Algonquin College : Ottawa
Algonquin College : Ottawa is a established in (unknown). The campus is located in and hosts students with an endowment of .
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38 Student Reviews of Algonquin College : Ottawa
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This is specific to the Computer Science Program –
Avoid this course at Algonquin at all costs. There is an insurmountable list of reasons to avoid this course but it basically boils down to inconsistency in quality and lack of teaching. There are a few good teachers but most of the classes are at night where the people teaching have a full time day job so they don’t care to answer questions or engage with students whatsoever to help them succeed.
The labs for some of the course are a complete joke and I can’t believe they charge money to take the program. The lab will consist of a word documents randomly names Lab03_labName_V2_final_v3 and be a few unformatted lines of questions that don’t teach you anything. Sometimes the labs are even outdated or contain the wrong info and this is all because the lab teachers are separate from the theory and just come in and hand out whatever is in their brightspace. The labs will have a 2 hours time limit, and if you don’t complete the lab you pass in what you’ve completed and get marked on that. Sometimes teachers are late, sometimes they release the lab and just leave the classroom so if you have issues with something on the lab you’re on your own. This is particularly frustrating in the programming lab as there is a 30 minutes explanation at the start, you then get the lab which you read through the 3 pages, load up the starter code and read through that to understand how it works, solve the problem, and by this point the class is almost over and you still need to create your pseudocode or flowchart and fill out two test tables that have no specified requirements but if you miss a test case you lose marks. To me, this defeats the point of learning and just enforces speed running the lab to get marks.
The computer essentials course also needs a complete rework. The slides each week range from 50 slides – 200 slides of information and you don’t get to apply 95% of it. Without an outline for exams it would be the equivalent of studying an entire textbook on barely related information from one week to the next. From tech organizations, computer hardware, VM and Linux cmd line, excel, and e-waste at the end. It all just feel like you’re learning a list of things to memorize and never actually get to fully learn.
Lastly I want to mention the “new” hybrid model they’ve adopted. Essentially they only teach you half the time but still charge you for the full price of the course. You have these hybrid sections where you get to go home and teach yourself new concepts for the other half.
The quality here is bordering on abysmal and when you try to make formal complaints about the issues its like screaming into the void. They keep raking in the money so why would they care too much.
If anyone has doubts about the quality and may think I’m just doing poorly, I’m currently averaging A+ and have experienced other schools. Algonquin has been the worst by far.
This college entirely scam, DO NOT believe what they told you. I am my 3th them and still cant rid of their system because of the immigration issues
The public relations program in my experience was very b!tchy. I’m not sure if I just got a bad batch of students, maybe previous years were better, but it really sucks. The professors openly play favourites and kids are talking while the teachers are speaking so you can’t focus. Good luck if you learn differently or are “introverted” because you won’t get recommened for a good internship/placement. If you aren’t obnoxious like the others you are by default seen as shy or weak. I grew up believing the loudest person in the room is the weakest but I guess not.
Coming from someone with university experience, these kids don’t have manners and it’s interesting to me that the teachers seem to encourage it.. meanwhile all the quiet or introverted kids dropped out or barely got recognition…
The workload was not too bad some of it was useful but coming to class is just awful when there is obvious favortism… it just made coming to class feel like a chore… Alot of these kids come from small towns so they think they are still in high school and continue to act cliquey. Stop acting like you are at McGill when you are at Algonquin.
This school practically ruined my life. From not submitting my enrolment to OSAP causing me to never receive anything as of writing this and then being fined by the school for late tuition when it was them screwing s**t up in the first place. All I was told by this incompetent registrars office was to keep studying and do my assignments like they were going to fix the situation but ended up having me be the one to liaise with OSAP and NSLSC which is another dumpster fire of a system in backward country. Don’t waste time or money on this place, they care about money more than peoples education.
There is a teacher and a chair in the Supply Chain Management program that validates the bad comments. The ‘professor’ has no knowledge, no ethics, and the chair has no intent to help the students with their complaints but defends the ‘professor’’s unprofessional actions. The chair refuses to investigate this matter. For the tuition paid, you are not getting your moneys worth.
Algonquin College is a trainwreck with a couple good people on the train. While it at least manages to be presentable thanks to all of the money it milks its students for, the management is between incompetent and malicious, and there’s no semblance of coordination between departments. Almost all student requirements are ambushes, the on-campus housing has tiny windows because people have jumped before, B-building was literally designed by a prison architect, and there’s a complete disconnect between not only departments, but individiual teachers and cirriculums. Labs and theory classes have almost no common theme, so if you don’t have one of the good professors to help you, and even if you do for the most part, you’re just going to be teaching yourself everything.
This school sucks. Go somewhere else.
Terrible school. Under qualified staff and recycled out of date material. Waste of time.
I see that the worst students only list comments here. Where were they when it was time to complete work and submit on time?
Thanks for this test on this ONLY AD REVENUE SITE as this review will never make it through.
Took the online construction project management course.
All the content is recycled from previous years.
Teachers constantly getting due dates confused, forgetting about classroom discussions they have scheduled and they are overall lazy.
You can tell most of them do not take the program seriously because it is online.
All the assignments give about a paragraph of explanation with no example and very limited instruction.
Their brightspace (formerly blackboard) site is completely disorganized. Every teacher uses it differently and can be very difficult to navigate. You’re on this website to find your calendar for the week, but then you need to go to a different website to get the actual lesson information.
Would not recommend online learning through Algonquin.
If you want to learn something relevant about architecture and be ready for the work place this is not a College for you. In level 4 or semester 4, I was informed, that Revit or a BIM programe would be the lead program for Architecture students, this program is needed to get a job in the field. Well you will not get the training or education needed, no BIM in a 2 year program, this course is a wast of time. Go to a college that offers a a BIM course either Revit or ArcCAD at another college. Also Harassment is part of the prgram, many students put harassment complaints against the teachers at the ombudsman level, unfortunately the President of the School Cherryl Jennings does not see this as problem, in fact she does not see sexual assault as a problem either.
I took a course to get an idea of the program before fully committing. The course facilitator recycled content from previous sections she taught, much of which was inaccurate. I basically did not learn anything from the course that I wouldn’t have been able to learn alone. All they gave me were assignent guidelines and notes with links posted. The course cost 1000 dollars but I don’t understand how this is even justified. Facilitator was rude, unavailable and the college course management system is useless. Avoid this place! All they want is to take your money in exchange for information that’s already available to you online.
Worst school ever. Everything is a sham. Student’s representatives exist to report on student issues. But the issues get silenced. Take a programming class for instance, expect to learn a variant of the C programming language. No textbooks, incomprehensible slides, and a teacher that focuses on flow-charts the whole semester, but not on the theory necessary to accomplish what is needed for the labs.
That was one example. Electromagnetic Control: my favourite of the worst experiences of my life: all of which were at this college (like losing all your money on an education that might leave you with $15-17/hour job – if you’re lucky): no materials available, you’re stripping bare wire, which isn’t a bad skill, but competing for that wire with 50-60 students. That’s right – a bunch of students, in one lab, with, yes, ONE INSTRUCTOR!!
Let’s get something straight. The quality of the teaching staff stem from the administration – where they only hire teachers part-time: right, like a grocery store, so they can avoid paying them benefits. Right, and because these part-time teachers do not make any money when they are not teaching.. do you see now: they have no incentive to update their course materials, because if they did they would be doing it for free!
Texidium came out the year I started with this school for my diploma. I completed my diploma and feel like I wasted my time, but let’s talk about Texidium for a bit. It was this new software platform whereby students would access their textbooks from. Students all paid for their textbooks within their tuition so that they could access their textbooks online. However, there was one problem, Texidium was used for one or two courses in the first semester, and never again.
In a nutshell, chances are you’re going to end up like me. You’re not going to see any negative reviews, you’re not going to see these that’s for sure because I sure as hell didn’t, and you’re going to waste your time and your money on an education that isn’t going to educate you to a standard necessary for a job.
I was a mature student who had saved for years to go to this place. Years. I have to turn around, fight for more money just so that I can choose a better institution to start all over with – my pick this time: Conestoga College.
I completed the two year Electrical Engineering Technician program and let’s say this: the money that you pay for your tuition does not go into what you are getting: it goes somewhere else. No textbooks and taught off of wikipedia. Slides are given, but they are out-dated, or last minute as they are riddled with spelling errors and inaccuracies. Course materials are not appropriate – they are of sub-standard quality. There are too many students per classroom, and only one instructor. Laboratory Instructions are not made by the teachers for the most part, although some are, for the most part lab-instruction-manuals are made by students in the third-year completing their project requirements. Finishing a lab with little instruction, and mostly on outdated equipment, make reaching deadlines difficult. Coming-in on weekends to use another station is a possibility in some situations, which is great if the station you use in class doesn’t work, but you’re stuck on it. However, demonstrating labs is impossible, as the one-teacher in the classroom can only handle 3-4 demonstrations per every 45 minutes, where most labs only run for 90minutes. Sixty-seventy students in a lab and 1 instructor make it very, very difficult to demonstrate a completed lab. Cheating occurs across the board big time – as all the teachers re-use the same assignments, quizzes, tests, etc., every semester without change.
Remember – no textbooks!! Biggest complaint. Blackboard is also used differently by all teaching staff, and some will forget to use it, or worse think they’ve used it, and do not.
The funny part about Algonquin College is the course description you see on the website. You do not get to learn even close to what they represent on paper. Come out with a diploma, and scratch your head thinking, “At least I learned what school not to attend,” and all to late for that matter.
Also, plagiarism is said to be frowned upon, but isn’t really when your classmates plagiarize the crap out their papers and still get an A+.
Grades are bell-curved if students fail during the first and second year, as your are not a student in as much as you are this institution’s cash cow. It’s true. If you don’t believe me, enroll for yourself and find out the hard way.
This school is awful. Seems like it instructs all of the administrative staff to be as greedy as possible and squeeze every penny out of students. I find them to be dishonest, arrogant, unprofessional and UNFRIENDLY. Useless. Stay away! Please save yourself time and money and nerves.
See how much damage they have done to the students. Ruthless. This school should be investigated, fined and closed.
This is my first semester. It was difficult getting in as I am a mature student. Most of the admin staff were pleasant, but very disorganized and ill-informed. It took me a lot of effort to get into my program including several months of math upgrading. The first week was very disorganized and confusing. Blackboard is a horrible tool as every teacher uses it differently. I was promised I needed no expertise or previous experience, but that is quickly proving to not be true. I was also told I would be taught certain math disciplines before they would be required in my program. That is also not true. I have been unable to complete assignments due to not knowing trig. A couple of my teachers are honestly, completely useless. Nice people, but unprepared and not teaching material. A couple of others go too fast, one explaining he doesn’t want the students who have experience “to get bored.” I have spoken to my department coordinator that I am stressed out and unhappy and am considering switching programs and he was completely unsympathetic. Didn’t even ask why I was unhappy. I was actually rather shocked because he was my favorite teacher. I spent a lot of money to be here, and not just tuition, but almost $800 in books plus a $700 parking pass. I worked very hard, all summer, to get accepted, and it is all proving for nothing. This whole process has been very disappointing. Both my sons attended Algonquin and constantly bad-mouthed it, and I just thought they were being immature. They both later attended the U of O and had high-praise for it. I am now realizing that Algonquin really does seem more interested in getting our money than anything else.
Just started my second week. It is very confusing and disorganized. So far it’s been a terrible experience. Just gettting accepted into the program was very difficult and again, very disorganized (I’m a mature student). It’s totally amateur hour in every way. Hope it gets better, I spent a hell of a lot of money to be here.
Awful. Avoid at all costs. I decided to take a course for my own personal development and the facilitator was rude, did not wish to help and even when I reached out she would send me condescending emails. When I escalated the issue, I never received a reply. Assignments are vague yet you are expected to deliver on detail. The course was to give the basics yet we were expected to already have IT experience. Nobody shows you where to go for your assignments or where to access information. Go anywhere else but Algonquin.
Avoid this college at all costs. Super expensive and they will terminate programs that students are registered in without notification. Big waste of time and money as they don’t hold themselves responsible for the contracts they enter with students. Anything to rip people off for their money. 1st thing on their list is they supply money for themselves…somewhere around item 21 is supplying education.
Would not recommend, education value is poor and the staff especially the financial department are extremely unsympathetic. Students are nothing more than tuition money to this “educational Institute”
I am upset with this college. They are blood thirsty animals who overcharge for everything. As someone who has been to University, I can confirm that college has become more expensive than University. Parking is way over priced, and they have an admin fee on everything. I had a surgery booked on the same day as a midterm and there is a fee to pay to retake exams, even if you have a Doctor’s note. I could go on and on about everything they charge, but I won’t as I’m sure you get the point. University WILL open more doors than college in many fields so I would suggest you really look at your options there, unless you are satisfied with getting the $15 an hour jobs that the college doesn’t proudly advertise. Sure, all institutions are expensive, but Algonquin College has gotten way out of control with their charges for an education that I wouldn’t consider to be of the best quality.
Bottom line? Don’t waste you money there. The staff is not the most knowledgeable and the college doesn’t care if they take all your money to the point where you can’t afford tuition and ultimately delay your graduation/don’t graduate.
The admission procedure for highly qualified new Federally Skilled immigrants is highly complex and expensive. The requirements are complex and Staff at Registrar Office do not understand various types of professionals and their qualifications. Their dealing with internally trained university graduates is like high school graduate. There is no respect how to deal with highly qualified new immigrants they are putting everyone in one bask the reason is because under qualified and unskilled staff are working in these offices they don’t have any idea about universities qualifications.
I applied to a program thru ontariocolleges.ca and later I found AC Admn staff were not aware of my credentials reports attached there and now the registrar office staff emailed me to send them another detail assessment report. She was telling me this after more than a month or 2 I applied. When one would tell them we would withdraw they would gladly cancel your file immediately does not bother if they lose candidates.
Therefore from today on I will never recommend this college to anyone the staff working there are unskilled untrained to understand diversity of students and qualifications. They are just junk I would advise people not to go to AC if they want to make a good future in highly paid careers then this is not a place. This college need overhaul and scrutiny to replace all existing staff and bring newer trained qualified staff to understand the complexity of students situation and regain trust of new students. I want to give Zero Star but cannot so I have to click on one star.
Overrated and over expensive. Looks for any way to gouge you in the financials. It’s also expensive to remove your medical files from their health services, especially if you aren’t the most financially equipped, no matter how desperately you need them.
Terrible college, teachers are randomly picked, seriously, where do they find these guys? This College is AWFUL.
I have been attending Algonquin College on and off for over 25 years. I am ashamed more than ever of this institution. The prof`s reek with arrogance and circle the wagons when you find a flaw with the program. Some of them have never worked a real job but love life in Organia (at our expense). I also agree with the other reviews of being over charged for services you don`t need. Complete scam indeed. This place needs a major audit and shake-up.
The whole college is a scam. Trying to get any information from the register’s office is a total crap shoot, with half of the information not true and the other half they answer a question you never asked. The instructors are no better. They constantly show up late, mumble their PowerPoint slides (which they read like a 7th grade presentation) and really are generally unpleasant people. God forbid you ever have to question a test they marked incorrectly. They will make you think you asked for their only working kidney.
Another issue is the tuition. If you look at the fees it is some of the most lame excuse to steal money from their students I have ever seen. $25 dollar student experience fee. I’m paying to have an experience? I don’t give two fucks about having an experience! I just need that s**t-rag of a diploma you are offering me. Another good one is the $300 sports fee. What does this do? If I play no sports I still have to pay it, If I do play sports I also have to pay an additional fee. Why am I paying two fees! The list really goes on and on, like paying to bring your own laptop and things like that.
To end this before I burst a testicle, do not go to this school!
Terrible school. I can’t believe I wasted 2 years and tons of money on this useless college. I was first in the animation program, then switched to graphic design, and I have to say, that both programs (except for the few I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare), have the absolute worst faculty of teachers that I have ever seen. They teach nothing, explain nothing; basically they are the ambassadors of their section that take your attendance and tell you about your assignment on Canvas or Blackboard, when its due, and what its worth. They don’t even teach you about the software that you are supposed to use. The typography teacher,who is also the program coordinator (graphic design), would very neurotically come into the class in the morning, give us a brief overview of the assignment, and if you didn’t ALREADY know how to use Adobe Indesign, then you’re screwed. Don’t even THINK about asking her for help; she will just give you attitude and frustrated that she would actually have to “explain” something. Heaven forbid!
I found the Animation department being run by a faculty of incompetent instructors, who have absolutely no regard in assisting students with their projects, and take a very long time to provide feedback to students on their progress. The Animation coordinator doubled as the animation design teacher, and if you raised your hand and told him that you didn’t understand how to do the assignment, his arrogant reply was “Ask a student who does”. Really?! I thought the whole idea of going to school was to “learn”, but it seems that in this and most of the other classes I took, you better come equipped knowing how to do everything ALREADY! The animation drawing teacher was an animation graduate, who worked part time at Algonquin, and had NO teaching ability whatsoever. She had no knowledge of how to explain certain tasks related to animation, nor did she know how to answer questions from students. In animation, there were 90+ students in first year and only THREE computers to test out animation projects! Seriously!?? There was one tutor, who’d come in for 2 hours every Wednesday, and he would have to go by the waiting list of students written on the blackboard who needed help….very often he’d never get to your name. Really? 90+ students and ONE tutor? Something is seriously out of proportion here.
The Web Development teacher (graphic design) confirmed my decision to just leave the entire program. He would come in, give us a preachy, militant speech about code for about 3 minutes, and tell us to find our assignments on Canvas (there seems to be a pattern with this method of teaching—or lack thereof!) Naturally he assumed everybody knew how to code already. The course description is very deceiving, because they claim that they teach you the basics/foundation/introduction to code, but in reality, unless you already have an intermediate knowledge of code, you will be seriously lost. All assignments go through a “code corrector” system, and must be handed in before the deadline. If you have basically 99.9% of everything right, but can’t seem to find the tiny error that is preventing your code from getting a perfect 100% and don’t submit it on time, then you get a ZERO.
Overall, in both cases, there is a presumptuousness that you should already know all the fundamentals and software pertaining to the program, and if you don’t, that is entirely your problem.
I would not recommend this college to anyone, there are better institutions with much better teachers. Even my teachers at community college in California were better than most of the Algonquin college teachers.
Worst school Ever. I took two programs, the instructors in both of them sucked. They did not know what they were really doing or just wasted time. I had few instructors call me a liar when I was telling the truth. The technology they have for your program is out of date or not there.
The college is over capacity and there is no real place to work on assignments other than going somewhere outside the college.
For college services they are a waste of your time, they do not help your needs.
I wasted four years of my life and what I learnt can’t get me a job/career. You’re better off going to another post-secondary institution.
What a worthless waste of money. This “school” is an absolute joke. I had some of the worst most disrepectful teachers imaginable here. I had one tattooed skateboarder “teacher” tell me that his 4 year old neice could have done the assignment I handed in. Excuse me, did I just fork over my hard earned money for some tattooed skinny little condescending sack of vomit to berate me? No. Avoid this dump like the plague. Avoid the “professional illustration” program at all costs. It killed my passion for art due to extremely condescending feedback. “This isn’t college quality” I was told. Alright then give me a refund. What a waste of time and money.
Programs I took are out of date and realized it too late. The technology available to the programs also were out of date. Most of the professors/instructors did know how to teach it properly and I pretty much had to self learn.
College services didn’t help at all.
A big waste of time going here.
Currently attending the electrical engineering tech program. I do not recommend this school to anyone. I’ve paid over 10,000.00$ they do not even have proper working equipment in the labs. Some teachers have no idea what they are doing in the labs and can not help you if you hit a wall. One of my teachers spends his class talking to the students and not teaching, giving you tests on lessons he supposedly taught. Another teacher would not show me where the overload or latches are in my labs and had to figure it out on my own. all in all Algonquin blows.
Brutal school. 75% of professors are part time and have little to no grasp of how to teach. A large subset of those professors have a poor grasp of the subject matter they’re supposed to teach. It’s the perfect storm. It’s best described at the Best Idiot Factory on Woodroffe Ave…
Students also pay ~$250 a semester for the privilege of bringing their own laptop to the school. Yup you pay to bring your OWN laptop. You do get a few perks for that money. You can get a free copy of windows, that you probably won’t ever need. You can get a copy of Office at 3x the regular price. Or you can pay 6x the cost of regular books by enrolling in their ebook program. Let’s just say that I’ve had malware that was easier to use than their ebooks… Go for open waters Big Tuna. That school is useless.
Absolute worst experience I have ever had with a post-secondary institution. Useless technology that doesn’t work and don’t expect a refund because of it. Terrible “customer” service, rude administration staff and deceitful bookstore staff (don’t let them tell you that you can print any part of your etext!!). This college is all about the money, trust me you’re better off with a different college.
This college is terrible with planning and helping student success all together if there is option for 0 STAR I would give them 0….here are some problem I have with them:
Frist issue I have with them is that they list a numbers of differences course that you can take for your selective course, but they never let you choose them, they will put you in a course that they want you to be in. once I see I cant pick the course that I want to learn, I go to see my coordinal of my program and he just said, well sorry folks those class are full, we cant extended them! those class are priority for those are specifically apply for that course, and they are all full now. Then why are you putting it as a option when you are advertising them? and tell us sorry you cant take them, because they are not for your program.
second issue, is that they will include the e-textbook rental fees in your tuition fee without option for you to opt out…. well let say I want to keep that book for references later on, I have to go to the bookstore and pay for that book again? and they are not cheap!
Third issue is that all the new Professor are part-time, most of them don’t even go through colleges of teaching or anything similar to that… they know how to work in their field but not teaching us what we need to understand, some of them can even speak English fluently… let say if we cant understand what they are saying, how can we understand what they are trying to teach us? do they really care about us? do they care about our future? my answer would be no in my case.
Fourth Issue is that I went for a Computer program (2 year course plus co-op) after my 1st co-op term, I didn’t receive any email from school asking for the second term co-op letter of offer or anything like that. they took the money for the co-op term and in middle of Co-op term where I am about to submit my assignment, I couldn’t find the course to be available. Call them up, they said I was withdraw because I have no placement….. and took 150 out of 499 that I pay for the course, and yet they are not the one that find the job for me… I have to go and find it myself…. talking about find the job myself, they have something call Resume prof read, and that I am not sure what are they prof reading, I have to get other friend of my to look at it and help me time to time for my resume( after the colleges prof read and said yes it look perfect.)
Fifth issue is that they want more and more money every year and as early as they can get… my course wont start until Sept. 7 and I have to pay my tuition fee by June 15 the latest or else there would be penalty on that…and the funny thing is the timetable wont be available until AUG. 5th and I need the time table to coordinate with my work to see if I can continues to work part-time for this company(THIS IS MY FUTURE!!!!!!!!!!) call them up and check for time table today and all I get is sorry cant help you…so much for “student success is our priority and our goal” ….Great here you go my money take it and go….
My concludes is think twice and research more before you make your choice!!!!!
and if you ask me do I recommend this college I would say NO!
Half of the teachers are good, the other half so so to bad. Many have God’s complex. Overall education
I chose the course of construction projects manager , studied online, they call when you need to pay and very diligent , but when you have paid you are unlikely to get timely help to deal with both types of system functions online learning , it is difficult to understand ( which all of FIG after you pay tuition ) . We were told here will Maurice Jervie teacher – that’s who was horrified when these courses or did not respond to the letter, and when, because of my insistence , he replied with an ulcer and blatant insult , like ” you’re there do baby movements ….. ” ( as you know it but do not tell babies to adults , especially the man who teaches not only the specialty but also must have the professional ethics ) . At the end of the course I had to fill out a form type is what I think about the course of the professor and all that, I said that the courses weak meager little cognitive , professor very big slacker and vulgar ignoramus . For what I received the worst evaluation here’s honesty and fairness of this college gained such intruders and give these papers but there is no knowledge who does not, it’s sad that leave graduates with diplomas without having knowledge and very sad that you can learn a lot more than money and official legal speculators as Algonquin college . All praise this college because as long as you do everything on a miserable note you get too easily this paper called a diploma I shook the country in which the future professionals at this level.
Residence and meal plan is a rip off.