The Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division Reviews of Associates in Web Design

"I was suck into attending the Ai school by the finance department, under the impression that my Pell grants would take care of my entire tuition. About two years into my study, I get an email implicating that, "In order for you too continue your education you need to sign up for a personal loan." At that time I felt duke, because the Ai told me a lie, I was told my Pell grant would cover my tuition, tell me why am I under god green earth signing up for a loan? After graduating I presented my portfolio to the career department, and all I got from those people was the run around, I was willing because at that time I was excited to know I would be getting the job I desire, only to get disappointed. Had I known this unethical of a school was full of disaster, I would had ran long time ago. Please save yourself the time!!"

"This school has messed me around and put me 25,000 in debt for nothing. It has expelled me twice saying I dropped out. The first time it was suppose to have been from a mix up of paper work with another student. They charged me 3 tuitions in less than a month and now they did it to me again. I'm super not happy with this school. Everything that they taught me I could have ordered on Adobe myself. I pretty much taught myself. This school sucks. Please save your money and find another school."

"I enrolled in Feb of 2009. I had not completed my 2008 taxes and classes started in March, so they told me to provide my 2007 taxes, and just give the 2008 taxes with the 2009 the following year (thank you J.B.). The bank confirmed they would handle my loan and AI confirmed my FAFSA, and I started classes. End of 2009, they were calling saying I owed the $10,000. I told them I had a student loan and they need to correct their records. Did not hear back. In the Summer of 2010, that $10,000 was in collections and I was getting harassed by debt collectors. I called AI, they refused to help me at all. They would not correct their mistake and recall the debt to my loan. I made several attempts to contact the head of the financial dept (Quincy) with no reply at all. Only after calling and raising hell did he reply to tell me that they would not correct their mistake. AI is criminal at best. I am still paying off that debt, had to drop out with nothing to show for it, and my credit score is wrecked. Stay away from this school by all means!"

"This is school is a complete SCAM. I am about to graduate and I just have basic knowledge of web scripting , why? because they make you take classes that have nothing to do with your career. Instead of focusing on web developing programs, software that is used as the industry right now, they just make you take classes that are OBSOLETE for the industry. The online classes supposedly should be more flexible with your schedule and they are not. There is not breaks between quarters, meaning you only have 5 days off from the entire year (holidays on christmas) and of course you have to work on assignments due by you come back. What is even worse is that the "professors" are more "facilitators or monitors." If you have a question, you have to wait up to 24 hours to get a response. In many occasions the response is "click this link" and it direct you to an external link that you could have found on Google or YouTube. The classroom barely explains anything and THE ART INSTITUTES DOES NOT HAVE THEIR OWN ONLINE TUTORIALS. They make you take online tutorials form LYNDA.COM which a membership on there is $390 dlls a year (including all tutorials with thousands of subjects on design, business, e commerce, you name it) the cost of ONE CREDIT at THE ART INSTITUTE? $470 dlls. each class is 3 credits so is about 1600 per class. TO LEARN TUTORIALS FROM EXTERNAL WEBSITES, you ended up in debt. the program is NOT the quality for the price. I hate this school and I am in debt and barely making any websites, and the school won't help you to find a job in the field. you could take courses online with better quality for a fraction of the cost of this SCAM, the FOR PROFIT school is under investigation. google Tom Hankins report of for-profit schools, EDMC who manages the art institutes is being sued by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ,  the report shows that this schools spent 40% of their profits on marketing and recruiting and ONLY 17% in the students and faculty. If you want to learn go online, lynda.com or udermy.com real cheap and learn about the same (or even more) and if you want to get accredited start at a community college. PLEASE DONT FALL FOR THIS SCAM!  Thousands of students are in real debt for their false promises of job placement."

"I signed up almost 2 years ago for an associates degree in web design, since then they have screwed up my classes by giving me advanced before the basics and did not make good for this was still charged 4600.00, they have started my last class before the student loan was finalized without telling me this and now am being billed for 10,000.00.I am certain that something can be done to prevent this from happening to others and to get these debts squashed so our credit is not affected.I am looking to find another school, but seems most have the same footsteps. Does anybody know how to complain to the Student loans provider, great lakes ?"

"When I started at this school I was very excited and the first few classes I had we're great, but as time went on I was having more and more issues with classes. Many assignments were often vague in their details and I ended up spending more time trying to understand what the assignment wanted than I spent doing the assignment. It can also be diffucult to get ahold of instructors and receive a proper response.For a while I was trying to get a hold of my academic adviser so I could start taking more classes, but even after the numerous messages I left for him and emails he refused to call me at the times I would be most available. I work third shift so I sleep during the day, I'm not going to be able to get to the phone in time. This completely screwed up my plans for my education and was partially the reason I decided to leave. The class content ranged from great to completely useless. I honestly don't feel that here is anything I couldn't have learned on my own, in fact most of my learning was done on my own by researching outside sources with much more usefull information.I understand that part of this is about building a portfolio, but grinding through assignments and not learning anything about industry, with no efforts made to reinforce what your supposed to learn, honestly leaves me feeling totally unprepared for a career in the field.My final class at the school was a video class using Premier. The program was easy to learn but the assignments didn't match up with the book and all the files were completely screwed up.All this cost me 30 grand if I had stayed it probably would be looking at a $70,000 bill. I feel this is far to expensive considering the issues with this school."