St. Petersburg College (SPC) - St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus — Local services in Saint Petersburg

Please, please spare your children and/or yourself the issues you will accumulate after joining this school. After moving from Tampa, and transferring from HCC, SPC seemed like a much more helpful and student oriented school. I was so wrong.

1- I finished my first year with online courses at HCC during summer during which time I went to advising to tie off any loose ends with transferring my credits, finding out which courses I would need to take to fulfill my degree with their requirements, etc. They ended up having a student advisor go over my transcript, and check off any courses I would need to take. I felt like I was very prepared and off to a great start. But seeing as the girl used the wrong catalog year, I had to fight tooth and nail to have a couple courses I took validated (even though I took them there).

2- One year later I apply for graduation, and they're stating that I have a course holding me back: A computer course. A computer course which I have already taken. A computer course which I have sent request over and over again to have looked into by administration.

Well, luckily for me, my request wasn't taken seriously until I emailed Bill Law, President of SPC, who finally looked into the issue and had it resolved. Seeing as this request took months to fulfill, I ended up missing my graduation, where I was supposed to walk with Honors as I graduated Magna Cum Laude. As a single mother, who graduated with honors within two years, you would think that any school would consider this a very proud moment for a student and not make every moment of it a living hell: especially being talked down to by every advisor, staff member, dean, whoever.

3- After they overnighted me two copies of my A.A., they insisted I walk at the next graduation. I decided I would, and today went into Student Services to figure out how to get my two Honors Chords. Well, two hours later, I still have no definitive answers; go run to pick up my kid from school, and return as the advisor and I have agreed to have these issues finalized today. The supervisor who was supposed to talk to me when I returned didn't even have the decency to acknowledge my presence in the waiting room (her office had open cutouts/windows, so she was aware I was there). Another advisors told her as I was leaving that I was waiting for assistance, which she replied loudly "Well, I am in a meeting for the next hour, so she will have to come at a later date." Um, no thank you. I will never be coming back. And I'm also not wasting my time trying to track down my chords or walk at graduation. Anymore energy spent on this school would be a waste.

This shows the level of customer service this school cares to use. Which is basically none.

4- And now, thanks to AUTOGRAD (if you do decide to go to the hell hole of a school make sure you ask as many questions as you can about this!!!) I am now forced out of this school and into USF to finish my Bachelor in Engineering (although I have 3 more semesters of prerequisites to complete) since I am now listed as a "Non-Degree seeking student", receive no financial aid even though I am still eligible to receive aid, because now that I have hit my 60 credit limit, I have been given the option of paying out of pocket for the remainder of my courses or pay 3x the price as USF.

After finishing my degree on time, not abusing the system and receiving only 3 or 4 B's on my entire transcript, I would think that a hard working, dedicated student should be allowed to fulfill their prerequisites and not be thrown out on their ass to fend for themselves. But, according to SPC I am just an unimportant number who allowed them to take my money until they were no longer able to. Very upset with this school and what...

I have had nothing but problems since I enrolled here. I enrolled this past June, for the Fall semester. Problem #1. I have quite a few AP credits from my high school years. I am told by an advisor that they have "expired". Upon further research, I see on the CollegeBoard website that AP credits do not expire. Problem #2: I work 2 jobs, 60 hours a week and cannot make it to a campus to have my photo taken for my ID. I cannot become FA eligible until I have my photo ID. The school rejects my request (without notifying me) for an ID by mail because I live in Pinellas county. I file a formal complaint, the school calls me, we get it taken care of. OK. So I become FA eligible, enroll in classes, and everything is good. For about two weeks. Problem#3 Around the last week of the summer classes, I get an email saying that I am being placed on "SAP warning". The email lists me as having attempted 0 credits and having been awarded 0 credits for the semester. Well duh, I didn't want to take any classes. So I call the school and someone in student services assures me "Oh its probably just an error, don't worry about it." So I don't worry about it.Problem #4 Now come September, fourth week of classes goes by...no FA disbursement. Fifth week...no disbursement...I call every day to check when I will be getting money and get a different answer every day, and one of the FA advisors actually tells me to "just wait it out" when I complain I am living on ramen noodles. FINALLY receive my disbursement. So halfway through the semester I am failing one of my two courses because the professor (who has horrible ratings on ratemyprofessor) doesn't appreciate the art of concise writing and is thus giving me crappy grades on every paper I write telling me he wants "more". So I call SPC to talk about getting the SAP warning taken off my account so it doesn't affect my aid come Spring (when I'll probably actually need the FA warning, and thats fine).Probem #3a/5: I have to call three times, and receive two answers...one person tells me that I will need to speak with someone else about it, and the other person (who is not the person I need to speak to) tells me its because grades from my previous institutions transferred over. When I applied I listed myself as never having attended college because I withdrew from a semester 6 years ago. Problem #6: Well apparently the policy of SPC is to transfer credits without your permission or consent. Funny enough I have other credits from a school, where I have a 3.0, that didn't transfer. Problem #7: I am told, to have the grades that I didn't want transferred removed, I have to actually petition someone for it, like So while I suspect that this woman was just making crap up, I am either going to lose my FA because 1) SPC did something without my permission or 2) they can't fix an error they created. I received an email from the actual person I was supposed to speak to and I emailed her and have yet to hear back 24 hours later.

I have filed another formal complaint with the school and plan on formally withdrawing and making damn sure all of my friends and all of their friends know to never attend this school! My room mate, who is an SPC/USF/SPC transfer student has also had TONS of problems with them, which actually caused him to have to drop out of USF and owe them a considerable...

While I was initially drawn to St. Petersburg college by their affordability, and online program, I now wish that I had chosen another school but am too close to graduation to change at this point.

First of all, unless you are able to go into the campus for advising, plan on multiple days (sometimes weeks) of "phone tag" to get a simple question answered. The first level support is no help at all, and only takes a message for the actual advisors, with a promise to return the call some time (at their convenience) in the next 48 hours. If you miss their call, then you must go through the entire process over again as they will not leave an actual number to speak with them. Unfortunately, email requests are no better. I have had situations where I asked to speak with someone, or a response via email for clarification of my issue over 5 times, never actually getting it resolved and finally giving up on a few occasions. With that said, one does not need to deal with them that often so I ignored the issue hoping that the rest of my experience would make up for it.

Some of the teachers have been really good. Others have been neutral with their teaching style but I learned a sufficient amount from their class so I did not complain. However, I recently had a teacher that was absolutely horrible. She literally did not teach anything in the class. NOTHING. She assigned reading from the 2 books and gave several long assignments (which I still question if she ever read because there was never any viable feedback), but never gave feedback/guidance on the class or individual level. A child could have taught the class more about this subject than this "doctorate" level professor, very disappointing. She even had several errors on the spelling and grammar of her pre-filled assignment instructions, yet she marked her class off for "grammatical errors" and refused to give actual feedback when asked for clarification (asked her to point out where the perceived errors were), she simply ignored the emails and did not respond.

Unfortunately, I do not know who else to turn to in order to escalate the issue. As mentioned above, advising is a challenge to get a hold of, and there is no clear escalation protocol at the school. At this point I wish I had stayed "just a number" in the University that I was at, and cannot graduate fast enough from this place.

If you are considering this school as an option please think twice, it is...