jane_harper2

I've taught distance education courses, and there *is* the technology for immediate back and forth discussion. There has been for at least ten years! I know you're familiar with chat rooms and instant messaging ...

I've tried addressing my concerns with NYIP and it's like talking to myself. I've emailed everybody from the customer service folks to Chuck Delaney himself, and gotten zero response. I'm sure they've written me off as a shrew.

I really LIKE my instructor -- and if there's a way to do followup questions and answers other than just including them with the next photo project (three months later), I have no idea what it is. What the student advisor Jerry Rice told me was that any back and forth was to be done with an advisor -- and then he and his cohorts don't respond to my questions.

Why don't I phone? Because the 800 number is reserved for SALES, if you're an actual student you have to pay for the call. Sounds kinda backwards, doesn't it? I've already given them almost a thousand bucks. I'm not giving them any more.

I'm halfway through the NYIP program and I AM disappointed. The written materials are nothing you can't find in a bookstore -- but that's what I expected. I'm a university educator myself and I know that in subjects like photography, the real education comes in the exchange between instructor and student, where the student develops his/her skills. At NYIP this exchange is minimal: you send in your "photo projects" of between 3 and 6 images, wait (and wait and wait and wait), and receive an audio tape of your instructor's responses. Mine were perfunctory. "You're cropped too tight" -- what the *#&$ does THAT mean? As a student you have NO OPPORTUNITY to discuss images in a back-and-forth fashion with ANYONE.

Unless of course you count the "student advisors" -- you email them to a standard address (studentadvisor@nyip.com) and get a response from whoever's in the office that day, if you're lucky. They will not look at electronic images, no matter how you submit them; they will only look at printed photographs sent through the mail.

I'm VERY disappointed in NYIP. I only wish I hadn't already received all of my materials already -- I can't even ask for a partial refund. So I will finish the course and stuff the diploma in a drawer, because it's nothing to be proud of.