IT Certification: Training Tips, Unlicensed School Scams and More Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

According to the Department of Labor, Information Technology careers occupy four of the five fastest growing occupations in the United States with phenomenal growth foreseen over the next seven to ten years. In response to this a huge industry has sprung up to provide training to people who want to ride the wave of IT success. The advertisements are slick, moving and very enticing. Testimonials from actual students talking about how attending this or that technical school changed their lives, saving them from a life of laying roofing shingles or flipping burgers. Sometimes there will be large ads in the local paper about how people with the right certifications can make 50, 60 or even 70 thousand dollars per year. For a person who may have gotten off track after leaving high school or an older person who is forced to start a new career, the opportunities appear very appealing and the ads make it look quick and simple. In a matter of a few months a person can make the leap from manual labor to working in an exciting and rewarding career in the Information Technology industry. The reality is something different.

In this article I will focus on the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified System Administrator (MCSA) certifications because that is where my direct experience lies, but the realities and pitfalls of the technical training industry are the same whatever certification a person is trying to achieve.

What is Certification?

The certification process was developed by the various software and hardware companies to give employers a measurable paradigm to judge the knowledge level of people who are looking to work for them. This was the result of the IT industry outgrowing its embryonic stage where everyone was pretty much self-taught and hiring managers had to take the word of the applicants as to what their skills were. This situation led to a lot of inflated resumes and a lot of people hired into jobs that they were not qualified or able to perform.

The certification process requires that a candidate complete a series of tests measuring different areas of knowledge, and once they are successfully completed, the candidate is considered certified. Certification allows the holder to use the initials of the certification after their name on stationary and business cards, along with the certification logo. An employer will look at certification as a requirement for getting certain jobs and it may have an impact on a person's salary in his or her current job. Those are all good things, but certification is not a magic talisman that makes the holder all knowing. Rather it means that they have proven themselves knowledgeable in a narrow set of criteria as defined by the certification authority. Put simply a certification is only a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture. An MCSE is an important and valuable certification for someone who has already been working in the industry for a few years and is looking to take the next step up the ladder.

The Training Process

Most technical training schools recruit students by enticing them with the income potential that they might realize after achieving certification. The classes are usually sold to the students as a package, one price for all of them, which may or may not include the costs of testing. Classes are, of course provided at convenient times but they are taught by instructors whose qualifications to teach vary wildly between schools and even within the same school. Each student is issued a training kit which will include a textbook and software that supports the course. The software will have lab simulations, resource materials, practice quizzes, and possibly a full or demo version of the software being taught.

At the completion of each class the students may be subjected to practice tests in order to get ready for the certification exam. After successfully completing the practice exams the student will usually be issued a voucher that will be used to pay for the certification test. The tests are taken at a certified testing center and are timed, computer based, with multiple choice questions. The process is fairly straightforward, after completing the test the candidates will be told immediately if they passed or failed. If they passed, a package will arrive in a week or so from the certifying authority that will include a certificate, the rules for using their certification, and some other trinkets. Pass all of the tests and the candidate is certified.

There is no requirement to attend any classes or study any particular materials before taking the test and many people who become certified never enter a classroom. There are numerous resources available on the Internet and though various vendors that allow anyone to prepare for the certification tests on their own. But the tests are not cheap, as of this writing the tests cost between $129 and $169 each. Many of the training materials that are available commercially offer discounts on the vouchers, but if the candidate fails a test there is generally no discount for a retake.

When a student signs up for a technical school among the first things they will be asked about is financing. The cost of completing all of the courses associated with an MCSE is between $9000 and $15,000 depending what school is offering the training. The student will be asked to fill out forms to request a career loan from one of several providers. It is important for the student to realize that these are career loans, they are not "student loans" and they are not government backed, although some of the schools may intimate that they are. The student is responsible for the full amount of the loan whether the courses are completed or not. Repayment of these loans is under a special set of rules that allow for minimum monthly payments for the first year and then higher monthly payments for a period of eleven to fifteen years. The trap in these loans is that unlike normal student loans, the money is often paid by the lender to the school, not to the borrower. In many cases the school receives all of the money up front before the student ever sets foot in a classroom. If the student drops out or fails to complete for any reason, the school usually keeps the money and the loan must still be repaid by the borrower.

My Own Experience

I retired from the Navy in December of 2000 and cast about for a second career. I had worked some jobs that I wasn't really very happy with or didn't pay the bills, when I decided that selling insurance might be a good solution. It wasn't, and in August of 2001 I was unemployed when my wife brought me an ad from the local paper. In big bold type it said "Get your MCSE with us and we'll guarantee you a job." It seemed too good to be true, but I thought I would have a look. The next day, I called the number from the ad and was told to bring a resume' to my appointment. I arrived on time, wearing my coat and tie, with my latest resume' in hand. I was given a test to take that was supposed to be used to determine my qualification for their program. I had taught some software training courses for a major PC seller and had a fair amount of PC troubleshooting experience but I thought the questions on the test were pretty simplistic even for entry level people. I turned in the test and the receptionist handed me some forms to fill out. One was a single page job application and the other was a loan application.

After turning these in I was ushered into a room with an attractive young lady who told me she had been brought up from Tampa to help open this new location of the company. She went over the forms and asked me a few cursory questions and then we went on a tour of the facility. It looked like they had just moved in; the classrooms were set up with folding tables and cables were strewn across the floors. There were boxes of equipment scattered about everywhere. I asked how long they had been here and was told it had only been about three weeks, but the company was growing so fast that they hadn't time to get everything set up. The story was that this company was an IT services company that provided PC, network and training support to a bevy of major companies across the country. Their business model was that they only hired from the pool of people that they had trained and everyone in the company had some kind of certification. This was supposed to give them an advantage over their competition that they would use to get contracts with major businesses.

I returned home and immediately looked them up on the Internet. Their site was slick and very professional looking. On a page labeled "Partners" they had Wachovia and Barnett Banks, Lockheed-Martin, and Dale Earnhardt Incorporated listed among others, as companies they had worked for. The owner of the company was a member of the local chamber of commerce where the company was headquartered and had received glowing write ups in local papers. It all looked good and the company seemed to be one that was ready to take off in a big way. In spite of this there was something that just didn't seem right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. A couple of days later I received a call from the company saying that I had qualified to be "hired" into their program, and I had to come in to schedule my classes. I chose the MCSE track and arranged to take night classes that would start two weeks hence. I was given some more paperwork to sign and left with a class schedule and a letter signed by the owner stating that once I had completed my certification I would be hired into the company. Before my classes started I got a job with a local self storage company that I hoped would keep me afloat until I finished my certification and got the high paying job that they had promised.

I started my classes and the first thing that surprised me was that almost all of my instructors had only recently graduated the course themselves and many were not that familiar with the material or the labs. When questioned about it they rationalized that this was part of the business model and was a way to employ people until they had the IT support part of the business up in our area. I progressed through my classes and got my CompTIA A+ certification. I moved into the Microsoft portions of the course and began to notice that there was considerable turnover in our instructors. None of the people we had started out with were still with the company by the time I had started my fourth class. It was during this fourth class that we got a visit from the owner of the company. Our class that night consisted of assembling with all the other night students in a large room for a pep talk by the "great man" himself.

His speech was like something that would have come from a demented Knute Rockne on speed. He talked loud and fast, sprinkling his motivational talk with off color anecdotes and some very inappropriate jokes. He told us that he was going to take the company public and that employees would have first call on stock options. The kicker was when he announced that they were about to close a deal to be the official network provider to the Jacksonville Jaguars. He also dangled that they would be buying a luxury box at the stadium and we would be able to get tickets to the upcoming Super Bowl. I didn't see it then, but his speech was like something out of a textbook; the man was a sociopath. One small detail in his speech that was overlooked by everyone was the mention that the training division of the company would be "reorganizing" soon.

It was after this that I realized that I absolutely could not stand working in the situation I was in at the storage company; I was working myself to death for $400 a week and taking the blame for a lot of things that I had absolutely no authority to correct or control. I decided that the best thing to do was to quit and try to finish my courses as quickly as possible to get that high paying job I had been promised. In February of 2002 I quit my job and tried to enroll in a day class that was just starting in order to avoid the two week layoff between classes. I was told that I couldn't do that. I had just finished practice tests for two of my core courses and had not received vouchers for their certification tests. I was told that there was a hang up with the computer system but I would receive them shortly.
One night I noticed a request posted on the bulletin board for someone with teaching experience to do a Microsoft Office class for one of their customers. I applied and was asked to speak to the training director. He asked me if I would be able to write curriculum for this course. A loud bell went off in my head. They claimed to be a full service IT company that had an extensive training department. They had training facilities all over the eastern half of the country. They claimed on their website to have provided training to major corporations, but they didn't already have approved curriculum for something this basic? I told him I could write it and left him examples of materials I had produced before, but left with a very bad feeling.

A week later I received a call from the receptionist of the school, who happened to be the owner's sister, telling me that there had been a disturbance at the school and that classes were cancelled for that evening. When I returned the next day it was announced that the school had been notified by the state that offering employment in exchange for paying for training was illegal in Florida. This meant that the letters we had received were invalid, but they would still honor them. On the following Monday I received an e-mail from the owner of the company stating that they had closed down the training division for two weeks to perform the aforementioned "re-organization". A week after that I received another e-mail stating that because of the changing IT market and "negative press" that made it impossible to find new investors, the company was closing down permanently.

Following the shutdown several things came to light that we as students were unaware of. It turned out that the company was not licensed to provide technical training in the State of Florida. Their Jacksonville school was not certified by any of the certification authorities to provide training. Only their home location was certified and all of the curriculum materials were received at their headquarters and then shipped to Jacksonville to hide the fact that they were doing training in an uncertified facility. They were being paid our full tuition in advance by the lenders and the amount they charged for tuition was solely dependent on the ability of the applicant to get credit. Some were enrolled for as little as $5000 and some paid as much as $15,000. They continued to enroll students and collected money up to the day before they shut down; these students were on the hook for repaying these loans even though they hadn't set foot in a classroom.

I had completed three of the nine certification tests I needed. I owed $11,000 to my lender; and I was one of the lucky ones. Some people were left with nothing at all to show for a huge debt except a cheap tool kit.

Lessons from all of this

What is described here is an extreme case. At the time I was enrolled we were in the middle of an economic downturn following the dot com bubble burst and 9/11. In this atmosphere training schools pop up like weeds to fill the needs of people looking for a change, either forced or otherwise. While many will do their level best to do a good job and fulfill the needs of their students, many will also be bad players, writing loans with a too cooperative lending industry with full knowledge that most will not complete the courses, but still collecting the full tuition up front.

One thing that is important for anyone looking at these schools to know is that no IT manager is going to hire anyone as a Network Engineer or even administrator based on a recently acquired MCSE/MCSA certification and no experience to go with it. Taking these classes all at once hoping to get that high paying job right out of the box is a mistake. For your first IT job I recommend getting a CompTIA A+ or Net+ certification and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) certification in one of the operating systems. This gives you a good foundation to build on as your experience grows.

Based on my personal experience, the best way for a young person to go about this is to take their classes through a local community college. It will cost about the same as the for-profit technical schools but it will take longer. The big advantage is that you will have transferable credits that can be applied to a degree and that will give you the most options for the future. For people who are switching careers the community college is still a good option, but if you are in a hurry go with a training facility that allows you to pay as you go.

It is vital that every certification candidate realize that at the technical schools, the purpose of the training is not to teach the students how to be a systems engineer or network administrator. Every network has its own little quirks and the software is so complicated that only experience is going to teach someone how to administer one. The purpose is to prepare the students to take and pass the certification tests; the understanding is that they already have most of the knowledge.

If you've been working in the industry for a while and need the certifications to advance in your job then these schools may be the right answer for you. Or, if you have the ability to take in information like you are drinking from a fire hose, the boot camps may be the answer. In these the entire package is taught in a period of one or two weeks. But by no means are either of these the right choice for a person with no experience.

Before enrolling in any for-profit school contact your state department of education and make sure that it is properly licensed in your state to provide technical training. Do a web search on the school; find out if there are complaints in other states. Address these with your recruiter and make sure they are answered to your satisfaction before signing anything. When talking to the recruiter get specifics on what percentage of their students complete their certification. Are test vouchers included or are you expected to pay for your own testing? If the vouchers are included, what is the school's policy on retakes should you fail an exam? Do you pay for the retake or do they? With regard to the contract, do not trust anything that you are told verbally. If it's not in the contract then it was never said. Get everything in writing. Do not let them force you into using a particular lender; these schools often get incentives for the number of loans they write. Shop it around to your bank or credit union to get the terms that are best for you. Finally, make sure that any loan proceeds are paid to you, not directly to the school. If these suggestions are unacceptable to the school then get your training from someone else.

The Information Technology industry is one of the greatest job opportunities available. If you are a person who doesn't mind working, and loves to solve problems, there is almost no limit to how far you can go. Training and certification are an important part of being a success, but be careful, be skeptical, and make sure that you are getting what you are paying for.