Problems with New horizons

My work paid for two training course places for myself and a collegue to train up on the 70-291 , ( I'm going to sit this one on the 5th Nov ) has anyone else had problems with them ?
Here's our saga so far;
1:\ Turned up to find out tutor phoned in sick ( sod's law I suppose ), but no replacement tutor
2:\ Then put into a "mentor" led class, ( can't stand much longer of listening to a drolling american speaker via video training ), I find this form of training very boring.
3:\ Then told that they didn't have any training manual's , books etc for us !!!

Is it just me or is it the case that they take the money from companies and hope no-one complains ??

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Comments

tweakingit

I have had similar issues with them.

It must be company policy not to have training Manuals.

They also are full of unfilled promises. They say, “That course is available online” then they tell you we never said that.

I would steer as far away from them as I can. I won’t even schedule exams at their location. Because of these issues I drive an extra 20miles to a testing center.

sthomas

I have never used them for training because there prices are to high but I do take my exams there. It is ok I guess but it seems a lot of the times I go in they have some sort of technical difficulties.

KGhaleon

Once they called me to their office, claiming they had a job available which I might be interested in. I drove an hour or so to New Horizons(an office building) and they basically looked my resume over for a couple minutes and proceeded to tell me that it lacked what I needed to get a good job. They then began promoting their school to me, trying to get me to sign up for classes.

Yeah, scam.

KG

kevozz

KGhaleon wrote:

Once they called me to their office, claiming they had a job available which I might be interested in. I drove an hour or so to New Horizons(an office building) and they basically looked my resume over for a couple minutes and proceeded to tell me that it lacked what I needed to get a good job. They then began promoting their school to me, trying to get me to sign up for classes.

Yeah, scam.

KG

They did the exact thing to a room of about 50 IT people, about a year after the dot com bust. They almost had a riot on their hands!

Plantwiz

Now that you mention about the books....One job I had was offered a complimentary course and no one else was interested so I signed up. The first thing they mentioned was that they didn't have any course books (they were out).

Unfortunately, I've not heard of anyone else who has ever taken a course (locally) so I don't know if that was truly isolated or their standard line.

I wasn't impressed and didn't ever want to put out my own money.

blargoe

We had some Microsoft training vouchers to spend so I am signed up for a course at New Horizons next week. I'll post my experiences here.

JDMurray

blargoe wrote:

We had some Microsoft training vouchers to spend so I am signed up for a course at New Horizons next week. I'll post my experiences here.

Thanks for the effort, blargoe. It seems that anytime a NH thread is posted on TE, few people have anything good to say. I'll be very interested in reading a recent review of the experience at an NH training center.

sprkymrk

My experience with NH is strictly limited to the Davenport, IA location. It's been 4 years since the last time I took a course there, but for about 3 years (2001-2003+/-) I attended NH training for the following courses:

A 1 week combined 70-210/70-215 course.
A 1 week Security+ course.
A 1 week Exchange 2000 course.
A 1 week ICND course.

The classes all had books or training material of some sort. The MS course came with the MOC soft cover manuals, as did the Exchange class. The Sec+ came with what appeared to be an instructor-made binder of Power Points, resourse references, practice questions and some other material. I think there was also a book, maybe exam cram, but can't remember for sure. The ICND course also had some materials that appeared to be made by the instructor.

The instructors varied in skill and knowledge, but all were at least "good enough". In the 70-210/70-215 class the instructor was smart but not a genius. He taught straight from the MOC using power point, was a little boring, but could answer most questions that came up. He had a large class going (there were about 10-12 of us, which is huge for a NH class in my experience) and so couldn't take the time for every last person to complete a lab if they were having trouble before moving on. In all fairness, this was also a night class that ran from 4PM-10PM so most people didn't want the class to drag on anyway.

In the Exchange class, the instructor was a very talented individual and definately "genius" level which created a huge problem for me combined with the fact that the only other student (yes, only 2 of us) ran an IT shop for a large business that had about 100 Exchange 5.5 servers in the process of migrating to E2K. I, on the other hand, had just set up my first Exchange 2000 server a few weeks previous and had limited exposure to 5.5. What happened was that the discussion would get side tracked to issues way over my head at the expense of the basics that I needed to get started.

The Sec+ course instructor was a nice lady, good instructor, but I detected she had limited real world experience. The class was okay, consisted of about 5 students, and we all got along well sharing experiences and stories. On a side note, I was able to get into the school's switch (innocently poking around) and edit the config (I just had to try) but of course I didn't hurt anything. I showed the instructor lady (remember this is Sec+) and she wasn't concerned, and didn't know how to set/change the password to keep others from getting in. She declined my offer to do so. I did get a nice laptop style backpack with the NH logo on it in this class.

The ICND class was very good, led by a very smart and experienced instructor. This is how every class should be. Skilled instructor, good equipment, good material, and a class of about 6-7 people hungry to learn.

Overall, I would rate my experience with NH as 7 out of 10, but I would NEVER pay the price myself for any of those classes, not even the ICND class which I would give a 9 out of 10 rating. My company paid for all of this training.

wd40

This might not be relevant because I'm not in the US.

I'm attending a MCSE Course in NewHorizons Bahrain, the books are the official Microsoft MOC's + they gave us Access to online courses & virtual Labs through the international Newhorizons website.

online Training is through element-k training.

http://learning.newhorizons.com/

sm45350

I know I started this thread , but I agree , it would be nice to hear some good news from a tutor etc from NH, even a explanation as to why this seems to be such a common occurance in NH.

Some good came of my complaints to the NH manager today, I have been offered a free tutor lead course of my choice so guess I'll be going back to do my elective after the 291 after all.!!

blargoe

I started my NH class today. I'm taking the MOC for 70-299, Administering and Maintaining Security on Windows 2003 Networks. I guess NH centers are a mixed bag, I have been very impressed so far with my experience.

The center itself (ie, the business) is not new but they recently relocated across town and the physical facility is new. The lab machines are great compared to what I'm used to in a training scenario, dual core/2GB/Dual Raid0 PC's running VPC 2007.

I think our local center lucked out with the instructor, he really knows his stuff inside and out. He actually has a strong, real-world background in information security and does consulting as an ethical hacker on the side in addition his full time job training and continuing his initial infomation security business that he started before he became a trainer. With all the real world he throws in with the MOC the class could take 3 weeks and still not cover everything good enough, which is the only negative I can think of. They packed a lot into this course, but none of it so far has been fluff.

Plantwiz

thanks for the update!

SingleServingJack

Interesting experience here in Durham, NC w/ NH...
I left my job (IT Admin for major Mobile provider 10 yrs., MCSE for NT 4 way back in the day) in Louisville, KY to come down here to Durham w/ my wife while she takes a 1 yr NueroOncology fellowship at Duke. It was a sound decision, she will make WAY more than I ever hope to...anyway...I am using this time to re-up all my certs.

I shopped the NH here and for the full MCSE, CCNA and Sec + they only wanted a meager $18,000.00

Read that again.

I told the account rep to immediately go poop in his hat. That's a car, not a course fee.

I have, however, had great courses w/ NH. I took an awesome Exchange course @ thier Nashville, TN (the instructor was outstanding!) branch and a good AD course in Louisville.

To sum up...all of the branches will be different. Go with you gut about the account rep. They might try to sell you a line of BS. Ask to talk to the instructor, as well. Demand MOC at the very least or don't sign up.

Caveat emptor and your mileage will very.

Needless to say, I am going self study. I take 70-270 on Friday. I remember that the Windows 95 course was a bear because everyone took it for granted and your day to day knowledge of it could work against you, I am trying not to this time around...
Wish me luck...

keatron

I've taught for a couple of NH centers. The thing is nowadays they're like 90% franchised (no longer all corporate). One center I taught at was absolutely horrible, while two others I taught at were magnificent. So it really depends on the particular center. So saying that all NH is bad because one location didn't quiet have it together would probably not be fair these days. I guess looking at it from a students point of view, a large part of your experience and what you think of that experience will depend on the instructor. Which is why it's always a good idea to ask the center a week before class for the resume (and some recent evaluations from students), of the instructor who'll be teaching the class. And seriously, there's no excuse for not having or "being out of" books.

Keatron

Vogon Poet

Looks like some people got some bad deals.
I enjoyed my experience at New Horizons in Albany, NY. We always had the books, labs were well set up for our use, and the instructors were very good. My only beef was with the Microsoft materials that didn't include every topic that would be covered on the test (e.g. terminal server & IIS). That was Microsoft's doing though.
The offered curriculum may be getting too expansive for some operations to cover with qualified instructors.

rmochrie

++++ Add removed++++

dtlokee

Heh, how about support our little community and pay for that advertising!

The few New Horizons centers around me all place ads online for jobs, then when you come in for your "job interview" they tell you that you don't meet the requirements of the employers but for a mere $18,000 they can offer you the necessary training, sounds like a bait and switch to me. What a way to try and take advantage of people. Also they contacted 2 students who were going through state funding for training (unemployment) and told them the paperwork was complete and they must show up on Monday for classes. Problem was they were not approved through NH but they were approved at my school, I thought that was a new low.

You can't keep everyone happy, but the underhanded practice of some centers has made more than a few people unhappy with their experience.