ITT Technical Institute, Sylmar Campus, Computer and Electronics Engineering Technology (AAS), 15-MAR-04 / 05-MAR-06, Electronics and Communications Engineering Technology (BS) 13-MAR-06 / 02-DEC-07
Department of Education,
This letter will describe my experiences at ITT and why I believe I was misled by the school and the victim of fraudulence. As a result of these experiences and the facts that have come to light regarding ITT (enclosed in the Appendix), I am seeking full reimbursement of my tuition at ITT.
I was enrolled in ITT Technical Institute from 2004 to December 2007 in Sylmar, CA. My hope was to learn new skills and broaden my employment opportunities. Unfortunately, I was grossly misled about what ITT could do for me. The "tour" was where it all began: my recruiter asked me what my ideal school would be -- I was candid and replied that I thought I might start at a community college and transfer later to a larger school like MIT. He immediately warned me against going to community college by saying that most of them are only regionally accredited. He then compared this accreditation to ITT's national ACICS accreditation. He told me that national is better than regional accreditation because you can take it anywhere. I took his word for it -- but I would later come to find out that this is simply not true: a lot of non-profit, state-owned, degree-oriented schools are regionally accredited -- whereas, many for-profit schools are nationally accredited (and it is these latter type of schools that face less strict regulations). My recruiter was trying to convince me that by being nationally accredited, ITT was superior to regionally accredited schools. He even went so far as to say that if I wanted to work with computers, ITT would probably be even better for me than MIT.
He explained this by saying that "98% of ITT grads are placed in jobs in their field of study" and that starting salaries for these positions were between "$80,000 and $100,000" a year. He assured me that ITT worked with big name companies like IBM, Schumberger. He told me that Schumberger hires primarily from ITT's pool of graduates and that I would easily be able to get a $120,000 to $150,000 salary...
I didn't understand all of this, but he spoke on
authority of the school, so I accepted it at face value.
He went on to compare ITT to MIT saying that while MIT is the bigger name, employers are actually seeking out ITT graduates because they are better trained and the best equipped in the world.
I asked about cost and the recruiter said that he could not tell what the exact cost of attending ITT would be because it varies student to student. He directed me to the Financial Aid Administration. He assured me that they would make it work and that by the time I was ready to graduate I'd have a high-paying job lined up that would more than compensate for the loan.
It all sounded too good to be true and I was so happy that I had come to ITT.
That
happiness soon wore off.
For all the time I spent with the recruiter getting sold on why I should attend ITT, I spent mere minutes with the experts in the Financial Aid offices. Everything was filled out on Smartforms -- and everything was filled in so quickly and I was pushed through so fast that it was over before I even had time to blink. When I tried to ask how much I would owe, I was told "about $30,000" but not to worry because I wouldn't have to pay back a dime until I was out of school for 6 months and that the
federal government would pay my interest on the loan while I was in school. As they said they would do all the paper work, I never really got a chance to double check any of it. I felt like I'd just signed my life away without really knowing what I was getting in return. The promises of my recruiter were beginning to dim as the reality now began to dawn.
That reality would become grimmer over the years as I attended courses. The picture can be tersely summarized thus: instructors who hardly…
