Columbia College - Chicago

Date: Jan 06 2014
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
With Columbia College, Chicago on my resume, I've been laughed at every place for a lifetime, from graduation and still til now. Besides invariably earning me the tacit smirks and raised eyebrows at job interviews, the word "Columbia College" straight away brought into open question my choice of school, or I got asked about broadcasting, even though it is not my field. Why so?

On being a questionable choice of a school with employers: Columbia College is inferior because the confused, disoriented and lied-to kids go there on some false impression that it is good, or because they like coming to the city from the burbs, or straight out because they got bad grades prior to that, and Columbia has no admission requirements.—Bingo! Now you know. Columbia's motto of "Make. Change." actually speaks to that kind. Dumb. going there to get dumber, and THOSE people come out thinking that they will change the world? When they are put out as the unemployables! Columbia College is skilled in lying to pull them in. I'll tell more on this further below.

Regarding this undying broadcasting specter: It took an old professor from a junior college I attended to tell me that he recalls that Columbia started out as a speech school for communist agitators in the 1950's, so they can win the hearts and minds of the proletariat, and from there proceeded to focus on a broadcasting program, because Lenin directed that bolsheviks should take over radio stations to control the media. Then somehow it was accredited to become a real college at some point in the 60's or 70's. People who remember the broadcasting stage are still alive and ask about it, but what's the use of being asked about the broadcasting program in your school if your major is in the design and commercial arts cluster? Meantime the new generation of employers who have seen today's dazed Columbia-graduated product are doing their best to keep it out of their organization. Boss's secretaries comment to each other while you sit waiting for your job interview, "See this guy… He's from Columbia. What's with those Columbia people? My daughter with bad grades who didn't know what to do with her life goes there and she brings home the castles she made out of popcorn in her 3D Design course. The same thing she was doing in 6th grade! What is with that place? What are they preparing them for!".

Reasons why Columbia College sucks, to put it succinctly:

The lie of "the Columbia network". The words "Don't forget the Columbia College network." were spoken for decades in regards to what one would find out there as job and career support after graduation, and yet this was not established as such until just recently. It is ran by one overworked guy in the College's office doing ten jobs at once, planning reunions of grads for which the college charges, by the way, and administering the "network" which just looks good online, guaranteed. In reality one finds the Columbia College network much better behind the fast food counter. Listen good, please: No one who has abraded their bloody fingers to finally grope to some job halfway related to their field is going to give you their own job. And no one who is working is going to risk their own face in front of their boss to risk bringing in some new graduate from a school that is full of gloss-eyed zombies. People who got to a position in their fields are seeing that the best coworkers that they have, and also their own boss comes from the University of Michigan, and from countless other places where they truly really teach their students how to kick butt on the job. Your so called "successful" Columbia College graduate wants to keep his/her job, or wants his/her business to actually work out, so they brings in one of those, who can do the job, and not "one of those Columbia people".

Some points why Columbia College Chicago sucks, to put it curtly:

The school is plagued by nepotism. Faculty and staff of entire departments are filled with their family members. This should matter because teachers should be hired for their rep in their field. The real professionals who teach went to teach at other reputable schools, like Roosevelt University and DePaul University.

Columbia College pays only $300 per course to a part time single-course teacher. Is there any other word for absurd? Wasn't salary supposed to attract the highest talent? Of course, the school is saving money, how clever. Contract instructors at the Adult Education Department of the City Colleges of Chicago, (a chain of local junior collelges), get paid more for teaching a five-session non-credit course.

Entire departments are plagued by entrenched alcoholics. Not an exaggeration. I mean alcoholism as a disease. They brought their pals in on the basis of drinking buds, and they liked it and stayed. Come to Columbia College for its staff of professional alcoholics.

That entire notion of "hands on" belongs with trade schools. Review of trade schools versus college or university: A college or university is intended to give a good education, to turn out an educated person, who also should place himself in a professional field. A trade school skips the inner educational building of a person and trains just the skills, and provides job placement, in the mechanical shop, or whatever they train for. Ergo, a college, nee a university, which still calls itself a college, like Columbia College, Chicago, is advertising "hands on". Go to a trade school if that's what you want.

To wrap it up, my personal story: I was forced to supplement my undergrad degree from Columbia College with a higher degree from another place, chosen for its impeccable reputation this time. Only this saving grace enabled me to actually compete. Prior to that, with Columbia on my resume, I was losing out jobs to two year grads from junior colleges who were capable of doing the job but would demand less pay due to no college-level. After I had Big University on my diploma, it got much better, except for that indelible Columbia College stain. Employers then remarked to me thus: "What kind of a person are you, to come out of this place, Columbia, such as it is, and then go to Big Name?". And, "What are you trying to tell me… what do you want me to think, when I see this nice degree from Big Name, but you got your BA at Columbia College?".

What am I to say? I would not recommend Columbia College Chicago to a pig prepping for the slaughterhouse. At least a pig's network of pork products is truly extant and highly appreciated, for what it is, not for broadcasting.