George Brown College Applied Arts & Tech

Worst customer service & no effective advice provided to potential students. They also show no respect for people and no willingness to help out except asking for money. The call centre is slow and the lady who answered the phone was very rude. Apparently, their staff do not care about the students' career and personal development. Since I have many other options and the price is not that different, I would never take any course from them unless they have personnel changes to meet a similar standard other colleges/universities provide.

Never ever attend or pay for a course at George Brown College. Waste of money. You get nothing for you money on Continuing Education course.

If you sign up for a course and do not immediately with draw within 10 days they keep your money and will not offer any option for doing it the next term if you become too busy during that 4 month period.

10 days??? I didn't even receive the materials til 6 weeks after I signed up.

Not even an option to just change my start and end date. $630 down the drain. You have to re register for the course ... and repay sir. Not likely.

Part 2 of 2 courses. I received a+ in the first course.

None of this matters. Repeat business doesn't matter.

I am a working individual who needs to do night courses when I have time but paying the bills must come first.

They are completely inflexible and do not cater to the working class. Only students whom are just out of high school and no responsibilities, time on their hands and access to lots of student loans.

T110 - Building Renovation Technician 2 year
T148 - Building Renovation Technologist 1 year

Bottom Line: I cannot recommend this program.
Recommendation: Keep searching. Find a program that is better established, and ask yourself where are the graduates today?


The Good:
-Majority of the teaching staff posses both the industry knowledge and the ability to effectively channel that knowledge through the classroom environment.
-The openness and willingness of instructors to communicate with students and accommodate individual needs is, in my opinion, one of the best that I have experienced in the Ontario college system.
-I feel that most instructors go above the minimum requirement in terms of making a personal investment in their students success in their respective courses. For instance, many will bend the college rules regarding retesting policies and late assignment submittal--this however may be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
-Small classes. about 60 students in the first two years and about 30 in the third year. Below may explain the reason for the reduction in third year students.

The Bad:
-Dishonest marketing and false claims made regarding courses with in the Building Renovation Technician program.
-First example, During the information sessions, the program brochures, and hearing first hand from instructors about one of this course biggest selling points, the "field placement", expectation where rightfully high. However, the so called field placement turned out to be a 5 day volunteer manual labor job at anywhere that would accept you. Why is this a problem? the college had, and let me be clear on this, ZERO (0) involvement, oversight, or direction in this course credit. Studends there to find their own place to work in which there was no quality control in placement selection and absolutely no direction regarding objectives and learning outcomes. For the second year placement, most students simply submitted a fictitious placement--myself included.
-Second example, just as aggressively promoted as the field placement above, students were also sold on the program including an actual house building project. What was implied: students will work together to build a house from the ground up to the roof! What we got: we built 4'X6' mock-sheds that simulated some aspects of real home building.
-For every one knowledgeable and engaging instructor in this program, there exists one disconnected and incapable instructor. I wont use names of course, but these particular teachers all had the same things in common: late for their own class, materials and learning aids incomplete and or not prepared at all, assignments left unmarked and unreturned, little relevant feedback, lectures given without qualification, and my biggest pet peeve of all, TEACHERS ANSWERING CELL PHONES IN CLASS AND TAKING THEIR WORK CALLS!!!--One instructor in particular interrupted her own lessons to take a call on more than one occasion. Ironically the class was entitled Business Management. Bravo.
-Many of the courses with in the program are brand new and because of this still have many flaws to smooth over. This, of course, is to be expected with anything that is new and I can hardly blame the college for that, but in the end I still can't help but feel like the guinea pig.