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Company information:
ITT Technical Institute
Lathrop, California
United States

In the year 2001 I was working customer service at a telephone company, living on the bad side of town and just making ends meet. I became disenchanted with my life and decided that I wanted to persue higher education to better myself and my position. After some thought and research I decided that a technical school would probably better suit my needs as I was going to have to continue to work full time in order to pay my rent and bills. I headed over to my local ITT Technical Institute and spoke with a recruiter regarding my desire to educate myself and dreams of inproving my station in life. I must say, he was good at his job, I left his office that day feeling like I had all the answers to my future right there in my hand. If I remember correctly he was a former Air Force recruiter. Looking back now I realize how innocent and naive I was. My father helped me by taking out a personal loan in his name and I signed up for federal loans as well to cover the tuition for the next two years. I walked in interested in going through the CAD (drafting) Program but somehow the recruiter talked me into signing up for the BRAND NEW Multimedia program that was going to be starting next September. I was thrilled, for the first time in my life I felt like I was on the right track. I was determined to do everything it took and devote all my spare time to my studies. I began classes that sept. They started out with some general education type classes and some basic computer classes. Right away I thought their classes didn't cover nearly enough and some of the instructors only role was to assign pages in a book which was a bit discouraging, but I was still determined and fooled into believing my education would be what I make of it. I continued this for two quarters and then in my 3rd quarter I was unable to fool myself any longer. We were supposed to be taking a Trig class, which I was terrified of because I had not completed any higher than Geometry in high school, we spent the entire length of the course reviewing Algebra. That was the first thing that sent up a red flag in my mind and I began to really look at the education I was receiving. I was having more and more of a hard time with the instructors and their lack of knowledge in the areas they were teaching, it was common when you asked an intructor for assistance to have him referring to his book and trying to look up the answer with you. It became more and more apparent that most of the instructors were in no way qualified to teach the subjects. This was the quarter that we were supposed to begin our 3d MAx class and because the school had not found anybody to teach the class they had a CAD teacher fill in as our instructor. He knew absolutely NOTHING about 3d Max, he literally assigned us pages in the book and could not answer any questions regarding the program. We spend most of the time desperately trying to figure out the projects on our own time. I met with other students several times a week trying to complete our assignments in the lab. Probably the most appalling incident that occurred while I attended was in my Visual Basic class. I was one student in a class of about 40. The instructor was a sweet man and worked in the field as a programmer. The problem was not that he didn't have the knowledge base but that he did not know how to adequately teach. I had never really thought about the ability to teach people as being a skill until well into my visual basic class. towards the end of the quarter everyone in the class was failing but 2 students. The director came in and lectured us all on how his teen son was taking U.S. robotics and passing with an A but we all couldn't pass a visual basic class. It's always nice to have the director of a school you are paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend imply that your entire class and you are idiots. At the end of his demeaning lecture he proceded to tell us that we would all be passed with A's!! It was bad enough that we were being insulted but to not adequately teach us the subject matter in which we are paying thousands of dollars to learn and then to turn it around and act like you are doing us a FAVOR by passing us??? That is proposterus. I was enraged and appalled that I was paying these people to talk to me like a child and blame me for the schools inadequacies. That quarter was wrapping up and the next about to start. I was excited to begin the next quarter because most of my classes were now going to be multimedia specific, I asked the director about the instructors and what type of field experience they had. He stumbled around trying to answer before I realized that they had not yet found any instructors for the multimedia classes that were to begin in a week! I continued still having a sliver of faith that they would work it out and things would improve, after all we were all paying thousands to attend. The next quarter was the worst by far and my last days at ITT Tech. The very first day we had trouble getting our books, some of them had not come in yet and would not be in for a couple weeks. I went into my 2nd 3d max class which they had found an instructor for named Mr. Burgess. He claimed to work in the field and showed us a very limited portfolio of images etc. but when we asked him simple questions he was unable to answer them so I have my doubts about the ligitimacy of his claims. He was hands down the worst instructor I have ever seen, he was a nervous mess. I felt sorry for him. You could see the sweat pouring off of his head as he stood in front of the room. He stuttered and didn't make eye contact. He constantly made errors when trying to explain assignments. The class was supposed to be a lab class but we were still in a classroom, they were still setting up the lab. Within the next week they moved our classroom to the lab. I will never forget that day, the very last day I attended ITT. I walked into school after having worked all day, I was just on time and found my way to the lab. I walked in to the room to find it empty. There were tables set up but no computers. There were stil mounds of cables and monitors as if the classroom was still being set up. I was confused, I hunted down the director and verified that it was the right class. Finally a few others shuffled into the room but still no instructor. After about 10 minutes the instructor showed up with a had full of copies and nervous and unprepared as usual. He proceded to ask me if I could take the copies and staple them into packets for the rest of the students. I couldn't believe it... he was asking me to spend MY CLASS TIME that I AM PAYING FOR to be a teacher's aide???? This blew me away, I'm not even sure if I responded to him, I think I may have just stared at him. I looked back over the classroom, as it was now 15 minutes past the start of the class and realized that there was a total of 6 students remaining. Out of our entire program, 6 people were still here. It was right then that I could delude myself no longer, my dreams and goals were all crushed. I was depressed and walked out of the classroom not responding to the instructors attempts to speak to me and left. I never returned. It has been almost 10 years and to this day I still get emotional reliving my experience at ITT Tech. I owe thousands in student loans that I continue to struggle to pay every month but the biggest price I paid was the destruction of my hope and dreams for my future and my faith in the education system. I have never been the same and I have stopped many many people from making the mistake of attending ITT Technical Institute. That is about the only thing that makes me feel any better and the fact that I got one beautiful thing out of attending ITT, I met my husband there who also went through this experience with me and we have a beautiful son. If I didn't make that mistake then I would not have them in my life. If anybody has any information about class action lawsuits please send me info at cliffandsuzanne@yahoo.com.

Thank you,
Suzanne