I have a rather contentious relationship with For Profit schools. Last year I was in a full on war with Full Sail Exposing some You Tube accounts as not being run by students but Employees of the school POSING as students. Recently on my You Tube Channel somebody commented on a video about the fall of Arcades here is the entire convo GAMING HISTORY CLASS? Now I know some schools have Beatles classes and shit like that but I don't know of ANY Schools that offer legit degrees that offer a gaming history class I mean what qualifications does one need to teach that Any asshole from this board probably teach a gaming history class. Besides online didn't kill Chinatown Fair in New York's Chinatown, A Rent dispute did. Arcade Infinity in LA died because the city was giving them shit My Local Arcade and Fighting game watering hole closed because the building it was in was flooded in fact TWO major arcades around here closed due to flooding. Anyways what school did this guy attend? academy of art university Which like University of Phoenix online, and Full Sail is UNACCREDITED Yet countless people go do these schools thinking they're paying out the ass and are getting jobs at EPIC or BIOWARE or whatever.... when at best they'll just be getting them Coffee. Now we've been over this before recently But I wanted to elaborate not so much on what schools to go to for gaming (there is at least 1 legit school that does teach game design that's nationally accredited) But more on why so many people fall for the false promises these schools offer Last year at this time my cousin wanted to drag me to FL to look at Full Sail and they get back and are singing it's praises about how awesome it is and how it's THE BEST IN THE WORLD My cousin wants to do film (yet does NOTHING on his own to advance his knowledge in fact Retrocade Fantasia was his Idea but he never did jack and shit to get it going so I just did everything my self including coming up with the name) Also are For Profit school degrees really as worthless as I say they are?
I say don't attend online schools. Who's to stop you from having the course open in one window and Google in another? I say these "for profit" schools are bull. I believe college should be run by the state or county or whatever. And if I were hiring people, and one showed me a masters from(for example) Florida State, and another showed me one from Full Sail(again, for example), and they had the exact same resumes, I'd take the one from Florida State. I'm not in college right now, but I can sure as hell tell you I'm gonna go to an actual university.
Every school is run "for profit", some of them are just classified as "non profit" for tax purposes. Let me comment on two points here. First, a good online program can be better than a "traditional" face-to-face program, but a bad university will always be a bad university. Online scam schools and low quality programs like UoP leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth (except those profiting from them). In the end, the most important part of the program is what you, as a student, take away from it. If you coast through doing as little work as possible, then you will get little from it. Second, having taken AND taught face-to-face, online and hybrid courses, a good course design expects that you have the course material in front of you. My background is in CS, and I can tell you that it is much better to let a student look up formulas and actually apply what they learned with an assessment such as a final project, rather than give a final exam and expect rote memorization of material that would just be looked up in the real world anyway (to an extent at least). Besides, most online programs have proctored final exams anyway (i.e. you still have to show up in person to take the final, no Google).
I prefer face to face though, because I'm the kind of person who can't pay attention for shit to something on the internet, unless it's like a game or something. Now yes, if the university is shit, then I wouldn't attend/hire someone from there. If the online school is really good(on par with a state university) then I'd hire(if I was an employer in either case). The reason I'm attending a real university is 1) I have 4 years paid for, I'm not sure if it will transfer to an online course. 2) I would like to do the actual college experience. Hell I'm no expert on colleges, I may or may not be wrong about some things, and some people may not agree with my opinions about them.
See, the problem is that many online programs are offered by "real" universities. Take UMUC for example (since I happen to be an adjunct faculty there): it is part of the University System of Maryland (i.e. it IS a state school). Also, while you might be planning to go to a great school in person, if you have a hard time paying attention, you're screwed either way.
By online I meant for profit, just too lazy to type it/I suffer from I-knew-what-I-meant-everyone-else-should-too Syndrome And like I said, I'm not in college yet, and haven't researched much, so some things I say might not make sense. Well that's true with anyone really.
Glad we got a good dialog going here I wasn't sure we would. As far as Gaming related schools go isn't the only reputable one Digipen? apparently not http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/214164/8-highest-ranked-colleges-for-game-design/
As mairsil said, lots of normal universities now offer 'distance programs' including computer science. Unfortunately you get what you pay for, and the good courses are not cheap.
I went to ITT Tech for 3 days. Then I found a forum dedicated to the demise of this school. After reading all night, I decided to resign from the place... ... which was VERY difficult. They did NOT want me to leave. I wonder why?
