Every night I watch CBS2Chicago news leading right into David Letterman’s hilarious opening act. I love the first 20 minutes of Letterman! This past Monday, there was a very interesting story about a company, Environmental Technical Institute (ETI), pitching future employees into buying what ETI has to offer.
The rates of people losing their jobs are increasing, and the amount of money companies are spending on employment is decreasing. This does not suit well for college graduates or someone losing their job or changing career paths. With the troubling economy, people are choosing to develop a trade. However, the point of a trade school is to help students develop a skill through hands-on-experiences; actually it’s everything in the trade business.
Students who attended ETI’s school learned how to install and service heating and air conditioning units and believe they’ve been burned by the misleading pitches ETI is sending out — especially that ETI is still standing by their 99 percent job placement rate in our current economy. Really? How? Is that a joke? How can they continue to pitch a statistic like that in the circumstances we are in?
One student, after graduating ETI’s program, was turned away in an interview because the employer said he didn’t know enough based on his skills and ETI’s name.
“What I would get from contractors was basically, ‘No, I don’t want those guys here in my business.’ ETI doesn’t teach them anything. They are not learning heating and cooling,” says Brenda Hudson, former ETI job placement counselor.
The students claim they were never given an opportunity to touch or allowed any real examples of repairing or servicing an air or heating unit. Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of developing a trade?
Gerhardt Facko was lucky enough to land a job thanks to ETI, or was he?
“All I did was clean swimming pools,” says Facko.
Makes sense right? He paid and attended a school to learn how to service air and heating units, and he ended up cleaning pools. Hey, they got to keep their job placement rate up.
Now ETI graduates are back at square one, no job and in debt with thousands of dollars they still owe ETI. In response to the student complaints Moshen Davanipour, ETI’s school director, said he would be happy to talk off camera.
Cat got your tongue?