Highline Community College Double Standard – Higher Education Consumer Protection

When I started off this quarter on my pursuit of the Paralegal Plus Degree from Highline Community College, I was excited.  I love to learn.  I love the law and finally I am getting down to the business of moving out of the computer field into something I am passionate about.  It is no simple decision to go back to school to change  your career totally at my age.  I am already almost 70k in the hole to the government for my masters degree in Computer Science/Web Development.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W_RQlTmWf8
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Going back to school could potentially add another 60K to that according the budget outlined by Highline’s financial aid department.

When I first read the syllabus for the class I got a bit of the hebbie jebbies from comments like:

LEGAL 101 – Intro To Ethics

LEGAL 199 – Legal Research and Writing I

In Legal 199 we even had to respond to what I felt was a condescending assignment:

I couldn’t help but have a snarky response.

I get it Instructors want us to have our assignments in on time. Presumably that would be so they can grade them in a timely manner and provide us appropriate feedback, therefore enhancing our education.  The sad reality is in most cases much of our work was not graded until the last few days of class.  Not all of it and some instructors are better than others at this.  Some instructors even give you a bit of a break, lets say if you were in the hospital.  I did have this happen to me this quarter.  But there is still a problem here:

1. IT IS A DOUBLE STANDARD
2. When they don’t grade in a timely manner it is hard gauge of how you stand grade wise.

HEY I HAVE A LIFE:

1. I go to school.
2. Teach at Shoreline Community College.
3. Live in Tacoma so I commute between Shoreline/Renton/Tacoma in I5’s horrible traffic.
4. Take care of my 85 year old grandmother.
5. Had to complete 24 hours of community service for Legal 101 outside the classroom work.
6. Need to sleep sometime.

OH THIS GETS BETTER:

Grades were to be submitted by 12pm on 16 December 2014.  That didn’t happen because the entire computer system at Highline Community College went down. See the following email from one of my instructors…

Okay so I guess the school can have gremlins.  Guess what it’s possible. I will give you that even though it is not reciprocal as you have already read above.

I want to give the instructor the benefit of the doubt.  Guess what I get they have lives and being IT born and breed I know all about computer gremlins.

But it is now 18 December 2014 around noon, and still not all of the grades have not been submitted

Even though the same instructor said:

And in a way she is right and I STAND CORRECTED.  She did her part now the failure is somewhere else.  Doesn’t change the fact that the failure exists though does it?

Can you imagine this even gets better?

On Dec 17 2014 the school actually posted on their Facebook page that the grades were available.

Even though you can clearly see someone has failed to do their “JOB”.  Yes all that etherial lofty BS about academia this is their “JOBS”  On which they are paid a nice middle class salary by the State of Washington to perform.  They didn’t post that the servers for the school went down. Or that they had arbitrarily changed the rules.  Just that they were done doing their “JOBS”, though I beg to differ.

THIS IS A CONSUMER PROTECTION ISSUE:

Do the math…

$29,665.00 x 2 years = $59,300

If you took Federal Loans to pay for it at around 7.5% interest.

THE LEAST OF WHICH I EXPECT FOR $131K is to be informed.