Corinthian and Art Institute (also run by Corinthian) are closing FOREVER.
Above all I promise to be level headed and as accurate in this post as I can. The people who are too outwardly livid about this may sound like they're ranting with no cause but all of our stories matter.
Points/Articles:
- Corinthian for-profit colleges fraud
- Art Institute 11 Billion Loan Fraud
- Preying on low Income students at Art Institute
- Non-transferable credits and non-accreditation
TLDR because a lot of this post will be my personal experience and other friends who went to Art Institute: The aftermath of going to school at AI was not worth it. Massive debt,non-transferable credits and fraudulent job placements. DO NOT go to any school associated with Corinthian or any for profit for that matter. Unless you're wealthy,even then,run. It'd be better to self teach & find alternative resources.
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The Enrollment and Loans
When I decided to finally go to 4 year college it was because I'd come around to the idea that a degree would help and that school would focus my direction. Before that I was in Santa Monica College for photography and working part time at restaurants. The pressure to leave home from certain family was also a selling point. They were wrong of course,this was a new generation and economic climate,even before 2006.I was literally the 2ed person in my family to go to college. We had no money to do what I thought was frivolous at the time,like go to college. I was in,what my husband calls,survival mode. It feels like most low income people do the same when presented with a better life through college.
I applied to Art Institute when I got a flier in the mail. It was the only school that had anything I wanted to do;all art. When I got there I had my portfolio ready. They told me it was 3 days before the new quarter started but I could apply right away. As the meeting went on the recruiter refused to see my portfolio saying that he was sure I was good enough. Red Flag 1. Then he said if I filled out paper work that day I could start the next quarter.He meant the one in 3 days time! Reed Flag 2. I asked what I needed to pay to get started and the recruiter said nothing up front but I would be sent to the financial office. Red Flag 3. I was used to other schools like SMC that offered a BOG fee waiver and Grants before loans.
I decided to take 1 loan to start school hoping that I could just pay it with the job that I had. As the first few quarters went by that wasn't viable anymore. I found a job closer to school to keep paying for transportation and food. I had to quit my jobs after a while. The work load & travel time of 2 hrs each way on transit was too much. It was never enough to pay for an actual class but I qualified for a small grant because I was ward of the court(in foster care as a child & rights given up from my mother to my grandmother). It seemed like I could afford it even as my debt piled up with every loan I took out. With the school saying its job placement was so high I thought it worth it to keep going.
Why couldn't I ask my family for money or co-signing right? On top of none of my guardians having any money for it anyway, going to college at all was not the most supported idea. My gran refused to be even a little encouraging about education unless I was going to be a doctor or lawyer. When I was in the middle of my last year is when she came around because it seemed like I was doing something worth money.
The Classes
The classes could have been more in depth but what can you really get done in 11 weeks? Especially learning as a beginner. Most of the teachers I had were great. Some were just awful and 2 got fired they were that bad. Bullying students and making personal insults will gain you a bit of flack. As well as 1 who was caught stealing student work! If you went to school with me you know who each of these teachers are.
The main reason I didn't realize I was in trouble was because I got mostly good grades. I only flunked 1 class in all 4 years. That was around the time I had 2 jobs. I'm still friends with my favorite teachers. I was in the Animation department but worked double by also working with friends in both schools production teams. I worked my ass off even though it may not have looked it because I was so quiet.
I was exhausted every day of my final year. My friends and I did so many overnights to render our 3D work that the security guards knew us by name. They stopped bothering us as we crashed on the lounge sofas because we'd been there literally every day of the week to do work. When people say we worked hard at that school we don't just mean late nights at home. People were basically living there with bags of snacks,sleeping wherever and making the labs our render farms. At least a group of us did. To say we didn't get jobs after because we didn't work hard enough is a fucking joke. That is the greatest insult you could say to us who had given up sanity for quality and production.
Exiting
Thats life right,hard work to the point of insanity? I left Art Institute because I wouldn't afford my last quarter of 2 classes. There was what seemed to be a loophole in the loans process. I had to take out more than $2,000 to get it to work. At the rate I was going having a hard time in demo 2 I knew that I'd have 1 class my final quarter and thus be just below the loan minimum. The school pressured me to get a co-signer even as I told them I had no one to help.Red Flag 4. I ended up convincing my gran to co-sign but they turned me down anyway because of her own past school debt,though minimal.
I tried to redo my final for demo 2 in hopes that I'd pass and not have to take out the extra loan. I failed and was berated by that one teacher who was fried. "Do you even want to be here" they said. If you couldn't tell by seeing me (and many others) there all day every day then they were an idiot. When it came down to it I was sick of hemorrhaging debt so I left with 2 classes short. I was told by the director of the animation department that I should stay and that it would be too hard to make it if I left. I'm sure the staff had to do what that would to keep students so they school could keep drowning them in debt.Red Flag 5 I took my chances for the better.
I applied to Otis,a school I'd been looking at for some time,and got in! I didn't know that Art Institute was not accredited thus none of my credits would transfer. On top of that when I went to the admissions office to fill out paper work I was asked what school I went to before. I said AI and literally got laughed at out loud. The admissions person apologized for me having gone to that school and not that she laughed. When people say these schools are jokes it's true. I didn't go through with Otis,I also couldn't afford it. They were not letting me take out private loans.
Jobs
I applaud fellow students that were able to get studio jobs right out of school or eventually. Most of the rest of us though didn't get that lucky. With a diploma or not, finding a job using AI's job offices was a waste. Lists of dead links for job boards,withholding job info if you didn't graduate yet and employees in said job center that were flippant were the biggest road blocks there.
I didn't expect the school or the diploma to get me a job in any way but some people did. They're not wrong when the idea of a diploma was that it would give us a leg up in being qualified for jobs we'd trained so hard for. For some it might be true but the truth is layered.
It is who you know,your skill, your determination and sometimes dumb luck that gets jobs. Friends pass you jobs,former employers pass you jobs,community is where the opportunities are. No amount of shallow activity in them will work. Don't be afraid to ask for support from them because if you really want to be in this field you do have to work hard. Return the favor and make that art of your community strong.
Forgive our loans
It's easy to dismiss the hoards of students in debt as the whining "millennials" but it's not our fault the economy went to shit now is it. (Looking at you government bailouts). The time of getting a degree to get a job is quickly dissipating with "skillmills" like these crushing any hope we had of having that so called "American Dream". It's not easy for the first and second generation students to have known not to go to for-profit colleges when no one else in our families had much,if any college experience.
How would our loans be forgiven and where would the money come from to pay the government back? Why not hold these for-profit schools accountable for it. More than just making them close down or file bankruptcy. Not only did they hurt legions of students but they defrauded the government itself. And thats what the government probably cares about more than helping ailing students in debt. So forgive our loans and go after the organizations that actually hurt you,the for-profit schools.
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