[game_edu] Here goes the first shoe . . .

[kevin at kogsspin.com]

I totally agree with Susan and despite my agonizing efforts to try to  
seem "non-finger-pointy" I can see where I may have failed.  Having  
taught at two "for-profit" schools (I'm at one now), I was merely  
pointing out that they are more susceptible to these types of suits.   
When was the last time a land-grant university was sued for deceptive  
business practices?

Sorry if I caused offense, but I thought this would be a pertinent  
topic for this forum and knew someone had to just suck it up and post  
it.  Now I'm going to see if it made the IGDA forums yet.

As for my take on the situation, I'm in the "school is what you make  
of it" camp.  So even in the worst situations, the fact that you  
isolated so many hours a week for school and were exposed to  
techniques and textbooks means you should have left there with more  
knowledge and experience than when you entered.  If you sat there with  
your mouth open expecting to be spoon-fed an industry-acing education  
(at any school), then you began your journey on faulty premises and  
that is what we can fix.  We can make sure any freshly spawned  
developers-to-be know how to evaluate a program and pick the one that  
is right for his or her needs.

--Kevin

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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:00:08 -0700
From: Susan Gold <sgold at btrout.com>
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Here goes the first shoe . . .
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv <game_edu at igda.org>
Message-ID: <C60A7FA8.1C918%sgold at btrout.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I think this is an interesting topic, but please everyone, this is not a
pick on the ?for profit? program listserv. This is for thoughtful discourse.
Note, since this a lawsuit, I know students and school representatives can
not even discuss this in an open forum.

I hope that we all respect each other enough to realize that all programs
have some great and some bad instructors. Pointing a finger also means that
you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.

The type of thing that would make sense to me is if we can find a way to
help these students. Maybe they should all take Ian?s Free Summer Game
Design class? What other ideas might we be able to give them?

Susan