e-petition

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Of course you are right...I apologize. This is a topic a feel very very strongly about, but I will take a chill pill in the future.

 

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I seem to have hinted at this in my other ranting post without realizing it. You are absolutely correct!!!

It seems that another method is needed. Maybe for now the only way to asses the quality of the TP is to find forums such as this.

 

I probably need to explain my choice of wording in the petition...

For any figures relating to pass rate, fail rate and drop-out rate you need to know the overall sign-up/start figures. This is probably the least contentious figure to ask a company to provide, and is the figure most companies will willingly use in marketing.

The pass rate shows a number of things. A low figure suggests the company is not training sufficiently well, or is more interested in getting money from people than actually helping them (I would argue that a charging training company has a duty to ensure that the person purchasing their services is actually capable of benefiting - investment companies have this sort of legally binding duty). I am assuming that to pass in an area of study means something. In the case of the microsoft exams, the standard is not set by the training provider. The training provider cannot simply lower the pass score to boost their figures - unless of course, they invent their own sub-standards! If the provider has taken care in how they have marketed their product and not mis-sold, and if they are offering a recognised qualification, then a low passing rate can only suggest problems.

The fail rate is the opposite side of this coin, giving similar underlying information to the pass rate. The reason it is here is to ensure that there is discrimination between those who did not pass due to failing examinations and those who failed to pass due to dropping out. It doesn't strike me as unreasonable that this information should be provided for comparative purposes. A high fail rate suggests the company is not paying attention to their duty of care to the student. It will prevent a company from claiming (as some may) that because they have x thousands of students, they must be good...

The drop-out rate is about marketing. A high drop-out rate suggests the company has not paid attention to whether a student was ever likely to benefit or not, or to whether their courses are structured adequately, or are meeting expectations.
All companies will have a degree of drop-out. It isn't necessarily a sign of failure. It isn't possible to be absolutely certain that a customer knows what they are getting into, or has the qualities required to succeed. But if some companies do much better than others here, and have a lower drop-out rate, that surely suggests something?

But I completely understand that there will be a wide variety of opinion about what information a company might be compelled to provide, although I would find it difficult to swallow the concept of 'buyer beware' (the cheat's charter), and that this sort of legislation is not required.

Bottom line: These companies are taking money from the public and should be accountable. It is simply not good enough to say to someone 'You should have done your research' when they have paid a good sum of money to a company and not really benefited from it. It isn't acceptable to take money from someone without taking care to check they are able to benefit. And we need some basic measurements to work to - forums (fora?) are fine, but they can't provide this sort of hard numerical data, and they can't sit with you when the salesman comes.

Last word: If this petition were to go through, it would certainly go through a process of discussion and debate that will change it out of all recognition, and hopefully make any legislation a more comfortable shape.

 

shambles, you really need to take note of what trip has written above! For us forum regulars, what is more annoying then most is peeps that use this forum as a soap box for protesting against their training company(s) or as an advertising stand for braindumps! If you cast your eye back through the forums you'll note that training company protest threads usually end up getting locked!

 

Shambles, that argument definitely does not hold water. If a salesman comes to your house, invited, is he going to leave without trying every trick in the book to get you to buy what he's selling? No, of course he isn't - but you're still not obligated to buy anything from him. I have had to physically threaten a double glazing salesman with violence in the past to get him to leave!

The simple fact of the matter here is that there are thousands of people signing up for IT courses who don't have a prayer of ever passing them - 90% of the time this is because they made a mistake thinking they could pass prior to signing up because they didn't do their research properly.

IT is a very competitivbe, very difficult profession to get into. All too often, people think because theycan write a formula in Excel, or install a network card in a home PC, that they can work in the IT industry with minimal effort. Sadly, this is just delusions of grandeur on their part. Being 'the IT bloke' in your office does NOT mean you can fix a router when it goes down, install a new firewall or configure Group policy for 5000 users. The sooner people realise that, the better for them - I'm sure that if they did a bit of research before signing up for what will quickly become a £5000 millstone round their necks - they;d think twice before doing so.

Another problem with the IT industry is that people with no aptitude for it and no love of working with technology sign up because they are stupid enough to believe that IT is not only easy to get into, but provides a path to unthinkable riches - certainly ads like "the average salary in IT is £37k" don't help matters, but if they actually took the time to do a bit of digging - on forums like this one and others they would realise the salary gravy train came to a halt - ooooh.... sometime around September 2001 and think twice about getting into an industry purely for the money. If thats all that motivates some people I've never understood why they aren't all striving to work in the city.

As I said earlier, I've signed the petition because I think anything that highlights the fact that there are tosspots out there that are willing to con someone with no talent, aptitude or hope of passing an exam out of parting with 5 grand is all to the good. However, this is no different, in every respect, to my ire at cowboy tradesmen, who charge ridiculous amounts of money to fix the tiniet (or even non existent) problem with your house. They deserve to be birched in public

 

This is like pulling teeth - what is it about me that raises so many hackles? (Please don't all rush in...)

FYI Drum_Dude, I did not make tripwire read this thread. I never even tried to make him sign the petition. I did express surprise at the amount of disinterest the petition had raised, in the hope that I might discover why. I then apologised to tripwire when he expressed unhappiness about this. I expressed a degree of unhappiness at Sparky's initial response - I thought he was being a bit harsh. He's now said a bit more about where he is coming from and I can see that his views have more merit than his first response suggested. I have said thank you to the people who have signed. And I have tried to explain my actions. I have previously complained about my training company. I was not doing so on this occasion. This is my first post since that particular thread was locked and I'm already getting it in the neck. And if you just read through again, you will see that I have not said anything in favour of braindumps... jeez!

We all know that I have a point here. There are loads of threads about problems with training companies, and very little in the way of protection for people coming in. I am merely suggesting a way of moving the debate forward. Why is this such hard work?

Zebulebu - I don't disagree with you. That's what the petition is about. My point with that statement was simply that it is harder for a salesman to lie to you when he has to present some hard facts about his company. But I'm sure it won't stop some of us from fooling ourselves about our chances.

Moderators - please lock the thread and ban me. I seem to be unable to contribute without creating a fuss...

 

FYI shambles, Trip is a Senior Moderator @ CertForums, that is why I said TAKE NOTE of what he has written with regards to the purpose of these forums. Also, if you read carefully what I wrote you'll note that I put the word OR in between the soapbox and braindump statements.

You got your fingers burnt so live and learn! I got my fingers burnt by a Ford car dealer last year but I haven't resorted to a public crusade as you have! The reason being is that I was gulliable and the salesman saw me coming...I've learnt from that one...end of!

My advice: put it behind you, get your certs and get on with your life because our time on this earth is too limited for this bullshit!

 

Can I then, please, just nail one comment which I feel comes up way too often for my liking, and which does no-one any favours at all?

Roughly translated this comes out as:

'You got caught out. Tough. I've been caught before, too. But I didn't make a fuss. Not like you have. Because it was my stupid fault. But I have learned my lesson. And I don't care that someone else is going to get caught the same way after me. And I don't care that you got caught. Let's not bother about it any more.'

The result of this sort of thinking is that the people who prey on others continue to do so forever...

Here's a better approach. ' You got caught out. I have been before, too. We may not be able to change that. But we can try. Let's make it better for the people who come after us. let's try to make the world a better place.'

Can we at least agree that blaming the gullible/greedy/stupid for being tricked is an inadequate response to the problem? Shouldn't we be dealing with the tricksters instead?

 

Well not wishing to muddy the waters too much but I think the important thing to concentrate on is IT not politics unless theres a really big issue at stake (like all our jobs).

Like I said my political interests are virtually non existent, but I'm pretty sure on this, you cannot legislate to protect people from themselves. The people and the market will move too fast, legislature is a fairly slow blunt instrument. There will always be sharp people looking to remove you from your money, legislation can help but the only sure fire way is to learn how to avoid them.

Do you rely solely on the anti virus writing or anti hacking laws to protect your computer ? Hell no you install a virus checker and a firewall....

 

We live and learn of course. That's what life is all about. But if conmen are allowed to scam everyone with impunity what kind of society would we be living in ? Okay, so today somebody cons you into buying a crap car. You learn from the experience and move on. Does this same experience protect you from getting conned into buying a crap insurance policy tomorrow ? It's simply not possible for anyone to convert all such experiences, and the lessons gained thereof, into some sort of scam-aversion universal model. That's why ordinary people like us need protection. And that's why I'm a strong believer in government regulation.

 

I got my fingers burned too. The thing is that I actually care enough to try and do something so that others don't suffer the same fate. Its not just about me. If we all took the attitude of "forget it", we would have no regulation for anything. In fact there would be not such thing as a legal system, why would we need one when everyone just has to watch his/her own back???

 

Well put, mate.

 

I'm sure I should not need to point out that any new legislation could have a multitude of effects as has been mentioned. The most likely would be to put up training costs and generate more dead trees.

There would of course still be bad trainning suppliers in the market just as we still have the odd bad doctor....

Read anything on statistics, read Freakonomics, you simply cannot draw the conclusions you would like.

If you want a better regulated training system why not use a tech college or University they were there for you to use all along ? They have some regulation and student bodies etc.

However even these institutions like all institutions are market driven and operate according to economic factors. Most courses will deliberately allow people who can't pass onto the first year to generate income. There are many courses with lucrative foriegn students who can't speak english.

Hell when I took my HND there were shock of horrors a few women on the course, when I asked three of them why they were there they said they thought it would be a good course to $h@g and meet boys, needless to say they didn't last very long or learn anything... (Of course the remaining women who were there for genuine reasons did well...)

I'd like to address one more point thats been raised by this thread, IT is not a magic ticket or a pot of gold, there are already many people in IT who should probably not be there and if you are lucky enough to get into IT you will have to deal with them ! There are many professions, football, law, recruitment, finance, sales etc That pay extremely well, sometimes for little or no effort, I wouldn't single out IT as a special candidate, in fact you will find many jokes about the lack of a life the average IT professional has due to their work commitments.....

IT suffers from some fairly unique problems too, you couldn't off shore your plumber or your lawyer could you ? So if you could pick up thoose skills in an unreasonably easy manner what makes you think they would be of any value in a world with globalisation ?

 

absolutely - but don't forget that behind the scenes, there are any number of internet related organisations doing a bit of policing on your behalf and arresting the scammers, virus-writers and pornographers (some of them, at least)...

I also hate politics - but I see it as as one of those things I ignore at my peril. If I don't take an interest, then for sure the people who do take an interest will be people with their own interests at heart...

I'd sooner pay more for something that is the real deal than pay less to be scammed...

 

This is the point entirely. If the expression "you get what you pay for" actually applied, I for one would be allot happier and everyone could then make an INFORMED decision.

 

Like I said Universities are subject to regulation albeit fairly loose regulations.

They have to have their courses approved by an external moderator.

They are subject to the student body NUS.

Hopefully you made an IMFORMED decision, just there were factors you were not aware of, regulation will not change this. A good lecturer could leave, the training company could go bust, theres no guarantees. As any financial salesperson will tell you past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

If you didn't get what you paid for and you have a contract to prove it why not take legal action ?

Surely you should try to use the existing laws to resolve the issue before asking for new ones ?

 

I don't see why this is so difficult to understand!!
Actions CAN indeed be taken AFTER the fact, but what we are trying to achieve is some form of mechanism where people are not in a situation where they have to take such actions.Of course, you can argue the effects of such mechanisms "case by case" and of course you will find situations where the mechanism failed.

But on the whole, I would much rather be able to easily find information on a TP just as I can when deciding what university to attend, or what school to go to, or what hospitals I should avoid.

There are laws to stop people from killing eachother but "there are no quarantees" that you will not be a victim, does this mean we should not have bothered creating such a law???