SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : PART ONE: GETTING AHEAD : Selecting a Trade School : A Little Homework Can Help in Finding One That Fits
The high school counselor tells you to go to college. Mom wants you to be a doctor. And Dad says he doesn’t care what you do as long you’re happy, but, gee, wouldn’t law school be terrific?
Well, no, you tell the folks. What you really want to do is deal cards, pour drinks, take care of kids (and get paid for it), fix computers, cut hair, drive a truck, cook (and get paid for it), groom pets, build boats or fix musical instruments.
But Stanford University won’t teach you to be a nanny. And UCLA doesn’t offer a major in tending bar. So what’s an aspiring student of any age to do? Call the local trade school, of course.
California has an estimated 2,000 technical and vocational schools--some 400 of which are accredited--schools that teach everything from air conditioning repair to X-ray technology. But not all trade schools are created equal, and court cases have shown that some are better avoided than enrolled in.
Still, trade schools “have been filling a void, supplying services that people have not been able to find in other sectors of higher education for years,” said Christopher Davis, spokesman for the National Assn. of Trade and Technical Schools.
Today, more than 2 million students attend such schools. The average course is 10 months long, and the average cost for that 10-month course is $3,800. In the last decade, the number of accredited schools represented by Davis’ group has risen to 1,300 from 550. Industrywide, Davis said, enrollment has increased about 14% in the past two years.
“College tuition is increasing faster than inflation, and we think that may be a reason why more students are turning to our schools,” he said.
Students like Lavene Banks, who is currently a loan officer at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists-Screen Actors Guild Credit Union in Los Angeles. Before Banks enrolled in the Banking Institute, she had a low-paying job as a supermarket courtesy clerk.
Banks finished the four-month course, which is given in the former Union Bank headquarters building at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. Three days before she graduated from the 13-year-old school, she got her first job--as a bank teller for the credit union. Soon after that, she was promoted to her current position.
Banks’ experience with technical school was a good one, in part because she checked out the school carefully before plunking down her $2,515 for tuition, books and registration.
According to Davis, students looking for private technical schools should follow a few important rules:
* Students should contact several schools, request information and carefully review the catalogue.
* They should visit the school and tour the entire facility. If, for example, the institution says it teaches computer repair, it should actually have computers on campus.
* Students should make it a point to talk to past and present students and employers who hire the school’s graduates. They should find out what employers think of their new workers and what kind of starting salaries they offer.
* Students should make sure that, if they drop out of the school, a reasonable percentage of their tuition is refundable--for example, 75% if they make it through only a quarter of the program.
* And they should make sure that the school is accredited and licensed by the state.
“It’s a question of promise versus performance,” Davis said. “Students should find out what the school’s promises are and if the school actually makes good.”
But Elena Ackel, special projects attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, gives a different kind of advice to students looking for private vocational schools: Don’t go.
Ackel receives an average of five complaints a week from students who say they have been defrauded by such institutions--ones where a different teacher taught each day, or where students who dropped out were not refunded their money.
When it comes to vocational education, Ackel said: “The suggestion that I give is to go to Los Angeles Trade Tech or an L.A. community college.”
But if you insist on attending a private trade school, this is what Ackel counseled: “You shouldn’t train for something that requires no training. . . . If you do, you’re being sucked in for a lot of stuff you don’t need.”
Kristin Kleppe, owner and president of the Banking Institute, takes great exception to such criticisms of trade and technical schools and contends that bad publicity does more to damage students than to protect them.
“If consumers understood what questions to ask and how to research schools, I think they’d be more willing to take risks and find success that’s potentially there for them,” Kleppe said.
Sybil Henry, a free-lance fashion designer, took that risk in 1981 when she enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles.
Although the Fashion Institute offers some basic college classes in its curriculum, its major mission is to teach students about the garment industry and then get them jobs. That’s just what it did for Henry, who graduated in 1983 and has made a living designing women’s and children’s sportswear ever since.
“I had basic skills, natural ability,” Henry said. “But they needed to be refined, molded, made marketable. . . . I loved the school. It gave me all the foundation I needed to be a professional and compete in the industry.”
