Western Career College

I am currently attending Western Career’s Respiratory Therapy program at the Pleasant Hill campus. This program is an intensive year-round program that fits about 3 years worth of prerequisites and coursework into two years. Tuition includes books, lab costs, equipment—in short everything but gas, food, and rent. \r \r This is a fairly new program and as a result has room for improvement. However, because of that, the staff and faculty are continually working to improve the program and open to student input as opposed to the more typical Faculty versus Student relationship one gets at a traditional university. Additionally, the faculty is very willing to help students having difficulty with the coursework. \r \r I find the course work is made as relevant as possible to the knowledge and skills required to practice as a Respiratory Care Practitioner in the field. Didactic classroom coursework is reinforced with hands-on training in a laboratory environment and applied during clinical hours. Concepts taught in Chemistry, Mathematics, and other core science classes such as Anatomy and Physiology are reinforced in coursework that focuses on treatment modalities and patient assessment. Patient assessment and treatment modalities are then practiced first in a lab and then in the field in a hospital. A large effort is made by the faculty to instill critical thinking and analysis skills in students to better enable us to solve problems in the field. \r \r During clinical rotations I have heard from staff members at hospitals that, in general, students from WCC are well prepared and ahead of the curve in comparison to students from other programs. On all of my clinical rotations I have felt well prepared and able to handle those tasks assigned by my mentors on site. I am looking forward to graduating, passing the board exams, and practicing respiratory care.\r Pros: Good program Cons: New Program more

\r I attended the Dental Assiting Program from Sept 2008 to May 2009. I am not at all happy with this college and its program ethics.\r \r The recruiters are, of course, very helpful and nice. However, once you are committed and start the program, all communication is shut down. From the receptionist at the front desk, to the career services dept, all are usually not available when you need them.\r \r A word of caution. As a dental assistant student, you need to recruit your own patients to practice your techniques. In other words you need 4 different people willing to come in for x-rays that meet a certain criteria, and 3 more to come in for a coronal polish. They DO NOT tell you this at the beginnning and IT IS REQUIRED to graduate.\r \r Another problem they do not reveal at the beginning is that you MUST complete a career booklet in order to graduate that IS NOT related to your field of study. It is purely a ""how to know yourself to get a job"" type of assignment. It is a completely ridiculous, but very time consuming booklet that IS REQUIRED. They do not tell you how to do the booklet and it is extremely difficult to figure out how to turn it in as there are many contradictory errors in assignments. The booklet is very badly put together. The career services instructer, Yvette, that gives you the booklet, just rants and raves about how good she is at her job during the seminar and does not instruct you on how to finish the booklet. She is only interested in promoting herself.\r \r Also the instructor that I experienced in my program for dental assisting didn't have enough workable knowledge of how to teach the program properly. She didn't even know how to pronounce the word epiglotis properly! And we have spelling and terminology tests 3 times per week! Also she was very inconsistent with her assignment instructions and changed her mind frequently on matters pertaining to turning in assignments and when tests were scheduled. In other words, you never knew what to expect.\r \r I really felt that my $16,000 could have been put to better use at another college. If I knew then what I know now about this college, I would have NEVER applied.\r \r My advice to anyone considering Western Career College in Pleasant Hill is to NOT APPLY! It is an extreme waste of your, or your parents hard earned money.\r \r Cons: Expensive, Poor communication. Very inconsistent more