Western Technical College - El Paso Campus — Local services in El Paso

As a veteran and a student:

Don’t come here. Go to a community college. The price for these programs is inflated and tuition is too high when you can go to a community college for a fraction of the price. The instructors don’t care about actually teaching. They are following a very sterile protocol.

It’s shiny and nice but as soon as they have your money they don’t care.

This IS a For-Profit school, I learned a hard lesson by coming here.

These types of schools almost always have bad teachers you have to navigate around unnecessarily. Everything is PowerPoint being thrown at you at high speed with very little time for elaboration on material. Everything is going to computers and A.I. Students have their own class during the class to figure the material out themselves, the students were literally having to teach each other while simultaneously the instructor blew through PowerPoints blind to the situation the students were in.

I asked my instructors for help many times and almost every time they either did not know the material or they claimed I was making a big deal about it. I had to go out of my way to get a text book to actually read the material only problem is that the curriculum is all over the place- good luck trying to follow along.

I was constantly gaslit by my instructor and was even verbally attacked all because I was trying to get the help I needed to pass the class.

I went up and down the chain of command at this school and they were mostly apathetic to my situation. Every solution they suggested failed and when I brought it up they would either ignore it altogether or say it wasn’t their responsibility. I went on my off days to get tutoring, the instructors did not know the material, I had an instructor that was well advanced in age and was barely able to track what he was saying. I had to leave the HVAC program and got into their CDT program.

Unfortunately it didn’t end there either. I had to leave class in order to pass. I had to take off school time and study on my own to pass my exams as the classroom material was just an instructor flying through PowerPoints. Class was jarring mentally and often left me drained. If I did not take drastic measures and take actions into my own hands I would not have passed.

I passed the program, but with next to no help from instructors. The instructors got in the way much of the time.

If you are wanting to get your CDL you are better off at a community college or find a good company that will get you a CDL and a year or two of OTR experience which is crucial for choosing a local job that pays well.

Just about the only thing I liked about this school was the cafe, the cooks made very delicious food and were very warm...

Take this as my honest review as someone who went through admissions to enrollment to classes. Save your money and find a better institution. Those with Veteran's benefits stay away. The VA counselor does not ask you how you want to structure your payments. It is very predatory in nature and they draft your payments with maximum loan amounts first and do not even disclose an alternate payment option. She was awestruck when I asked for a different structure with the least loans and max VA benefits as if someone has never asked her it before. Huge red flag.

The financial counselor doesn't even know what he's doing. Very unprofessional and sarcastic. Not welcoming or friendly. When asked about financial aid he looked at his screen, cringed and said "not looking too good". He also complained about working late hours. I'll admit I was the stupid one for not seeing this place for what it is. Run by a bunch of cons.

The Director and Instructors of the medical billing & coding program are a gigantic passive aggressive bundle of joy. The program is the laziest conjured course material I've ever seen. The assignments are just questions taken directly from the books practice questions. No originality just copied random youtube videos. There are spelling errors out the wazoo and the instructors scold you like a child saying it's important to be accurate. The hypocrisy is astounding. The answer keys are not accurate and horribly constructed. The assignments do not work half the time. We were literally given a final exam when it should've been a mid-term. Assignments don't work or are blank documents. I could go on and on with the technical issues. I spent too much time on making sure I was fairly graded. But the moment you share any criticism or feedback to the teachers it is immediately met with resistance and avoidance of responsibility. No accountability. The whole program is a glorified self-study session that you are overpaying for enormously.

The only person who was nice in my entire experience here was the admissions rep. She seemed forthcoming and open about the requirements of the program but I figured when she said it would be hard that it was about the content not the battles fought to even get to the content. But I suppose that's how they sucker you in so it makes sense. Do not...

HVAC program from a recently separated veteran. Pros: The school is clean, plenty of things to learn during labs, most instructors are knowlegable and are helpful with tips for the workforce, they have security and it's in a gated location. Staff is friendly. Mr Gruber and Mr Casas are great program directors who can be very helpful. Cons: This is in a heavy traffic location due to it being next to an entry/exit point through the border to Mexico, leave early to get there on time. The staff helped me with loans and whatnot but are slow and not always available. Every instructor uses Canvas differently, causing confusion with assignment dates or releases or even trying to get into contact with them. 80% of the time not only did my classmates speak in Spanish but the instructors did as well. Ive had to ask them to repeat or elaborate on what information I was missing out on, making my time spent in class not so pleasant. I understand helping billingual students but when it takes away from others who dont understand it can be frustrating. Class time is where we just read from a power point, took a quiz and got little explanation on the topic at hand. Labs were okay, plenty of units to work on, some broken but we learned a bit even if we were left to figure it out amongst ourselves. We've waited an extended period of time to recieve our tools for unknown reasons. Some instructors were new and we had to relearn certain things as because we were taught the wrong way the entire class. Thw night class had about 10 students while the morning had almost 18 to 20. It felt that there wasnt enough equipment for all of us to get our hands on for experience. The HVAC workforce in el paso is over saturated and they don't offer much even with a degree, I could have probably applied with no experience and recieved a dollar or two less hourly pay. The cafeteria food is terrible, no they don't speak English either. I feel like I've wasted my time, at leat i gave it a try but now I'm in debt. Your experience...