Thread regarding Corinthian Colleges Inc. layoffs

What do you guys think about ITT

I was laid off last year, It was pretty bad for about 4 months, no income, etc. I have a temp job now, it's not bad, less pay, but less responsibilities, it's stable. It looks like I may be able to get a job with ITT (I worked in admissions) doing pretty much the same thing for more money. Not sure about work load but you never know. I wanted to see what your thoughts were on ITT. Do you think there is possibility that ITT will melt similar to CCI? Please respond, I need to respond by end of day tomorrow, I am still not sure what to do. Thank you in advance.

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Post ID: @OP+wEW0T8h

24 replies (most recent on top)

I worked at ITT for 11 years in management. Don't do it!!! The government has been after em for years. Basically all of or most of your proprietary schools work the same way. It is a lot of pressure to meet numbers goals which creates unethical practices in some individuals. Unfortunately shit runs down stream and as pressure is place on managers, they place it in vey humiliating ways on their staff. Very low moral. Corporate knows and could care less. It's all about the $$$.

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Post ID: @3FJT+wEW0T8h

ITT, Everest, Strayer, U of P among others have all closed campuses nationwide in the last year or so. Not just Anthem.

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Post ID: @1EI2+wEW0T8h

Different cash positions between all of the big players, so grab what you can right now when it comes to employment. Anthem is closing campuses again, the announcements just came this week.

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Post ID: @iZW+wEW0T8h

ITT is the same as cci in terms of academics, if you document things heavily you are covered. Some ITT campus physical on ground locations have 12 week terms, PA and TX have 12 week terms due to the states requirements. Transfer of credits is the same issue as cci. cci and ITT are both accredited by ACICS.The bottom line is cci, ITT, UoP etc. are businesses. As we know, businesses are about the bottom line...the numbers. This breeds problems between admission reps and academics. Admissions are trying to do their job to stay alive and stay employed and academics are trying to do the same but yell at admissions for enrolling some less than par students. It is a non-stop back and forth saga.

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Post ID: @0aa+wEW0T8h

I've never been asked to falsify or raise grades to keep retention up. And frankly, the number of zeros you give at Everest (because students don't even bother to come to class) are not nearly the issue at ITT. You can't pass a student who does zero work. At ITT they kick them out after 2 weeks if they don't participate in class, which I was told was a federal financial aid law. But at Everest they rarely kicked students out, at least last term. I had students who never showed up after week 2, and I spent the rest of the term doing Outreach on a long MI A student.

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Post ID: @DNP+wEW0T8h

I would not go to ITT. As others have said, they, too, have been investigated and faced numerous lawsuits. Based on comments of others, it sounds as if you may be faced with the option of giving good grades to students who don't deserve them just to keep your retention rate up, or face no classes. In all my years at CCi/Everest Online, I've never felt that pressure so long as I've been able to show via my e-mails to at-risk students, and now Skype calls that I've reached out to them and worked to get their grades up. ITT sounds like a different animal, and one I wouldn't like.

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Post ID: @tgJ+wEW0T8h

21421, that may be the case. But, I think people are going to apply where the jobs are, regardless of the school. The pickings are slim and we are all going to need jobs pretty soon. Especially if it's a non profit school that buys us. We may not make the proverbial cut, unfortunately.

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Post ID: @h7b+wEW0T8h

I believe the original poster was in admissions. As others here have cautioned, I would be leary of ITT from that perspective. Nearly all for-profit schools are struggling, based on the market (too much capacity, not enough students). That causes undue pressure (read - maniacle managers and questionable tactics)to make numbers. Some for-profit schools (Grand Canyon, Walden,etc) serve a different student demographic and are not having challenges at the same level as CCI, ITT and others. Do your homework and understand the financial performance, DOE status and market strategy for any school you consider. Or - take inventory of your transferrable skills and change industries.

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Post ID: @Oum+wEW0T8h

They pay $200-400 less per class at ITT than Everest. But they have 11 weeks of classes and week 12 is grading. Them there's a week between. So, unlike Everest where you never actually have time off because of grading and prepping, you actually get one full week off between classes.

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Post ID: @pcT+wEW0T8h

Maybe tough for Anonymous21413, but not so much for others.

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Post ID: @jrC+wEW0T8h

If you apply for ITT Tech (on ground or online) you are applying to be in the pool. You are not actually applying for open classes. The heads at ITT love to brag about instructor numbers, for some reason. And it's mostly adjuncts. At the campus I worked, there was only 1 full time instructor (computers, I think.) Once you get a class, you have to prove yourself. And for the lucky few who everybody loves (instructors, students, deans, librarian, everyone) you can get your pick of schedule. But you have to be a rock star and you have to love your job and students. I think people don't understand that working for ITT is not just competition. It's hard to get a foot in the door. And keep it . (In academia, anyway.)

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Post ID: @5pk+wEW0T8h

SOme ITT campus may have a larger pool of instructors. Adjunct pay is between 1,200 to 1,500 on average to teach one class per term. If a student drops from your class as an instructor it doesn't matter if they were enrolled and only speak spanish or if they have difficulty reading...the bottom line is anytime a student drops the question on deck is what did the instructor do or not do? It always boils down to the instructor didn't do a good enough job to retain that student. No one wants to hear the excuses that the student dropped because of a death in the family or because they were reloated out of country for military....it simply doesn't matter why they dropped.....a drop is always the instuctors fault. Teaching any courses above a 3rd term at ITT keeps you safer as an instructor because there is less likely chance they will drop out at that point.

Admission is a different story. They will seek to get students to change their program major because when a student changes their major it is a new start counted toward the admissions department but counted against the academic department. Admissions takes that program change as a new start and academic gets dinged as a student drop.

Some ITT campuses have open admissions which is a buffet of problems but high enrollment campuses for admissions but a nightmare for instructors. Some ITT campuses require students to pass Wonderlic which is the bare minimum of course but it is at least something.

I don't blame the for profit school models as much as I blame the state(s) for not having more of an admissions policy to gain entry and I am not saying they need to be a scholar passing an SAT but a little more foundation than the simplistic Wonderlic test or worse yet having no requirement for admissions testing. Students graduate from high school and it is appauling at their skill levels -I am talking about the basics of basics like 4th grade division. Everyone wants to focus on the for profit models but the real root of the problem is the students graduating from high school without the bare bones of basic skills and THAT is the real crux of the problem. These students have no where to go to obtain the learning and skills they didn't obtain in high school. They coasted through high school and were passed along and they have no other model to understand what the requirements are beyond what they have experienced which is little work, no expectation and passing through. For profit schools tend to get these students as it is their only option because they can't pass the admissions requirements at other colleges. We get these students with little writing abilities or basic skills as to how to even be a student, how to communicate, how to study etc. and there is no training or guidance for them to learn any other way than what they know already which is a poor foundation.....so the public school system should really be the ones on the firing line right now and the question should be asked as to how these students graduated from high school and why they were passed along. Improving those standards would in turn improve our standards and student base at a for profit school.

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Post ID: @TBt+wEW0T8h

I don't work for Everest. But like many of you, I work at 4 different schools (plus gave an online k12 class) to make ends meat. I taught math for an ITT campus. When it closed, I was invited to join the math pool at a campus much further away. I readily accepted. That was 18 months ago and I have yet to be offered a course. When I inquired of the Dean why not, he told me my retention levels at the other campus was too low. I ended with 9 students. The campus CLOSED! That's why students left. And my retention rate before that was always good. It's a great place to work if you can get classes. But it's a lot of work per class. I liked it enough to keep trying every term to get a math class to teach.

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Post ID: @8wp+wEW0T8h

21404 - ITT practices slightly different recruiting than Everest. They probably don't consider Everest much competition.

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Post ID: @U6C+wEW0T8h

21404 - go apply at ITT and find out. Retention rates are THE very thing they look at when they assign classes! They have such huge pools of adjuncts, they can set whatever bar you want. Remember, they don't enroll the exact population that Everest does (trying to word that carefully.) I am sure you know much more than me, clearly never having worked for ITT.

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Post ID: @CBT+wEW0T8h

Perhaps with CCI schools closing, there will be more leads for other schools like ITT?

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Post ID: @Jue+wEW0T8h

If it was me, I wouldn't do it. ITT was already investigated, and already accused of similar improprieties as CCI. You're going to be dealing with the same policies, same requirements. And it sounds like the same ridiculous Talisma documentation. (Thank God ECP ditched that.)

Also, LOL at instructors "not making it" at ITT. Also LOL at "retention rates." No respectable university or community college reviews its instructors' "retention rates" for the sole purpose of maintaining employment. An instructor with a poor retention rate is not necessarily a "bad" instructor.

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Post ID: @ZRV+wEW0T8h

A lot of instructors at Everest would not make it at ITT. They keep a close eye on and protect their students from bad instructors. If your retention falls below a certain level, for any reason, they will not have you back after that term. They have a huge pool of instructors. Only the best stay working.

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Post ID: @a0g+wEW0T8h

It's more work / less $ for adjuncts. So, the instructors whining about having 30 students in their classes need not apt. That's the average class size.

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Post ID: @sjv+wEW0T8h

ITT is exactly like cci, same song - difference dance steps. Remember in the early 2000s the feds raided many ITT locations and walked in and removed computers and student files, yet somehow ITT overcame all those ordeals. It is believed ITT has a very strong high up person in DC that lobbies for them. I don't know that to be true or not but ITT does always seem to skate through some tough ordeals. ITT admissions of course is all about the start numbers....no different than any for profit college and truthfully not different than any college in that aspect as the name of the game is new students. At ITT your calls are tracked, your numbers are closely monitored and if you don't meet your numbers you are out the door. They do not waste time in that regard. You may get a pass in one term but but if you fail to meet your numbers the next term you can bet you will be dismissed. There is no two week notice. They tell you to pack up your things - they watch you pack up and walk you to the exit. The number one complaint among the admission reps is the quality of leads...the stronger your numbers...the better your leads. Which of course makes it more difficult on the new comers because they get colder leads and need to rise above that in order to improve their lead quality.

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Post ID: @vJ7+wEW0T8h

I worked in academics at ITT Tech for about a year and a half. I dislike the company and feel tremendous guilt for the way students end up burdened with debt for no degree or a questionable one. That said, you've got to make your own choice. At the moment market analysis suggests that, despite the SEC findings and the Consumer Protection lawsuit, ITT Tech is in significantly better shape than Corinthian was. It's stock value is slipping though and it plans to file a major document with the SEC at the end of July, correcting previous quarter earnings with the input of data from its Peaks loan program.

It is theoretically possible that the data is so bad that the stock will plummet and send the company into a tailspin, but people don't seem to think that's coming. it's also theoretically possible (and the company was obligated to spell this out in its most recent SEC 8K filing) that the DOE could cut off ITT Tech's access to Title IV funding. This would be the death knell for the company.

Note, however, that when they filed that document with that warning, nothing dramatic happened to the stock. While people predict it could go down even to $12, the company will likely be around for many years to come. That doesn't mean it will have large enrolments or be a happy place to work, however.

Look up ITT Teach "pain funnel" to see some of the more egregious practices the company's admissions people have been accused of in the past. I liked the admissions people I worked with and I don't like to think they engaged in similar practices. Then again, six months or so after I left they're almost all gone, too.

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Post ID: @4w0+wEW0T8h

I think the for profit college world is going to change. But it will never go away. And when they stuck with the model and work for students instead of profit, it can open up a world of education for people who would otherwise not have the opportunity.

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Post ID: @OAo+wEW0T8h

I was an adjunct there once upon the time. Same corporate culture. Heavy use of Takisma. Same Outreach. Big Dufferences as an instructor: Pay is significantly less and the graded work is significantly higher. There's at least 3 graded assignments per week us a quiz. You have to set up your own grade book. Overall, it's a lot more work. (Don't kid yourself - Outreach is the same. Same numbers drop out and retention is just as low.) Also, they have a giant pool of adjuncts, so the number if classes you will get per term is much lower. Maybe 1. Almost never 2.

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Post ID: @Qf6+wEW0T8h

Work for this sector and assume no job lasts more than a year. Both EDMC and ITT are next on the DOE's hit list.

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Post ID: @08Z+wEW0T8h

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