and have been getting the run around for about a week now. The records person says I have to talk to registrar, the registrar says I have to talk to the assistant dean.  None of whom are available past 5pm normally, which is a bit odd since 90% of ITT students attend night classes at 6pm.

Why would you want staff available during a time that students are actually there?

Waiting to hear back from the assistant dean now, and if what other students have said is correct, it's about to be a fight.  Word on the street is ITT is trying to tell current students that classes they already paid for and wasted time on, no longer count towards graduation and we need to take more.

Sounds like a class action lawsuit to me.  What's stopping ITT from adding new courses again next quarter to keep everyone paying? Can't wait to hear back from the baby dean.

The story continues!  Click for Part 2.