Westwood College Online ripoff They are robbing me blind and offering me a poor education Denver Colorado

Ronald,
So sorry to hear that you were threatened...
unfortunately it is par for the course- I am sure that is what anyone would expect from a "COLLEGE", right? You know... manipulation, apathy, and intimidation is exactly what I wanted out of an alma mater. - I find it disgusting and urge you to fight back! (( lawyer names redacted br ROR))

Good luck,
FIGHT WESTWOOOD!

CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.

Unfortunately they did ignore me at first and then threaten me, they told me if i said anything else to anybody in school they would expel me.

Ronald your points were very well put. Many kudos to you for articulating your experiences and confronting the directors. Wonder what their response will be (if any)...from my experience- they will probably blow you off or give you another a big line of BS.

You mentioned Myspace, if you're not my friend already, you should find me... display name: "Fight Westwood".

Best of luck to you- justice is ours!
FIGHT WESTWOOD!

I realize lawyers and politicians generally only side with big business and institutions because they pay good and us little people don't. I just thought I would include a copy of a letter I recently fired off to my school program director.

To Tracey

My advisor Christina Hernandez referred me to you to voice my concerns about being ripped of by the school. First things first I have been taking Web Design and Multimedia for the last two years with one to go. I have been on the deans list multiple times. Lastly I have been cheated by the school because it has not given me what it initially promised me, A good education for a new career field.

The school spares no expense with minor classes they set up the classes pretty good, they staff them with people who are knowledgeable in their fields, and give us great books. To bad Westwood does the opposite when it comes to major classes. We get our bills padded by having our schedules filled with either completely useless classes or classes that are usually so screwed up it fail's to teach us anything.

Let me get a point straight I am not taking graphic design where employers in my area offer starting salaries at around $10 an hour; I can find a job for about that without a college degree. I am taking web design with salaries that start in my area for about three times that a go way up depending on experience. Employers in my region of the country do not offer internships or entry level positions. They will not pay anybody that kind of salary unless they have a lot of experience or are very good, period. As a Westwood student I can not get employment period unless my work and skills are good enough to compete with experienced people already working in the field.

Westwood is only worried about how high it can get my bill not in how employable and successful I will be after graduation. I need to be employable after graduation and I need a job soon. Spending $64,000 for a degree that is only good for hanging on my wall is not what I had in mind when I decided to go to college, I wanted a new career.

Many of my classes in Web Design are taught by instructors with only a graphic design background and they have no clue what a web designer really needs to learn to be employable in today's marketplace. Many of the skills needed to succeed can be easily found just by looking through the help wanted ads, but Westwood never bothered to look.

We should be taught by experienced web designers who have a working portfolio they can show the students. This gives us the opportunity to learn what our own portfolios should look like to compete. Commonly we have poor instructors who tell us to put lots of posters, brochures, and newsletters in our portfolios to show employers. The problem is most employers looking to hire a web designer actually want to see web design work, and that is something Westwood students are not taught.

In two years I have only had two assignments that required me to design a complete web site (this was in flash) and even these did not have components like forms and stuff that actually work. Think of it you have students who are supposedly learning web design who never build web sites, does that even sound right?

Many of the major classes I have had have been completely useless. For instance:

1. A resume and portfolio class we had to take called portfolio design. This was a useless class that had us doing basic resumes and creating portfolios using only graphic design material. Problems we needed advanced resume help, and we needed to know how to put together a web design portfolio which is completely different. But that's ok because we have no web design material to put into one.
2. A digital print class that discussed all the methods involved in digital print in the book but the lectures did not cover the books material and our assignment for five weeks was to put together a newsletter, one newsletter. Problem we never really learned anything useful about digital printing we can actually use.
3. Interactive scripting is a really important class probably the second most important subject a web designer needs to know to succeed. To bad Westwood is not teaching us this subject, I want a refund on this class. This class took six subjects and combined them and all skill levels into one class. Westwood also supplied us with the worst books they could find for us to use. The books combine all skill levels, assume we have experience we do not have, and teach right over our heads. We are not learning a thing.

I could go on with bad examples of classes we are getting but the bottom line is we are not being taught anything useful we can use. We are not being taught at a beginner skill level then building on it so we can learn and develop our skills. Many of the classes are so bad that if we want to succeed we have to get our own books and relearn these subjects on our own, something we shouldn't have to do considering how much this costs.

I am tired of getting inexperienced instructors who have no web design skills trying to teach a course who commonly can't even answer student assignment problems when we run into a snag, like the interactive scripting class. The guy has no real skill and blew me off when I had a problem. Regrettably it led me to not completing all my assignments error free because he had no idea how to fix my problems. I even had to email him examples to prove I had a problem that he was not addressing. However many majors are not geared to teach us what we need to know and are not prepared for students who actually try to learn the material because there is a learning cap on how much we can actually get out of the classes provided.


The only classes that Westwood provides that are good are the flash classes and their instructors; the problem is that one should be three classes because what is offered does not cover everything we need to know.

What I need is to be taught so I can succeed after graduation because has is it looks like I will have to consider something like bankruptcy and lawyers because I will not be employable and will not be able to pay off my bills.

Westwood should be offering a web design course led by experienced web designers. The course should be centered on not only teaching us the subjects but incorporating them into professional portfolios we should be working on throughout school. The center of Westwood's focus should be on guiding us towards professional portfolios that will be competitive in the employment marketplace. Courses should not be offered to students until they are designed up to standards and can actually benefit the students.

We are tired of getting classes that are complete garbage and look like a drunk assembled it. Then we are told to bad we hope to fix these classes with your feed back in the future, but you can retrain with this program that we offer. Hello I just had the class and you couldn't train me there's a problem!

Most students taking web design have not learned anything from many of the classes, have no experience designing web sites, have no web design portfolio to show a potential employer, and have no real polished resume to show. With what we have its no wonder many employers will no longer hire entry level or provide internships for new web design graduates.

We need help with resumes that will actually help us with specific field related and individual problems we have so we can attract employers. A resume class that shows us basics but can't address specific problem areas is of no help, we need professional resume guidance.

A resume can only go so far because we have to be able to back it up, and being a Westwood student I have no portfolio grade school work that I can show an employer who is looking for a web designer. I have no ammunition and anything I can show will only hurt my chances because I am not trained in the skills I need or the skills an employer wants.

Earlier I said the interactive scripting class was the second most important subject we need to learn. The first is HTML and CSS. While I did get a very, very basic introduction to HTML in a class, Westwood does not offer Web Design students a solid course for us to actually learn it. This subject is the building block and the foundation for everything else we learn about web design, and it's not even taught to us. This is one of the most common and demanding points an employer looks for. Does the person have a good knowledge of the subject and a good selection of work to show, we have absolutely zero work to show.

In most cases you can go to any Myspace web site the kids like mine hang out in and see there web spaces that are basically about as good as many of the web design students and that's bad. We should have a good solid portfolio and web site to show by now and we do not have a thing because we are not being taught.

The sad part is two things:

1. Westwood is only concerned about how high they can run my bill and not with my success.
2. I have to tell the school how to teach a course when they should already know how to do it. Unfortunately they don't seem to know or even care about its student's success and act like they started this school yesterday.