Thinking of singing up for training at New Horizons?
That may be a very bad idea, for several reasons. I should state right up front that this page contains mostly JUST MY OPINION. There are cold, hard facts contained herein, but much of what I have to say here is based on my experience with New Horizons in the past and the letters I have received over the past few years from students, instructors, "account executives" (salesmen), etc.
So, why shouldn't you sign up with NH? The first reason is that New Horizons was recently (April 2005) delisted by NASDAQ because they failed to file their annual report. Why should this worry you, a potential student? Because healthy companies don't miss filing deadlines for something as fundamental as an anuual report. EVER. Not by a day. It's not just a technicality over Wall Street paperwork. For a publicly traded company it's as basic as eating and breathing. Being delisted is HUGE, by the way. Any decent company would go to the ends of the earth to avoid it, so it's rather extraordinary that it seems to be being shrugged off by NH's management.
There are several possible reasons why a company might miss their annual report filing. I can't think of any GOOD ones, though. The ones I can think of are things like:
- Didn't pay the accounting firm you hired to produce your annual report, because you ran out of money to pay them.
- Didn't pay the office staff who were to produce the annual report, so they all quit.
- The annual report showed something very, very, very bad, and they wanted to hold off releasing the info as long as possible.
- Couldn't reconcile the books, due to mismanagement, fraud, or incompetence.
These are just speculation, mind you. Maybe there's some really good, innocent reason for them to have screwed up so badly that they got delisted. I just can't for the life of me imagine what good innocent reason there could possibly be, and if I was a franchisee of New Horizons, or a corporate or franchise employee, I would be scared sh*tless right about now.
Regardless of the delisting, there are more immediate and tangible reasons to avoid signing a contract with New Horizons.
Chief among them is that New Horizons has, over the course of at least the last half-dozen yeasrs, demonstrated time and again that they DO NOT honor verbal commitments. In other words, whatever your "Account Executive" tells you that isn't actually written down is WORTHLESS. Whether it's availability of courses or certification tests, student loan guarantees, instructor qualifications, availability of jobs, levels of pay for graduates, whether or not the school is approved by the VA for tuition reimbursement, or anything else, they can and will just say anything they need to in order to get your signature on the bottom line, and have consistently "gotten amnesia" about verbal promises later on when those promises turn out to be lies.
Yes, I said lies. It would be easy to dismiss the occasional exaggeration from an AE here and an AE there. But for as long as I've known anything about New Horizons, their salesmen have made promises to people who come to their "career day" seminars, and then: "Well GOSH, I don't remember saying anything about that... No, we didn't promise that... "
What could it be other than outright lying? Hundreds, thousands of salesmen who just don't know their companies' policies very well? You'd think after the fifth or sixth time they saw a student getting shafted because a promise they made turned out to not be true, that maybe they'd STOP making bogus promises. But that hasn't happened yet, as the letter below illustrates. I received it on 6/28/2005, so it's pretty apparent that the "Account Executive" named in it, who has been with NH since at least 2003 (when I first heard complaints about him) hasn't stopped lying to potential students.
Author: Paolo Barredo
Relationship with New Horizons: Student,
Published: June 30, 2005
After 911, I found myself in a financial black hole from which I still have
not completely escaped. I was in the IT industry and programmers were
dropping like flies from their company's payroll. I either had to upgrade
my skills or take a huge pay cut if I found a job at all. That's when I saw
an ad that seemed to do both. I responded to the ad and was excited to be
invited for a "job interview." I put my suit on and brought my portfolio
with me.
Unfortunately, the job interview turned out to be an infomercial
for New Horizons. That should have taught me not to trust New Horizons but
I was dumb and desperate enough to get a job so I stayed around, extremely
overdressed in a business suit for some sales pitch.
Anyway, I "interviewed" with Gabi Golan, seduced by the prospect of working
again. The first thing I asked was whether the school was VA approved. I
served in the Marine Corps and I wanted to make sure that the Veteran's
Administration recognized the school so I could get reimbursed for the
tuition. Gabi Golan assured me that the school was. So, we started the
application process and I applied for student loan to cover the expenses.
My application was denied. I had defaulted on several loans after 911, and
my credit rating was in the in the shitter. So Gabi suggested that I found
a relative or a friend who trusted me and who would take a loan for me under
their name so I could go to school. I wasn't so sure about the idea,
besides I really had no money to pay for anything - even with the VA
reimbursement. Furthermore, I thought the idea was humiliating. My
situation was humiliating enough, and I didn't want to compound it by
further. But the program did promise employment after completion. After
weighing things over, I decide to ask my mother if she would take out a loan
for me. I reassured that the situation would get better once my
reimbursements starts coming in and once I get the promised job at the
course completion.
So, I signed up. I then asked for the VA rep so that I could initiate the
VA application. I contacted William Israel about a week prior to the
school's opening, but he told me to wait until the school opened. When
school started however, William told me to wait until the middle of the
term. I thought this was weird but I still didn't feel like anything wrong
was going to happen. A few months later, I spoke again to William; he told
me to wait for one more week because there were some minor issues with the
NY Board of Education. The minor problem would prove to be a big, big
problem; and now almost two years since I graduated, it's still not clear
whether the school is going to get accredited by the VA.
Through all these time, I had been referred to several people who told me
everything was going to be under control. When I got angry, I was basically
told to "get lost". The school stopped responding to my emails and my
calls. In my last conversation with William, he told me that the school
never said that it was VA accredited only that it was VA approved. I told
him I didn't know what the difference was, and even if there were a
difference, the school certainly made a lot of effort to assure me that as
far as VA reimbursement is concerned, there was no difference between VA
approval and accreditation.
I forwarded William the emails I've saved where there was tacit admission
that the school claimed it was "VA approved/accredited." I began to hear
from him again and was later referred to Liz Ramos, the complaints
coordinator or some such. This time however, no emails were exchanged. Liz
would not respond to my emails even after explicitly requesting for some
sort of acknowledgment of receipt. She would only talk to me on the phone.
After 3 months, she wouldn't talk to me on the phone either. I wrote New
Horizons and told them I was going to seek legal counsel if my problem does
not get resolved. I was referred back to Gabi Golan after that and we
reestablished communication.
Gabi told me they were really close to getting approval. He told me to get
in touch with him again at the end of May because the school would be
approved by then. I also told Gabi that aside from the VA reimbursement
that I lost, I want New Horizons to reimburse me for the interest that I
have been paying. I told him I should only be paying for the interest of
40% of the tuition because that's what I would have owed if I had gotten my
60% from the VA. He told me that's never going to happen.
When May came, I called Gabi, but he did not return my call. I may a few
other calls but he did not return any one of them. I also emailed him but
he hasn't responded either.
I am now seeking legal representation.
Stay away from New Horizons!!!
Now is the part of the page that's completely, totally my opinion and nothing but. Ready?
These people are scum. Just plain old lying scum. Yes, sure, there are a few NH locations that do what they promise and try to do what's right. They are the EXCEPTION, and odds are nearly 100% you are NOT going to be sitting in one of those locations after you give up thousands of dollars to a well-dressed and very friendly Account Executive. A much more typical experience with NH is "They promised this and that, talked me into taking out a loan, told me it would be just like a student loan, so I could defer payments if I was unemployed, and that they would help make sure I got a high-paying IT job when I got my certs. Then the instruction sucked, the loan was a high-interest loan made by some bank or company NH was in bed with, it wasn't a student loan so I have to keep making the payments even though I'm unemployed, which I am because NH didn't even try to help me find a job."
I cannot recommend strongly enough that you NOT sign any contract with New Horizons.
If you insist on doing business with them, before you sign, read the stories in the "Other Stories" section from former students. Don't worry if the dates on these letters are a little old, you can rest assured that nothing has changed, except that NH now appears to be in serious trouble if they can't even get their filings submitted on time.
If you still want or need computer instruction, there are many other places you can go. I don't have an opinion about any of the others, as I have no direct experience with any of the others. However, I can tell you this:
- Anything that ANY salesman tells you, he should be willing, no make that OVERJOYED, to put it in writing. If it isn't in writing, it didn't happen. Period. If it isn't IN THE CONTRACT YOU SIGNED, it doesn't count. If somebody tells you something but isn't willing to put it in writing RUN AWAY.
- If you don't know anything about computers now, there is NO WAY IN HELL that you are going to be making 40, 60, 100 thousand dollars this time next year in the IT field. It WILL NOT happen. No matter how bright you are, no matter how hard you try. The industry is NOT growing by leaps and bounds like it was in the late '90s, when anybody with a pulse could get a job playing with computers.
- Any school worth going to will have no major problems abiding by the terms in our Survival Guides: Contract Addendum and Instructor Screening
- Whether it's at NH, another school, a new car lot, or wherever there's a high pressure salesman at work, you'd be wise to take a tape recorder with you if you're going to let somebody tr to talk you into something. Whether you tape the pitch surrepticiously or openly, it will be a good thing to walk away without signing, go home, and listen to all the promises. Write them out on a piece of paper and when you go back, put it under the salesman's nose and tell him you won't sign unless all this language is added to the contract. (Don't worry about going home to "think about it," there's no such thing as a deal that's only good until you stand up and walk away)
- If you cannot afford the price of the "schooling" offered by any learning center without taking out a loan, DO NOT GO. Scrape together 50 bucks, go to Barnes & Noble, and spend a few hours in the computer book section looking through titles that deal with the certification you're after. If you can get another ten bucks together, you can even have a latte while you read. If you don't understand a bit of it, look for something else to do with your life. If you understand bits and chunks, then evaluate the available books and buy the one you like the best. By the way, if you don't have enough money for a couple of cheap used computers, a network hub or router and a couple cables, give up now. You are going to need some hardware to practice on, regardless of what certification you're going after.
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"newhorizonssucks.net" is registered to Joseph Betz. All inferences contained herein that New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, New Horizons Worldwide, Inc., or any other person or entity "suck" are the personal opinion of Joseph Betz and should not be construed otherwise.
New Horizons Worldwide, Inc., its subsidiaries and franchisees, are neither responsible for the content of this site nor have they given approval of any of the materials contained herein.
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