Milwaukee Area Technical College

Date: Aug 08 2012
Major: Other (This Major's Salary over time)
The simple truth is, the program you're in makes a big difference at MATC. I started out in the culinary arts program but did some serious damage to my knee (thank you Milwaukee winters) and am no longer able to stand for six to eight hours at a time as required in a professional kitchen. Still, I thought the program was extremely interesting while I was in it. The quality of the instructors in MATC's program could not be better. In my time in the program, I learned from one Chef who had trained under Charlie Trotter (who the New York Times recently referred to as the chef who put Chicago on the fine dining map) and another who had one multiple awards (including a James Beards award for best chef in the Midwest region). We had a demonstration on working with chocolate by Chef Roland Messier (the head pastry chef at the White House for 26 years). Every chef instructor I met in the department was knowledgeable and when my knee was injured every one of them was very compassionate.

Now, I have made the change to the Associate of Arts Liberal Arts so that I can earn credits and save money before transferring to UW-Milwaukee. I have had some classes where the instructors truly cared about their subjects and I've met a few other students who really wanted to learn. Then there was Business Law. I took business law online because I was considering doing accounting and it is a required course for that major. The online course consisted of about a dozen chapter tests, a midterm, and a final. There was (literally) no other interaction with the instructor and no interaction at all with the other people taking the class. I could literally have learned the exact same amount by just buying the book and reading it.

One thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of students at MATC are there for a technical degree. While most of the students in the CA program I met, as well as some I knew who were in the Nursing program and other technical degree programs, were very passionate about their lab classes, most looked at the lecture classes as a chore to get through. Looking at it from most people's perspectives, Economics isn't going to help you learn to make a brilliant Coq Au Vin. So that blah attitude toward the general studies classes is kind of understandable.