Grimmy Grim Review of Academy of Art
UPDATE: I have filed a complaint with Bureau for P...
UPDATE: I have filed a complaint with Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education about AAU. I would like to encourage all of you to do the same. The more people complain to them, the better! BPPE needs to know that this school is overcharging students and giving us a mediocre education. The BPPE finding in your favor could lead to your student loans from here being erased. I also want to encourage all of you to file for an Income Based Repayment Plan. I see that many of you are being forced to work for minimum wage. If you file a IBRP, you will more than likely not need to make any repayments.
Overpriced at $3000 a class especially when you consider that instructors are hit or miss. Not surprising as I recently learned that instructors are only required to attend a one day workshop!
The WNM department is a nightmare, especially for those of us with a related degree. Unfortunately they let everyone in no matter what your previous degree is in. I was in an advanced course once and a student did not know what a server was! In another upper class a student did not know HTML or CSS! How are these people registering for these classes?!? Teachers spend over a month teaching HTML&CSS even in the upper grad classes because of those students. We could be learning more advanced stuff like Javascript (you get a whopping two weeks; good luck getting a job with that one) or a JS library besides jQuery. Hell, they could give students who already know HTML and CSS different projects to work on.
Their electives are a joke, too. I seriously do not care about motion graphics in the slighest but it's one of only few options for an elective. They could easily add other classes but they rarely do. They have no problem forcing you to take classes like design practices where you'll pretty much do nothing but printing and won't learn very much (It's a class designed for freelancers).
The department director is off in la la land and does not take complaints about teachers seriously. My entire class complained about a teacher (whose answer for everything was 'Google it!') and he did nothing. In fact, that teacher is STILL THERE and is now teaching thesis classes.
Workload for in person classes vs online is not even comparable. My friend and I both took the portfolio class, him in person and me online. My friend worked on his three case studies and portfolio for the entire semester and that was it. I on the other hand had five assignments for the first week alone and had THREE midterm projects. I also had a minimum of three big assignments a week for the entire duration of the class and had to post paragraph responses four different days a week. They fail to realize that some of us actually work during the week and aren't riding on mom and dad's money.
The best teachers in that department are DC Sharpnelli, Ben Hulan (I think he's gone now unfortunately), and Walter. Everyone else is either 'meh' or 'total nightmare/avoid like the plague.'
And the admin staff? What a joke.
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