Milwaukee Area Technical College

Date: Mar 17 2009
Major: Computer Science (This Major's Salary over time)
Overall my experience at MATC was positive, however the general courses are mostly full of morons, especially at the downtown campus. I went to the school for IT-Networking and within my program, the students were smart and most of my teachers were great.

However many (not all, but many) of the general courses were taught by awful teachers and students who I questioned how they even made it through middle school. For example, in my Psych course I was so appalled by how stupid the the other students were, I ending up shaking my head and later bailing out 1/2 way through the 1st class. I then proceeded to only show up for the exams and after reading next to none of the course material, still managed to pass the class with a decent grade. Not trying to brag, the course was very easy and anyone with 1/2 a brain could pass it. Mind you this class was at the downtown campus which leads me to my next issue with the school:

The campus you go to makes a huge difference. I have been to the downtown Milwaukee campus, Mequon campus, and West Allis campus. The Milwaukee campus was only good for the tech related courses, the general courses were full of complete idiots and many bad teachers. The West Allis campus was mostly more blue collar type programs and I only went there for one course (macro econ). The students in my class really didn't seem to give a shit about the class and it was pretty badly taught. However yet again, it was very easy to pass like most of the general classes. Last but certainly not least, is the Mequon campus; this is by far the best of the campus's that I went to. Most of the students are either young adults (college age) or older adults who are looking to re-educate themselves or learn a new career path. The teachers were all great at this campus other than 1 and most students were smart and actually cared about their education. I highly recommend this campus. The only issue was that the 1 bad teacher I had at the Mequon campus was the worst teacher I've ever had. She had a really bad speech impediment but for some reason was teaching an in-person class where she lectured frequently. I never complained to MATC about her but I still plan to. I'm not trying to be mean, but she really has no right to be teaching a class where she is lecturing students because the students all suffer because of it. I couldn't hear WTF she was saying 1/2 the time. Luckily the book covered the material decently.

The social life at MATC is bad but Milwaukee is a very big city, so if you can't find something to in the drunkest city in the North America (no joke), or you can't make friends, it's most likely you that have the issue and not this school.

To conclude, if you want to go here for a tech related field, it's definitely not a bad option and the courses are cheap. Just beware that in the general courses at the downtown campus, students are future 'lifelong deep fryers' at Burger King and many of the teachers are ill-suited for teaching. I did have a great science teacher downtown for one of my general courses, so they're not all bad, but many of them are. The teachers that I had for my Microsoft and Cisco classes were all excellent and knew their stuff.