Devry Telecommunications management, is it worth the cost?

[427Windsorman]

I have been looking at attending Devry for the degree program listed in the subject, but am unfamiliar with Devry, and how they rate in the I.T. industry.
The program looks like it would fit well with my goals, but it is pretty damn expensive.
Does anyone here know anything about this program, and if it is worth the expense?

Thanks in advance

[Mitchell]

AS, BS, or MS degree? I suggest a community college or state university for the lower cost. In addition, the overall acceptance and prestige of the degree would be higher.

[427Windsorman]

BS Degree.

[SeanC]

There's a lot of people that would laugh at someone with a DeVry degree. Now I'm not insulting anyone who does have one, I'm just saying what I've seen and heard people do.

It is your choice but a good college or university can give you the same education that DeVry or any technical institute can.

Sean

[CMonster]

It all depends on what you put into your education.

My 26-year old son received his DeVry Bachelors in Telecommunications early this year. He started doing some network consulting as an employee of a small consulting firm, his hours varied from 3 to 25 hours a week but he was paid $50/hr. He just landed a job with SBC doing internal network helpdesk with a total salary-bonus-benefits package of about 65K per year ($45K base). He would not have been able to land either job without a degree -but equally important is his actual knowledge and experience.

Yes DeVry is expensive, but we were fortunate that my son had earned a millitary education benefit that offset most of the cost. Over all I think it cost about $50K -roughly the same amount it might cost at a reputable 4-year university. Even The University of Phoenix charges about $50K to obtain a similar degree online. It is an investment in your future. I remember thinking that the $10K I spent on automotive tools was entirely too much, but those tools have earned me $700K in the last 10-years alone (I have no idea where all that money went though).

My son was lucky that we have some extensive hardware at home for him to practice with; he also brought into DeVry a wealth of experience in both hardware and Windows/Unix-Linux operating systems, and was already A+ certified.

[Oakie]

I am a DeVry telecom student in Southern California.

It's very expensive, figure 1000 dollars a class and the tuition increases all the time.

Get all your general education requirements somewhere else. In other words, do not pay DeVry prices for English 101 and College Algebra.

DeVRy is very, very picky about what they take in transfer credits.

In California, there are State Colleges which are part of the "CSU" Cal State University system., Places like Cal State La and Cal State Northridge for example. Classes good enough to be eligible for these places are called "CSU" credits.

There are University of California places like UCLA that are "UC" credits.

I had over 100 transfer credits mostly composed of "UC" quality credits in general education courses.

DeVRY did not accept a SINGLE class credit of mine that was of the "CSU" caliber. They only took the higher level UC credits.


I transferred with over 53 "UC" credits to DeVRY and that is considered a lot by all of my friends who came with AA degrees and found that DeVRY only gave them credit for 20 to 30 units of their courses. Thats ugly.

You pay a lot for DeVRY, but you get equipment like rooms packed with racks of Cisco routers, switches, hundreds of computers, high speed printers, and teachers who talk the talk and walk the walk with Masters degrees, Multiple Masters degrees and Phds.

We are talking about teachers who have done battle for 10, 20 years in the telecom business and not just book learned.

You will take Voice telephony classes, Lan Classes, Wan Classes, Unix, Novell, Win 2k server.

You will learn the ins and outs of PC hardware, software, You will learn to program routers hands on. There is a HEAVY emphasis on DOING in the labs. There are lots of lab classes.


They don't cancel classes, if you need a TCP/IP course and there are just 9 students, they don't cancel it like the State colleges often do. You will get your courses, you will stay on track, you will graduate according to schedule.


The courses evolve to stay in step with the current market. When Novell was hot, they taught Novell., as the market shifts, they add more Security Classes, more Windows 2003 server courses etc.



The bottom line is that the DeVRY has the curriculum,. they have the teachers, they have the equipment.

Your effort and participation will determine if it's worth it to you.

[King Electro]

Quote:

Originally posted by Oakie
The bottom line is that the DeVRY has the curriculum,. they have the teachers, they have the equipment.

Your effort and participation will determine if it's worth it to you. [/b]

Totally agree!

That post was exactly what I was looking for to get my spirits up again about going back to DeVry. I attended 1 semester, tested out of 2 classes, and took the intro and gen ed classes was sort of dissappointed because they were boring and easy. I now realize that it is how you apply yourself = what you get out of it.

I had to quit because of financial reasons and took some classes at a local CC. Ran into the same thing there... some bad classes/teachers - and some good. Thinking back I'd rather go to the small campus of DeVry with all the equipment and new technologies than to any 3 of the state univ.s that are square miles in size. They can't offer the same degree of FOCUSED - HANDS ON training that DeVry can.

What you've said about transfering the "easy's" from a CC is great advice. However I can, I'm going to figure out a financial plan to get back to DeVry. TCOM is still what I like to do, and there's no better place (IMO) to get the degree at than at DeVry.


Hopefully Oakie's (and my) post will help the orig. poster, and others too.

Thanks...

[yanno]

I'm a student at DeVry and majoring in tcom, now networking managmnet. Compared to most ivy league and public universities, DeVry is cheap. Devry offers alot of hands on training which is a plus and provides the resources needed for you to learn. However, i've noticed through most of my education that most studentsd don't apply them selves as they should and end up dropping out or going to a different college.

i find that with technolgy you can't learn just by reading, especially if you are new in that. you have to go out their and experience it for your self and not depend on books and lectures.

just with any school, it's what you make of it, not what school you came from; with the exception of ivy league schools were you pay a fortune. But to me, DevRy is alsomot ort as good as other regulat colleges and universities out their, th eonly difference is that DevRy is soemwhat underrated comparted to piblic univesrities which may; i mean may, be left out from soemone coming from a public school.

[canadiandude1]

Attended Devry and can tell you first hand it was a biggest waste of my hard earned money. Also did nothing for me career wise and wasn't accepted for transfer credits by any reputable school afterwards.
I had to go get my bachelors from a real school afterwards and still kick myself for wasting that $25k I did.

My advice, attend a real (traditional institution).
Good luck

[King Electro]

Wow, totally forgot about this post. Looking back over 3 years ago from my original post I realize the "wish I knew then what I know now".

I did in fact graduate from DeVry and let me tell you a few things from my experience there:

1. Hands-on...? The only people who really get the hands on are the lab assistants that work for minimun wage as a student-job for the school. Otherwise the labs are given to you in thick packets of paper with step by step instructions that take HOURS to finish and in order to actually finish the labs to get credit you basically just rush through it following instructions in the lab booklets to get it done. They might have you switch a wire or two on a router/switch or use a removable hard drive to store your semester's worth of data... but other than that I had little to no hands on experience.

2. I would say, at my campus, there were some excellent teachers as well as some that were sub-par. There were so many worthless classes though that even the teachers had such lack of enthusiasm for the class that you knew they thought it was pointless too. I spent a whole class learning how to use MS Project and to this day I have no idea how to really use it.... The class consisted of us going into a room for 2 hours and talking about different ways to plan out projects and splitting up into groups which evolved into people venting about things at their own jobs. Then we were given a large packet of step by step instructions to take home and finish. That's actually how most of the business or management classes worked.

3. On the other hand, if you want to know the difference between the binary on a TCP header compared to a UDP header I could probably tell you....

I could go on and on but I'll stop here.

Bottom Line: If you have a lot of money or can get a scholarship and don't already know that much about computers but you're really excited about learning computer stuff.... DeVry might be for you.

If you're already a "Techie" this is NOT the school for you. Go get a computer science degree from a regular university and go after your career from there. DeVry will be too slow paced and you will loose interest and get locked into finishing b/c you can't transfer credits elsewhere. I lost so much interest that I moved out to a small town a few states away and started my own construction business. However, running the office I still can't get away from sitting in front of a computer half the day