Platt College San Diego

I have a BA from UCSD, a graduate certificate from UCLA in business / marketing, and 3 associate degrees in addition to my associate's degree from Platt. Also, I've been to two coding boot camps. I currently own a business that offers education in the cryptocurrency space. I ran group writing sessions at a community college. I worked at a nonprofit in Career Services, where I taught soft skill classes. In short, I have a comprehensive understanding of education services and institutions, good and bad. The classes at Platt are much smaller than community college classes, but that depends on when you go. I was told that classes were much larger pre-COVID by one of the teachers at the school. While I would call them "professor" out of habit and respect, I'm unaware of any who hold a graduate degree. The benefit to taking classes at community college over Platt would be that the instructor would have a higher level of education and likely the same amount of industry experience. The associate-level classes at Platt provided a comprehensive understanding of design processes and theory. The experience has made my life easy as a business owner interacting with designers my company now contracts with. However, I've tried a few times to hire graduates from Platt through word of mouth, and their portfolios could be better. I was full-time at UCSD and full-time at Platt College simultaneously. My portfolio is better than some of the graduates I considered hiring...and I don't think I'm much of a desirable design job candidate (Although that wasn't my goal; I went for a basic understanding of design for the direction of contractors in the business sense). Recently, I reached out to Career Services to try a different approach: instead of word of mouth, I'd go directly to the department responsible for helping students and alums find a job. The new director, who was sure to give me her full resume, which is unimpressive (math professor with a PhD) and has nothing to do with Career Services, didn't answer my voicemail or my email sent through proper channels (the looking to hire a student form on the website--which isn't updated with the current team, btw) for almost a week. Only when I called the director did she send an email literally telling me I'm making a big deal out of nothing and that she doesn't have access to that email, she didn't get my voicemail, among other excuses and irrelevant talking points...crazy way to respond to an employer in your community, lol (and she went on and on about other stuff, too). I told her it's a big deal if employers reach out and can't employ your students from the Career Services perspective. I hired a designer from other sources who didn't go to Platt, and I'm not interested in hiring alums based on dealing with an incompetent director. If you plan on attending this school for Career Services help, you won't get anything different than community college, which surprised me. I started taking classes for the second-tier associates, and I think they were generally irrelevant to my purposes. Some of the professors, like Richard (basic design classes and portfolio), are high-level, and others, like Fred (associates level web classes), have serious introspection to do. The web bachelors would be a total waste of time, frankly. The school will talk it up, but it's really not going to get you a decent job (even though Fred will pretend like it will). I pay devs in Pakistan anywhere from $300-500 for a WordPress website (not just a basic template), and about $1-2k for a DApp (decentralized application) site with React.js. No way students in this school can compete with those prices. For such positions, you don't even need an associates. The cost for the bachelors web program is absolutely not worth the payout. I've also heard from veteran friends in the film program that the equipment is old and basic. Seems to me the only program worthwhile (beyond basic associates classes) is the 3D program, and I'm not sure about that. Overall, I'd recommend other choices to learn design than Platt.