Frustration from the beginning
Students are frustrated when they are told one thing at the admissions department and find out they are not told the truth. Or, they bend the truth to sign them up.
Exactly. Students do hear what they want to. However in this case I know they were misled because after this incident I spent a year part time also doing job placement and as part of this job I made a job posting board. One day the owner came to town and as soon as he saw my board with the "actual" starting salaries that the employers told me posted on the board, he took every job opportunity down and told me never to post the "real" salaries again.
If a student feels that they have been mislead or that the school has misrepresented them selves they are more likely to leave the school all together. They will share their negative experience with others which may affect the reputation of the school.
I'm sure that there are times that an admissions recruiter might stretch the truth to put their presentation in the most positive light that they possibly can, and that is only human nature. No body selling you a product is going to tell you the shortcomings of that product but boasts and exaggerates about to positives. REMEMBER sometimes students only hear what they want to here and once any student may state that he was told $14.00 per hour then 100 students will fall in row behind them and state that they were told the same thing. I will set the story straight so there will not be any more spreading of this falsehood, ask if there was a particular recruiter that they can mention (that usually kills the discussion right there because most of the time it was student discussion not recruiter information). If there was an individual recruiter that was giving false information I will take it to the admissions dept manager and inform him of both the students claim and if I have the student’s permission give the name of the student and recruiter. I will then apologize for any misunderstanding, move forward and end this negative discussion.
I hate it when this happens. I have been teaching for 20 years, the last 11 at the school that I founded myself.
I will never forget my first class at the old school (that closed down 7 years ago). It was about 3/4 of the way through the program and the students were all excited in the lunch room. When I asked them what they were all excited about they said, "We are almost done and we can't wait to be earning $14 an hour"! I asked them where they heard that salary and they told me the admissions person told them that when then enrolled.
I was in total shock. You see the truth at the time was that they were going to be starting out at $7.50 an hour, and that I was only making $11 an hour as the Department Head!
They were furious, and rightly so when then learned the truth. That experience stuck with me all these years and to this day in admissions I insist that we disclose the actual starting salaries of our most recent grads without inflating the numbers.
Hi Melba,
These kinds of situations try the patience and skills of professional educators. As an instructor you have to be able to keep your students focused on learning outcomes while not being sucked into the vortex of school polices, no matter what how they are being administered.
If you find that you cannot function within such a setting you may want to explore taking your teaching skills to another setting where you feel more comfortable with the mission and administration of the school. This happens all the time. You have to find a level of comfort for yourself.
Gary
