Clark College — Local services in Vancouver

There are several issues. First off, Clark's website is ridiculous! It it so difficult to navigate & find what you are looking for. It is absolutely NOT user friendly. Web registration takes forever! Another big issue I have is the classes offered & time slots. It is impossible to get an effective class schedule. Not only are classes "full" the minute registration opens up, but I am just "mind blown" at the lack of thought in how these classes are offered. Classes are not offered at convenient times nor in time slots that will allow a student to build a schedule without taking useless & unnecessary classes! Some classes are 1 1/2 hours, 3 times a week, some are 1 hour everyday & etc. So if a student needs several classes it is really difficult to build a schedule without facing CONSTANT time conflicts. In my daughter's case she is not getting the full benefit of doing Running Start because she CANNOT build a decent schedule! I can only imagine that this is done as a way to get more financial aid money from students. Students have to take classes they don't need or want just to reach that "full-time" status to get the maximum financial aid. For many students, this contributes to larger, unnecessary student loan burdens later!!!  Another thing that grinds my gears is all the "fees" for the classes in addition to tuition! I mean, come on!! Students are already paying what, $113+ per credit hour for a community college, plus those expensive books, let's just add a few hundred dollars more for "fees"! I mean who cares right, the students will just get loan money or grants to pay for it!!! Oh, and those books! My daughter was required to purchase, well actually I purchased, an $80 book for a class & she didn't even need it! It was not utilized at all!!!  Clark, you need to clean up your act & quit wasting students'...

The people you can meet here are interesting, and it's a great place if you love stress. Any student coming here should expect to have to self-teach, and to expect to lose a lot of enthusiasm for learning.

Many buildings have poor ventilation and some lack A/C and heat. The rest of the campus is fairly easy enough once you are used to it, there's a lot of parking lots but they're mostly small and scattered.

It's easy to apply and get started for the most part, but the phone is never a reliable way to reach them and there are many times you can be the only one in a department but they're still struggling to find someone that can help you.

There's an extremely fast turnover rate with their teachers and staff. They're clearly underpaid and just closely follow a predetermined textbook course layout. It's content you can (and will) find online for free. In-class lectures are often just reviewing the required reading material and many courses do not provide enough time to ask questions in class. All classes will end up relying on the student to self-teach, I have yet to find an exception outside of a few of their more rare hands-on programs in during later degree courses, which still required a lot of self-learning. Even the teachers end up pointing more towards free courseware (Khan academy, MIT's free course material, YouTube resources, etc)

If you have no option, it works. It's better than PCC at least. They do have access to more interesting programs and extracurriculars that are free for students to get involved with as well. That's truly the biggest perk here and anybody going here should take advantage of all the opportunities they can give you, you won't have access to those chances anymore once you're...

September I just started at Clark this week and I am already starting to regret it. Before I start with the negative, I will say that my professors have been nice so far and the work has been as I expected college work to be.

First of all, this is not at all how I imagined college. We are all treated, no matter our ages, as if we are running start students. It feels like highschool with homework on steroids. I mean, no wonder though because I have 15 year olds wandering around everywhere I look. This is not the college experience I was hoping for.

My biggest problem with this school though starts with the fact that most professors are impossible to contact, even in Canvas where they claim is the “best” place to reach them. The final day to drop out of classes with no penalty was today and I have been feverishly trying to switch to all online for days now. Let’s just say I missed the deadline, which wasn’t my fault might I add. I contacted every single teacher I could find with open spots in ctcLink and out of about 8 professors, only two replied. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Well, why didn’t you contact advising?” Oh, but I did. They were absolutely no help. They acted like I was such a burden, were short and snappy, and told me that the only way to switch into classes was to contact each professor. Obviously that didn’t happen and now I’m stuck for the rest of the term. Thanks a lot Clark College. 🙄

Update as of December I finally finished the term at Clark and will be transferring to a much better college in the coming week or so for around the same price. Couldn’t be...