Berks Technical Institute

Date: Aug 18 2015
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
My "schooling" at Berks Technical Institute was a complete waste of time and money, I learned ALOT more in high school. I don't know where to begin, reading the other negative comments on this site about BTI are 100% accurate.

Here's my story…

I began BTI in 2004 for Business Management shortly after graduating high school, so many red flags (when you're fresh out of high school you are young, na?ve and stupid). I took a tour of the facility and was told it was rather empty because classes let out early for the holiday weekend (4th of July), okay made sense at the time. I was never taken inside a PC lab. Turns out, the PCs were ancient. I took the entrance exam and received a very high score, didn't know how it was possible being I was never very good at math. Turns out, everyone in my classes received a very high score. Our accounting instructor had no experience or education in the course taught. We would read word for word out of the text book each and every class for the whole semester. When we asked a question, we were told to "look in the book". She also made up grades after several classmates reported her to the Dean of Education. We never had any homework, quizzes, assignments, or tests. I've never had a teacher as incompetent as her. We watched a movie called Seabiscuit, if anyone can explain to me how it relates to accounting whatsoever, please let me know. She finally resigned. Our joke always was, what are the qualifications to teach accounting at BTI, being able to run a cash register? The same instructor also taught our advertising class, again no experience or education in the subject. She left halfway through the advertising course and was replaced by a guy who looked like he just rolled out of bed. Again, another person not competent to teach. We had another course where the instructor left half way through who was never replaced, they did however charge us the several thousand for the course. There was never a sub and the department head never even checked in for attendance. The instructor for this course was one of the very few good instructors at BTI (we had her for several of the business classes). The department head taught the selling course we had, a good portion of the class was taught by a classmate who frankly did a much better job at teaching. Our final exam for the course was a trip to Cold Stone Creamery, as nice as the gesture was and yummy it wasn't worth several thousand for a worthless class. I was one of the few who graduated from the business program, the accounting program even had less graduate. Most had dropped out or started over at another school, wish I would have. We had several courses where we had no text book for most of the term although we paid for them in our tuition. I put myself into almost 25k in debt to attend this school and 10 years after graduating owe over 10k. There is no hands on experience like the school promotes, the school has a horrible reputation in the community and the taxpayers are getting fleeced for what the government is dishing out in loans and grants for this place. Not sure if this place is any better since I attended over 10 years ago when it was owned by another corporation and accredited by another agency but reading these comments it doesn't appear to be. The whole goal of the for profit school system is to get as many unsuspecting people through the door for the bottom line. My suggestion is to attend a community college for not even half the cost with a much better outcome and education. Most schools do not accept credits from this place. If you had/are having a bad experience here go through the complaint procedures with the school and if you still aren't satisfied write to the accrediting agency, the consumerfinance.gov, members of Congress, the State Attorney General, federal Department of Education, Department of Defense if you received aid from them, Department of Veteran Affairs if you received aid from them, and PA Department of Education-Private Licensed Schools. Myself along with my classmates are much worse off now because of attending this institution. Don't buy the recruitment pressure and promises. Places like this school pray on recent/future high school graduates/drop outs with no real world experience, minorities, single mothers and veterans.