Technical Trade Schools

ITT Tech, CDI, are they really worth the money?

You're looking at a graduate of the Control Data Institute, now called Career Development Institute, circa 1979, primarily because Control Data Corp couldn't afford them any more.

Was it worth the money my parents shelled out for it? Well, it gave me an edge when I joined the Army, but other than that, I couldn't get arrested with my "certificate" from CDI.

Note: Before you go to a Corporation sponsored trade school, find out how many of the trade school's graduates are hired by the sponsoring Corp. CDC hired almost nobody from their schools, and those that they did hire, they would have hired anyway.

My experience at CDI was one of working by myself through self paced courses on old VT100 terminals buffed up with touch screens. I could have taken a correspondence course and saved a few bucks.

Take for example that you had to get your workbooks signed off by an instructor that you completed a portion of a course. Trouble was you couldn't find one to save your soul. So I used my forging skill and would sign off my own workbooks. I wasn't cheating, I did finished the workbook, but if I waited for an instructor to sign off my workbook, I'd wait upwards of an hour or so.

But, it's the fact that I was able to get away with it tells you a lot about CDI at that time.

So, are trade schools worth it? Well, I only have the one that I went to, so it's hard for me to judge them all.

Did my time at CDI help? Yeah, it did, it gave me the basics of working and repairing electronics, that helped me when I was in the Army. But besides the Army, did it get me a job? No, not really, I had to go to college to get the depth of education that companies look for.

Companies are no longer looking for the single subject worker, you have to have other skills to survive in the marketplace these days. A trade school can give you the basics, but but getting a bachelor's degree helps a whole lot more.