Two
years ago I decided to go back to school to
pursue my BA. I emailed several local Westchester colleges and
The College Of Westchester responded to me within seconds of
hitting the send button. I scheduled a meeting with
a recruiter named Vince. Vince really sold me on
the college's job placement program and that the school would
accept majority of my transfer credits. This
was not the case. The college took months,
literally several months, to obtain my transcripts at which point
they had already enrolled me in classes. After completing
my first semester with a 4.0, I was a little
concerned because the courses were very basic. It's not
that I consider myself exceptionally smart either, it was just
strange to me that I wasnt actually learning anything in
the classes. I brought it to the attention of my
student advisor which was a process in itself as she
frequently wasnt not available during our scheduled meeting times.
There was even once case when I took off of
work to meet with my advisor at a specific agreed
upon time. I arrived ten minutes early and was told
“she was out to lunch”. I chose to wait. A
legit 90 minutes passed by and she eventually stuck her
head out of her office and said to the secretary
“were there any meetings while I was gone”. (gone where?
you were IN your office). The advisor sees me
and bashfully says “i'm sorry I'm about to step out
for lunch can we reschedule?”. This was a common
theme with any faculty members that have any level of
descision making power. After refusing I met with the
advisor, as well as the assistant dean. Then I heard
this: “oh we're sorry it looks like you didnt need
to take any of these classes, we didnt get your
transcript in time”. So essentially I took a full
semester of classes that I didnt need to take.
My college recruiter also blatantly lied about the amount of
transfer credits that CW would accept. They accepted a lot
less than I was told.
The college makes you take
surveys to assess the professors towards the end of a
class. They're done on the computer and students are
told they're confidential. One professor who was frequently late,
frequently no showed, and frequently would just read things out
of the NY Times received a bad review from me
as he had horrendous teaching abilities and taught nothing.
The following day the professor knew about the bad review
and was verbally upset by it, however didnt challenge any
of it. The surveys are not confidential and just to
be very clear, I was an A student, not someone
goofing around where the professor would have a reason to
call me out of class to 'confront me'. The
professor's exact words were “I feel like you've been dissing
me”. I know that sounds outrageous, but thats the truth.
A common theme with faculty is that they want to
be perceived as successful business people. In reality, they're
not. A good handful of the college professors at
this college are high school teachers or fresh out of
a low level college themselves. One professor boasted about
his successful business which turned out to mean he rented
a baseball card store for a few years, another's success
story turned out to be that he played the stock
market. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, however
I think back to my “college tour” in which an
older White man in a suit picked up a copy
of The Wall Street Journal and went on and on
about how “The Journal is the key to all business”.
His claim to business success? He's the President of
his condo community, sorta like Jerry's dad on Seinfeld.
I
had one professor for three different classes. The problem was
all three of those classes felt like the same class
as no new material was ever learned. Specifically in
my case, three business classes taught by the same professor
resulted in: “okay class you're each going to write a
business plan, you will have the whole semester to complete
this project and thats all you'll be doing in class”.
I took a math class which the school
told me was required. Mind you I got a 98%
on my math placement exam. The math class was
very basic junior high level algebra and basic things like
“the length of one side of a square is 2
feet, find the area”. I wish I was kidding.
I took one class in which the ongoing theme
was 'why outsourcing is good'. The next semester I
took a different class which had the ongoing theme of
'why outsourcig is bad'.
The school requires you take
Microsoft Office. They unfortunatley break it down into three
seperate classes (each at $2,025): Word, Power Point, and
Excel. These of course are all programs anyone can
teach themselves. An instructional video on Youtube.com would be
just as helpful as spending over $6,000 on the classes.
In addition, the professors teaching these classes often have to
resort to the manual or help screens to find answers
to more complex questions. Also, completing these classes does
NOT give you a Microsoft Certification, I mention that only
because the school will claim they have that available. They
do not.
Career Services. The school will sell prospective
students on job placement. The reality is that Career
Services legit finds “their jobs” off of Craigslist and Monster.
The school does not get job orders and when
they do they're minimum wage jobs. The school will
also boast about their job fairs. What they wont tell
you is that their job fairs feature employers that are
local retail stores looking for part time help including TJ
Max and Stew Leonard's grocery store. There are no
businesses looking for office admins or marketing people at their
job fairs, it is 100% all part-time positions for stores
such as The Sunglass Hut.
Transferring your credits.
The school will tell you that you can transfer their
credits anywhere. Not true. I've directly asked several professors
and advisors “what local colleges accept CW credits”. I was
amazed at how many different ways there were to say
“I dont know”.
As aforementioned, I dont consider myself
exceptionally smart, however to give you a specific example of
the intelligence level of the average student at CW:
During one class the professor posed the question “What
US President came up with the idea of health care”.
The answer was of course FDR and I completely
expected people to start yelling “Obama”. However when a
student stood up proudly and said “teacher i know this
one” and then said “it was that Hitler guy, I
read about him”, I was truly at a loss of
words.
Location. The college is in an old office
building. The parking lots are both very small and fill
up quickly. Students then have to either park at meters
or across the street (Central Ave mind you, a major
road with a lot of traffic) behind a bank.
Schedules. In normal colleges a student will meet with
an advisor and make a schedule. Here they just randomly
give you classes. In addition they dont even mail
you a schedule. You have to login to one of
their several websites, and go through several prompts to pull
up your schedule at which point its 50/50 the room
numbers are listed. If they're not you then have to
go on your own time to the “Academic Office” and
request a printout of your schedule.
Activities. The
school will boast and brag about their numerous clubs and
activities. These include “The Dance Dance Revolution Club” and
“Street Fighter Tournament”.
The Book Store. The “Book
Store” is located in the cafeteria and resembles a closet.
Books are very pricey to purchase , are often
not used during classes, and the book store will not
buy back used books.
An example of the overall idiocy.
Lets say you want to make a photocopy of
something. In order to achieve this you have to go
the 5th floor to the Book Store (the closet in
the cafeteria) and purchase a “Copy Card”. Then you have
to go the first floor to the library to use
the xerox machine. Bit of a process.
The college recuriters
will prey on people looking to go back to school
or to go to local school that's not a community
college. They will tell you anything you want to
hear. All in all this college is about business. Unfortunately
they highly lack in customer service and their business is
taking your money and providing you with nothing.