If you happen to read this and are still in your first year. Cut your losses and leave. Sometimes it seems counter intuitive and you think, hey I’ve already spent this much money I might as well continue and finish up. But it is the equivalent of throwing the money down a hole, you ALREADY lost X dollars there is no reason to lose another X dollars if you aren’t going to get anything out of it. And believe me, you won’t. You are only a year behind your other class mates that went to an actually college so it’s not that big of a deal, and you won’t have to start repaying any loans until you are finished with your school.

Transfer ANYWHERE else. You will get a better education at Metro for a hundredth of the price, or you can go to an actual school like Kearney as was mentioned earlier. I’m happy to say I’ve persuaded a couple of people to not go there, and anyone else I can save the time and money would be amazing.

The Graphic Design field is so saturated with talent right now that it’s hard to find a decent job, even if you do decide to go into graphic design avoid the Creative Center at all costs, it is nothing more than a hindrance.

The teachers, curriculum, school, all trash.

We pay an absorbent amount of money to sit through picture lessons and watch free download tutorials. But even the ones who do actually demo and teach are fun because most of them are terrible at what they do anyway. The work tcc teachers do is embarrassing, full of Photoshop stamps and amateur concepts.

Frankly it is disgusting the amount of money that is spent here for books that are never referenced to. I wouldn’t wish this amount of debt or nontransferable credits (unless you want to go to Bellevue University) on anyone.

Now that i’m done bashing, here are some suggestions:

*more design history
*more typography
*Let students specialize in Graphic Design, Web, Multimedia, Illustration, etc.. as they progress
*Hire up-to-date teachers and professionals
*use up-to-date software,= Cararra as a college-level 3D program is inexcusable, especially at a college that basically promises you a job after you graduate, either scrap 3D all together or do it right.

Good luck to any high school student or college seeker who wants to get a quality education for their money, the creative center is not that school, I hope i can save you from all the frustration I’ve gone through.

thanks

I feel so stuck right now, I feel I was lied to. I’m spending to much money and not getting a thing out of it. I’m getting taught to use photoshop stamps. Which I think is totally ridiculous. That is not ART.

The teachers aren’t knowledgeable about what is current, unless you include the most current stamp that is available for download. I wish I could upload some examples of the work the teachers do. It’s truly embarrassing and amateur.

This school is a JOKE. It’s not a serious design school and if I could SAVE another human being 100,000 dollars, I’ll do whatever I can. These people are out for your money and they are willing to do or say anything to get it.

They don’t care about your opinion or your feelings towards the way your being taught, or who is teaching you. But were paying their bills, it dosent make much sense. If it weren’t for the students, the school wouldn’t be in existence.

It’s all sad, and it’s all true. I really hope it wont effect my ability to get a job, or progress in this business because I was taught by inexperienced and amateur human beings.

Thank You

First problem. What they said their placement rate was when I went on the tour of the school: 95%. I thought that was amazing, unless I was a complete dunce I would be guaranteed a job, what kind of idiot wouldn’t turn down nearly a 100% chance at a job. This is no where near their placement rate, more on this later.

They only care about money, not the quality of their education, or the class of students. I roomed with a kid who somehow actually managed to fail with flying colors the first year. Yet they let him back in the next year? Why? Because he would write them a check, despite the fact that the kid nearly lived in poverty as it was. Last I heard of him he was homeless.

The students would critique the quality of the education when we would get visits from the state, these students were quartered off and threatened with expulsion. Hell some of the instructors would complain about the quality of the education, these instructors were fired. One being the only instructor who taught me anything there, the Typography instructor, I forgot her name but she was the only who taught me ANYTHING at the school. And they had the gull to fire her for wanting to improve the students education.

Anything else I learned at the school I taught myself, merely by having the programs available to me, which I could have just bought for myself and saved myself a bundle of money.

The instructors seem to be out of date on the very software they are teaching, I took an interest in web development and was told to ignore Firefox in debugging because no one used that program. I was told the industry didn’t use InDesign and to focus on Quark. I took an interest in Flash, the instructors directed questions about the program to me during the Flash coursework because they didn’t know how to use the program. Why they even teach this stuff is beyond me, they should focus on design anyways. We wasted a lot of time learning to use industry standards like iMovie and Carrara or whatever god awful $50 3-D rendering program they had us use.

We of course got charged for all our textbooks in our tuition and we had plenty, and used none. My books were in pristine condition when I left. the teachers never once had us read our textbooks, or ever referred to them, lest they actually be bothered to read it themselves. There was one instructor who did use an advertising book during my second year, of course he was fired to for dissenting about the quality of education at the school.

Now back to my biggest beef, lying about the placement rate. I actually worked for Dotzler Creative Arts (I was the only designer there, as the studio doesn’t really exist to any real extent anymore look at the website for examples of how dated their stuff is) Working there I had access to the same computers the education info was stored on. They actually had spread sheets of former students and were they worked throughout the years. The placement rate started at about 60% a couple years before I got there, and dropped down to about 10% on my current graduating class. Granted I had graduated less than a year ago, so maybe people were still getting jobs. Regardless they said there placement rate was 95% this was a complete lie, and the main reason I attended the school. Now I only worked at Dotzler for about 2 months, but I’m sure I was counted in the “placement” skyrocketing it to 11%. I saw my Creative Center grads around Omaha, working at Runza, Target, CompUSA, Circuit City, Dick Blick, Merry Maids…I wonder if they were counted in the 95%.

My portfolio has been completely replaced from the work that I did while at school, because what I had when graduating wasn’t anything that could get anyone a job anywhere, even though I was told that it would.

And as a final fuck you when applying for a graphic design job a while back I but down Dotzler Creative Arts as a previous place of employment, they tried contacting them no luck, wouldn’t return their calls. I tried contacting them with no luck, didn’t return my calls or emails. Didn’t get that job. Didn’t get that job! Thanks Creative Center! Also the La Petite Academy across the street has a more official sounding name than Creative Center, makes me look like I went to a school for mentally challenged adults.