Complaint Review: Valencia Community College East

My wife has had nothing but trouble with them.   First off the Answer Center are not trained people they are just hired help.  Dont trust anything they say.  My wife went to give doccuments to show she was a florida resident, and the lady said this isn't enough she had, Florida Drivers license, lease information for the past 2 years, marrage certificate and a few others,  they told her she needed the registration for my car and all of my info,  Which I thought was wierd since i wasn't going to school.  So she drives 1hr home and 1hr on i4 during rushour traffic back to talk to another rep that informs her that she's didn't need any of that and the original doccuments were enough.  

No one communicates there at all

Welll now second scemester she has an approved financial aid loan and valencia dropped all her classes for non payment despite the fact she has the loan... she's up there right now getting the run around.  Apparantly someone didn't pass the information to the business center that she has a loan. Everyone is telling her well its our fault we made a mistake you had everything right but unfortunatly even tho its our fault theres nothing we can do for you.  Which i think is complete BS......     I bet if tonight after their education is in commercial plays the news comes on and has a big story about this she would be in all her classes with no problems..... 

My advice stay away

I would like to start off saying that I find your difficulties with the registrar to be valid complaints. I think if you work with them in an appropriate manner you can avoid having to re-pay your application fee, but unfortunately you will probably have to eat the 5 dollar transcript fee, although if your classes at FMU have nothing to do with your acceptance into Valencia (ie meeting prep class requirements to avoid prep math) don't even tell them you went there and you won't need the transcript. Customer service is lacking with many institutions and are not limited to college campuses as anyone who has called the utility company, visited the DMV, etc. will know. Unfortunately competence is the new excellence :( .

As far as your comments in the rebuttal are concerned:

I have been involved with 4 educational institutions in the state of Florida and all of them limit refunds to the ADD / DROP period (the first week of classes). After that first week you can no longer DROP a class and have to withdraw from it. This is pretty standard, if you have experience to the contrary your institution is being very forgiving and is not the 'norm' to compare other institutions. This is done for many reasons but there are two compelling reasons. First, if too many people drop a class and the enrollment goes below a minimum value the school has to cancel the class because it is a governmental institution and has to show a certain enrollment and hence income in order to justify paying the teacher , holding the room, paying the utilities, etc. By placing a 1 week window where you can get your money back it limits the investments that other, non-dropping, students and the teacher have to make to a class that will not go the semester and still gives them an opportunity to switch to other sections. Additionally, if the class is full and students are waiting to get in, they can still get in before they miss to much.

In regards to your comment about high school teachers, it depends on when you are scheduling your courses. During the main class hours you have tenured college professors teach classes, they may only have a master's degree, but many have multiple master's degrees and are quite knowledgeable about their subjects. Evening and weekend course are often taught by people trying to make some extra money, this could be one of the college professors from the day trying to essentially work overtime, it could be a professional in the field you are studying who is retired or moonlighting, or it could be a public school teacher ---- Who is qualified to teach college courses ---- making some extra money.

These are public school teachers with Master's, Specialists, and Doctorates in their field. Usually they make a better teacher because they have studied how to actually teach. I was a science major and many of my professors were horrible teachers because they were never trained in how to teach, they can run an assay in a lab like a madman, defend their dissertation against other scientist just fine - but knowledge does not equate directly to the ability to teach it. It takes training to be able to make a test that is fair, yet still separate students based on their learning. It takes an understanding of how people learn to design a lecture and course outline to facilitate learning and understanding rather than temporary rote memorization. Most of those public school teachers have been teaching for many years and are trained each year on just that, not to mention often having education degrees in addition to the degree in the field they are teaching.

Lastly, the level of courses in your gen ed requirement for any college: college algebra, biology, Freshman comp, etc etc. are not very high. I would much rather have a college algebra teacher with 5-10 years experience teaching struggling students in high school that has gone back and got their masters degree in Math Education than I would a 27 year old who graduated with their Ph.D. in Mathematics a year ago with limited to no experience and probably very little interest in teaching. If we were talking a 4000 level differential equations class that would be different, but we're talking about 1000 and 2000 level classes.

Valencia is a great place to make the transition to a 4 year university. In your basic gen ed classes you are one of 30, not 300. You get better teachers, because at 4 yr universities their newest and crappiest teachers are often the teachers of their lowest level courses. Also, you get automatic acceptance as a transfer to the 4yr state universities with an AA degree.

Sorry if there are typo's, I don't have time to go back over it right now.

Best of luck Jane, I hope your college endeavors go well. Part of a college degree is that it shows you can struggle through the BS to get what you want, show them you want it!

I have additional informationt to warn people before they consider attending this awful school.

1. Make sure you know when the add/drop period ends for each term. I lost money because I withdrew from a class after the add/drop period. Most schools will give you until the 4th week of the term to withdraw and get at least a partial refund. Not Valencia. You can only withdraw, and get a refund, during the FIRST week!

2. This school is geared toward 18-21 year olds. High school teachers teach these classes. They are not college level.

3. They get people to teach, who have no experience, to teach their classes.