Blue Ridge Community and Technical College

Despite my best efforts to get gainful employment with this “boat anchor of a degree”, an instructors words, not mine, I am unable to overcome the weight and stain that a degree from blue ridge puts on your resume. Citing poor recent graduates, no factory will give me an interview, and their internship coordinator said I was not good enough. Please understand, that if someone with clubs, honors, and worked through their studies isn’t ’good enough’, you won’t be either. I feel and fear very strongly that this institution exists purely to extract wealth from those who need a leg up the most, while offering worse than nothing; false hope, in return. I regret every day I chose this school. I will never get out of poverty or succeed in this life because I foolishly fell for their lies. You have the ability and opportunity to avoid getting caught in this trap. Please understand that going here will only lead to misery and ruin. I am begging you, do not make the same mistake I did, PLEASE. The fact that you are able to read and comprehend the words I have typed means that you are intelligent and capable of research and reasoned thought. The types of technicians that BRCTC seeks are dull and lifeless, able only to do a task while waiting for another. You’re intelligent, and worthy of life and love. BRCTC is not worthy of you. If this even stops a single future student from being taken advantage of, then that will be my barometer for success. I really cannot overstate how much of a failure of potential this school is. They boast millions of dollars of equipment, but can't afford more instructors, and actively work the ones that they have to the point of meltdown or complete uncaring for the job at hand. Their facilities are crumbling, with leaking roofs and mold in classrooms. The training equipment is prioritized for local factory workers, NOT STUDENTS! If you are working on a graded assignment, you are expected to vacate for a factory worker if the company pays for that spot. Factories are allowed to pay the school to take resources from students and their studies. Students are not a priority, and it's hard to envision what exactly their priority is. The clubs are nothing more than vehicles for instructor's children to pad out their resume, and exploit driven students. The opportunities they claim to offer are illusions. At a time where reindustrializing the United States is supposed to be at an all time high, this school supposedly capitalizes on it successfully, but that fails to trickle down to students. It's hard to see where these millions of dollars actually went. There is no opportunity here, their degrees are boat anchors and now unfavorable to local factories who would simply prefer to train who they have already than hire students. There is no upward mobility offered by this school. Do not attend here, you will be worse off afterwards. Please do yourself a favor and don't make the same mistake I did, I regret coming here every single day. I had one last opportunity to change my life and I blew it because I chose BRCTC. Now, I will never be able to climb out of poverty. I say this in hopes that you will not make the same mistake, you deserve better. There's better opportunities accessible to you, they're simply just out of state.

Do you enjoy talking to voicemail boxes more than real humans? Do you like emails that vanish into thin air? Do broken links, missing info, class cancelations without an announcement or email and zero follow-up bring you joy? Then congratulations as Blue Ridge is your dream school. Nobody answers the phone. Ever. The Veterans Office will track you down like a heat-seeking missile for your bill, but when you need help? Suddenly everyone’s on permanent vacation. Speaking of vacations — your main program advisor thought taking a cruise at the very beginning of the semester was perfect timing, so if you needed literally anything to get started smoothly… good luck, champ. Every department has a cheerful, happy-go-lucky voicemail greeting, so prepare to hear those on repeat, because your chances of speaking to an actual person are about the same as winning the lottery. Need to know if class is canceled? Good luck. Need help with broken links? LOL. Need literally anything? Leave a message after the tone. Message to veterans: Do not waste your GI Bill here. Seriously. Go to Shepherd, Shenandoah, literally any local school — or hell, even the Martinsburg Correctional Center — and see if you can take a class there. You’ll probably get better communication, faster responses, and more actual human interaction. Rest assured they will message you about your bill but cannot and will not respond to you.

They should really just take down their phone numbers on their website, no one answers the damn phone here. New COMBAT VETERAN student trying to get assistance... ALSO, navigating through their online process for adding and dropping classes is a nightmare. As a new student, this really puts a bad taste in mouth, the size of the hoop I have to jump through to add a couple classes back on my schedule. I'm an older student returning after a long time not attending college. The amount of bureaucracy to get "approved" for requesting to add classes back to your schedule is unreal. Are you guys sure you don't work for the government??? ALSO, they need to train their "professional staff at the front desk in how to communicate with people of different ages and not act like they're psyche analyzing you and smirking while you're communicating clearly to them in your needs, then "Miss Lippy" wants to interject ask me what I needed after I already stated what I need. they, the front desk asked me again in what I needed, and I clearly requested what I needed, and they kept asking and smirking wanting me to repeat myself.

I took the real estate course with them and it was a joke. They had multiple teachers that taught and the only one that cared and taught the whole class was the lady in charge. The others would just give answers to the work without teaching it and would end classes early so they could go watch football. People paid to get taught the information but they just focused on giving you the answers to their handouts. Also there was too much time wasted on students and teachers shooting the breeze when they could have been teaching. All of the ladies were realtors but that doesn’t make them good teachers. In the end they turned me off to even want to pursue that career.