
What Former Employees Say ITT Tech Did to Scam Its Students - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/07/502601724/what-former-employees-say-itt-tech-did-to-scam-its-students
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wccrawford
>"Maybe if you give them too much information, they won't want to come in."

Perceptive, since that's exactly the reason I ask so many questions before I
physically drive out to meet someone. On the other hand, refusing to answer
questions is pretty much guaranteed to put my guard up, too, which is contrary
to their goals.

I'm an ITT graduate. I experienced none of what was in the article. That may
have been their tactics at some point, but it wasn't used on me in the early
00's. Perhaps the person who was talking to me knew their job really well and
knew it wasn't a good idea.

In the end, I learned nearly nothing (I was self-taught already and mostly
wanted the paperwork) and got a 4.0 GPA. I watched others around me struggle
with basic programming. Most of them quit, and I graduated with about 4 others
in that program.

They claimed that a high percentage of their graduates had jobs when they
graduated, but what they didn't make clear was that those jobs weren't
necessarily in their field. I didn't have a job _at all_ , most others didn't
have a job in IT, and the 1 who did got it on their own at their current
employer, Disney. Despite them providing no leads, they blamed my lack of job
on _me_ and how I approached it. No attempt was made beyond basic resume and
interview coaching. That guy ended up getting fired after my father made a
huge stink about it repeatedly. (He wasn't the only one, I gathered.)

When I did get hired, it was by a company that cared more about my skill than
anything, and I actually looked worse on paper than the other main candidate.
The company paid for BrainBench exams and I blew the other guy away, which got
me hired. The paperwork I cared so much about has never been useful. The
original estimate was $30k. I paid $23k because I transferred in some credits
and tested out of others.

~~~
narrator
>The paperwork I cared so much about has never been useful.

Going to school just for the paperwork is kind of a bad idea. Ideally, one
should learn something useful when getting a degree. Just pointing out the
obvious which seems to be overlooked here.

~~~
sathackr
Not that bad of an idea when most job listings making more than $40k has
"4-year degree at an accredited college" listed as minimum requirements.
Without that, your resumé doesn't even make it through the screen door.

It doesn't matter that you have 25 years of experience and run circles around
people with Masters degrees. You never even make it far enough in the door to
show that.

~~~
iamthepieman
I don't have a degree but I did go to college. Just attend one semester or
even a week of school. On your resume put this line for education

Such and such university (2010)

It doesn't lie stating that you have a degree but it gets past auto and human
filters and you can explain that you went but found it wasn't for you, you
weren't learning anything, you worked better being self taught or whatever,
you've got your foot in the door ( or at least as much in the door as people
with actual degrees on their resumes)

~~~
paulddraper
> Such and such university (2010)

A single year universally indicates the year that you graduated.

~~~
iamthepieman
Mine actually says Such and such university - computer science and information
assurance (200x-200y)

A degree would usually include B.S. Computer Science. I always tell them in an
interview if it comes up or if they ask for transcripts/proof of degree. I
actually have nearly 30 credits more than necessary for a degree but missed an
elective requirement for my degree program due to a miscommunication about
transfer credits. By the time I figured it out my graduating year I already
had job offers and would have had to stay an extra semester to take one class.
I figured I would take care of it later - started working - never did and it
has never mattered.

------
fecak
>The rule set out in the ITT training materials instructs recruiters to call
"a minimum of three times a day for the first three days." This was known as
the 3x3 rule.

That is bordering on harassment by most standards. Taking advantage of the
underemployed has been happening for years, and in tech I remember when MCSE
training programs were mostly marketed towards blue collar employees. Many
graduated as "paper MCSEs" who were largely unable to get a job.

I hope that bootcamps and accelerated learning programs for developers don't
eventually go this route. They seem to be behaving to this point.

~~~
____nope
They already are. I've talked to some recruiters who laugh at bootcamp
programs on a resume. A few years ago nobody would ask me about my academic
background in a job interview, but now they've started asking explicitly. I've
been out of school for seven years, and nobody cared about my CS degree until
this year.

The reality is that degrees and certifications will be used in hiring as long
as they are a useful indicator of aptitude. HR departments need to eliminate
candidates from the hiring pool. At their zenith, the bootcamp programs were
useful for recruiters because only the truly dedicated survived the bootcamp
long enough to graduate. But with the proliferation of such programs, I think
the day is quickly approaching when the market will be oversaturated with
graduates and it will cease to be a useful indicator of aptitude.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Degrees and certifications aren't about finding aptitude. They're about
protecting the hiring agent from the political fallout of bad hires. "It's not
my fault I hired someone who couldn't program well. I mean, he went to
_Stanford_."

~~~
brianwawok
I don't really think that's true.

If I were hiring developers I would pick a college grad over a high school
dropout every time.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
If you have exactly one opening at a fixed salary for the offer and that's all
you know about the two candidates, sure. If I magically knew their technical
aptitude and employability in perfect detail, being a high school dropout is
not just irrelevant, but actually a positive for the candidate. Other
companies are looking to hire developers as well, and you're competing over
the best-looking candidates. Like, there are plenty of great developers that
you can't hire because they're happy making $250k/yr at Google.

~~~
brianwawok
I do not live in SF. In fact in my town, dev salary tops out somewhere near
100k.

Hiring is all about filtering. What people are going to be bad news? You need
to do some rough filtering to get the resume count down to a reasonable number
to look through. Maybe someone mentions his hobby is building bombs. Maybe ok,
but maybe it's ok to pass him over to avoid getting blown up. Or in a less
extreme example, one guy has a lot of rails experience, and one guy has a lot
of .net experience... if hiring for a rails job, you get more experience in
hiring the guys with rails experience.

Now is filtering on college graduation always right? No. If you have a lot of
patience, totally dig through and look for the gems without a degree. But if I
get 100 resumes and I need to turn that list down to 20 to do a phone screen,
I will prefer people that pass obvious filtering signals (college education
being high on the list).

That is my personal experience to prefer people that made it through college.
Obviously not everyone agrees. That is fine.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Yeah, I totally agree with you about how hiring is about filtering. The
concern I have is that there's only so much filtering power you have, so
anything you apply on things irrelevant to job performance will end up
detracting on things you care about. There's a fairly narrow band of able-to-
pass-your-hiring-filter that you're targeting. Anyone below it gets rejected,
anyone far enough above it works for Google or founds a company or something.
If you turn up one parameter in your filter, you're going to end up turning
down the others.

Like, I remember hearing a story about a college that ran some statistics on
the SAT scores of incoming students. They found that math SAT scores for their
students was inversely correlated with their verbal SAT score - yet, among the
general population, this correlation doesn't hold. What was happening was
students with low verbal + math were getting rejected, and students with high
verbal + math were going to MIT and the like, so given that they went to that
particular school, they had to have lower math scores if their verbal is high
and their overall suitability is in a narrow range.

I'm basically trying to make a similar argument here - given that the person
you're interviewing accepts an offer there, they've got a certain level of
ability-to-get-employed-as-an-engineer. If more of it comes from "having a
college degree", then less of it comes from all the other things.

~~~
brianwawok
Or you can offer a perk google and other's WON'T offer. For example 100%
remote. That brings the guy in the middle of Alabama into your candidate pool.
He is not competing against an offer to Google.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Yup, it's all about knowing what you care about, what other companies care
about, and what tradeoffs you're willing to make. "Being willing to hire
engineers who do not have a college degree" is one.

------
sethrin
> And it got personal. On-campus visits began with a questionnaire, the WITY,
> or "what's important to you."

Interestingly, I remember the same tactics being used by the last Marine
recruiter that I talked to. He had little flashcards you were supposed to rank
in order, with various ideals like honor and financial security that you were
supposed to rank in importance. I thought at the time that it was a pretty
transparent trap, but I imagine it works pretty well. However, if we're going
to suggest that these tactics and empty promises are immoral, are we to also
hold the military accountable?

~~~
linkregister
Military recruiter service schools are dominated by sales training. Wouldn't
you expect that its omission would be a waste of taxpayer funding?

The key difference between the standard sales techniques when they're used by
ITT or by any other organization is that ITT was making promises it couldn't
keep. When I get the hard sell about a new car, at least I get a functional
car even if I overpaid. If I take out loans to attend ITT, it's likely the
training won't help me get a job.

~~~
crazypyro
>ITT was making promises it couldn't keep

I've never been in the military, but from what I've heard from those who have,
this is exactly what military recruiters do. They tell people they will get
$XX,XXX signing bonus, but the reality is only a tiny portion will pass all
the required training and get placed in a specific type of unit to get that
money.

Granted, there a lot of real benefits that they can sell recruits on, but
recruiters will tell every 18 year old that they can be in special ops when
its not the reality.

~~~
jimbert
Military recruiters will at times over-promise, but not about bonuses. Those
are generally guaranteed once they pass their minimum schooling requirements.

------
whack
To be honest, every single tactic mentioned in the article sounds like
Marketing/Sales 101. What's really scary is how effective they are. It boggles
my mind how many people make life decisions, both major and minor, on the
basis of such sales tactics, instead of doing their own research or relying on
trusted sources.

------
wnevets
and counties all across the US are turning to for profit schooling for their
children.

~~~
talmand
Just to note, not all for profit education is bad.

~~~
mulletbum
Specifically ones that don't profit off of debt paid by third parties.

------
Unbeliever69
No news here. To be honest, these practices are used by all marketers.

~~~
throwaway729
From the article:

 _> They're looking for not just any customer ... but a customer who's likely
to be kind of desperate to enroll, and likely to be eligible for the highest
amount of financial aid_

Pushy marketers are all good and well until you start raiding the public
coffer while under-delivering. If ITT Tech wasn't dependent on your tax
dollars and other legal protections, they'd still be in business today.

~~~
gozur88
How is this different from nonprofit schools? If you get a junk degree from a
school that costs $60k/yr, does it really matter that they're incorporated
under a different section of the tax code?

