Accredited Schools

Hi Sara.

Thanks for clearing up the matter of anonymity. Why this forum allows it's use by anonymous posters, is completely beyond my comprehension.

See, your identity now lends credibility. You will see in your student roster that I am a fellow student. I'm the only guy in Rainier, OR. I use the identity "betelgeuserdude" on many forums because it is certainly more unique than my real name. The point though, is that my identity is associated with history, while your posting under the anonymous "guest", looks like the work of a troll. As I personally hate trolls, yes, it is personal. Because you used your identity, I see that you must be at Lemon Tree Passage, when not in transit. Your identity affords you much greater respect.

The reason that I suggested that you utilize the YDS forums is that I think that this is an appropriate issue for it. I dare say, it would be more appropriate than this forum, unless you have deliberately set out to publicly discredit the institution. I'm sure that more YDS students read the YDS forum than the boatdesign forums. Don't you think that a post on the YDS forum would provide a rallying cry from all concerned students, and thus directly serve your purpose? Posting your complaint on this board causes me to question your purpose.

You stated that you were waiting on (6) lessons to be corrected and returned with the new lesson. It was my understanding that only (2) lessons were to be undertaken at any one time. Did you ship the completed lessons as a package, or as you completed them individually? Seems to me that undertaking (6) lessons at a time would hardly allow for tutoring, and could cause a cumulative problem(s) when it it comes to correcting your work.

With any distance learning environment, effective communication is necessary for success. By sheer vertue of your complaint, it appears that communication has been less than effective. I hope that your continuing education with YDS becomes more satisfying.

DC

 

Sara & The Yacht Design School

I am the director of Yacht Design School. I had hoped that a lot of work and "hand holding" would be enough for Sara. It doesn't look like it. Unfortunately, now that she has "gone public" I have to make my reply public too.

Sara was starting from zero in design knowledge. We made the mistake of allowing her to pay for a number of lessons up front so that she would have plenty to work on. It is quite true that she has sent in a large number of lessons, but these lessons build one on another. We worked for ages on lesson two with me correcting it several times and sending it back before I realized that the reason she couldn't seem to measure correctly was that she had failed to buy a scale rule. It is obvious that she is continuing to try to work without the equipment we recommend our students buy. There is nothing I can do about this.

Now we are working on Lesson Three. Again, this is requiring multiple corrections and she has been sending it to us in pieces. I believe she is a long way from getting lesson three under her belt.

Recently I sent back her Lesson 4 with a request to do it completely over, but not submit it until she has mastered all of Lesson Three. For Lesson 5, I have not received a complete lesson yet but am still going to correct it and send it back. But look folks, realistically speaking I am spending more time answering her letters complaining that I am not letting her go faster than correcting her lessons, and I'm spending far more time than average correcting her lessons. I will not water down this course for anyone.

She complains about the time but she is located in Britain at the moment. The fastest way I can get anything to her is air mail. This gets to Britain in days, but then can sit in customs for two or three weeks. There is nothing that I can do about this.

Finally she will not read my letters and attempts to help in the spirit they are written. She sees everything as a desire to thwart her push to get the course done fast. What I am telling her is that she has to slow down and really learn each stage and that only by doing that can she increase her speed.

I hope that people will keep me informed of anything else in this vein that she posts here so I can respond. I really don't know what more I can do for her.

Thomas A. MacNaughton
Director Yacht Design School
www.macnaughtongroup.com

 

Sara & YDS

In the above post I should certainly have mentioned, as I believe Sara probably should have mentioned, that we always refund tuition on any lessons which have not been corrected if anyone wants to quit the course. My latest email from Sara is about how she wants to call me and talk to me about getting back on track.

I'm in a difficult position in that I don't want to insist that she quit the course as long as she wants to continue, but regardless of whether we are good people trying hard to do our best as we believe, or people who are not correcting her lessons fast enough as she believes, basically she is going to have to adapt somewhat to how and what we wish to teach or go someplace else.

I should also mention that in our FAQ we talk about accreditation and our current feelings on it's relevance for our students.

Further she implies that I spoke negatively of the Landing School which is very far from the truth. It is one of the finest programs if you have the money and desire to be trained as an entry level draftsman, which is exactly how they describe their training goals on their web site. She is criticizing me basically for quoting their information to her!

In any case anyone who has any problem with YDS can come to me anytime and I will do my best to make them happy.

 

Professionalism and YDS

Mr MacNaughton, It seems that you read and respond to this forum far quicker than replying to student communication, so I draw your attention to my email that should by now be sitting in your inbox.

I certainly do not feel that this is an appropriate place to launch a personal attack on anyone, and in re reading my posting regarding your school, I do not believe that I criticized you personally, only the level of correspondence and education with your school. It was my understanding that this forum could be used to share experiences. My experiences over the two years with your school have only got more frustrating. However, my response to your content is addressed in my email. If you decide to share that with this forum, I am more than happy for you to do so. I think that you have perfectly illustrated your lack of professionalism at YDS at this stage anyway.

I criticized the level of correspondence and the length of time in marking. I note that the content of your personal email to me is very different from your posting here, which we both know is lies. Mr MacNaughton, I do not take offence to your discussion of my personal experiences with your school in this forum, since we both know that what you have written is no more than a fabrication to put your own mind at ease. Those that I interact with in the industry, work or even future educational institutions, who may feel concerned by your words, have the benefit of reading our correspondence over the last two years and seeing my work. I am not so sure that you can offer the same comfort to future students who will not know if you will deal with them in the same manner you chose to deal with my situation here. I find it interesting that you would ask me to retract my posting when I purely discussed my experiences with the school, without insult I might add, while you chose to post what can only tarnish your name and own level of professionalism. After all, I am a student that chose to study because I am passionate about this area of the industry and paid to come to your school, and it seems mistakenly, expected to receive an education and correspondence relating to my education. I believe that is vital to any educational establishment. Even though your course is cheaper than most, it is very expensive for what you actually receive!

Mr MacNaughton, those around me who have followed my difficulties with the school which you head, suggest that your defensive manner and personal attack show an insecurity that perhaps you realise you aren't offering the service and education you strive to share or provide, which is why you sound guilty and insecure about our dealings. I do have to ask, does the second half of the course actually exist? I have yet to find a student who has reached past lesson four (though I have submitted up to 8), and the notes I received for lesson six where half written as you know.

I hope that you will reply to my email as quickly as you replied to this forum. I am sorry to those that read this that Mr MacNaughton seems to have used this for individual issues and a more personal attack and I have followed his lead in hoping that he will reply to my correspondence. My problems with the school are about the length of time they take to mark and their lacking in professionalism, and I still do not feel that 3 months is satisfactory and I have still not received any correspondence in relation to my assignments or education! As for handholding, I believe you, Mr MacNaughton, have must have directed this to another student because I have not received any, but if it is on offer, I would like some if it helps move things along! But, more importantly, this thread was actually about accrediation!!!!!! My problems with the school might have been resolved sooner if they had been accredited and there was some responsible, professional body to seek assistance from.

The big question..........will I stay with YDS or change schools? I am not entirely sure at this stage, but as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, perhaps it would be a wise move to make and change to Westlawn. Is this perhaps why NO ONE has graduated from YDS, yet Westlawn have a long list of professionals in the industry? I am sure it would give Mr MacNaughton great satisfaction if I changed schools, but at the end of the day it is about what works best for my education, though I believe that it may well be discriminated against at YDS!
Should I bother to keep everyone up to date, or are you all sick of this now?!?

 

To Sara Tom and everyone interested...

Wether my post is meaningful, I don't really know. It's always difficult to take sides in any issue like this, so I'll try not to...

This IS the first person that I have read about that actually HAVE problems with YDS. Since there are quite a number of students enrolled with YDS at different stages, I do think this issue would have become evident a lot earlier if it was a real issue for anyone else.

One could argue wether responding to Sara in an open forum was wise by Tom, I do understand both his and her frustration with the issues, because there are always two sides of any story, and the less contact you actually have the larger the differnce seems to be how you percieve a problem.

If it really has taken Sara two years to get to lesson six and yet have failed to get a passing grade on several of the lessons sent in for grading by the school (that's what it sounded like to me). Then either she lacks the feel and competence requiered for taking the course or indeed the tuition must have been lacking at least in part for her to go forward so slowly.
One does need to understand that submitting more than one lesson at the same time when doing a course like this migh give you problems later on if you have failed to understand important parts of the previous lessons.

I would suggest that since Sara is the one with issues towards YDS, I suggest that you try to calmly put down every issue that you feel you have with Tom, and make it as a list so that they can easily be responded to.
Avoid accusing and make it as short as possible but without leaving out any relevant information. It's always hard to properly answer questions and issues in something like a "normal" letter without missing out on stuff.


I would suggest to both of you that you try not to use open forums for accusations and try to solve the issues directly. Any specific questions relating to the course or assignments could obviously be asked in a public forum like this or YDS own forum.

I do hope that you can reach an understanding that makes both parties happy. It's always hard to stand down when an issue has become infected as it already obviuosly have here.

Good luck to both of you, it seems like you might need it.

 

While Mr MacNaughtong may disagree today, his comments less than 6 months ago in an email were that I indeed held the dedication and committment as well as the passion for the course to succeed as a great designer. As I also said in my posting, it is not the place to go through point by point of Mr MacNaughton's posting, however, while Tom may discuss progress, he is in fact talking about assignments from well over a year ago, and forgot to mention that his office did actually "misplace" a number of assignments further adding to the delay, and those that he refers to are blatant lies on his part.

The whole point of education is to learn a skill or a trade or profession - I have worked in the industry for over ten years now, and moving on to this course was a logical step. YDS sent one assignment backwards and forwards, not about the actual answer, but about a missing word despite the answer being correct.......so I don't think the ability to pick up the skill is the problem. But, I am sure Mr MacNaughton will feel it is his place to say otherwise to protect his own interest.

As for sending letters, ErikG, I have in fact done that very thing, though they are ignored. It does not seem to work listing points as I still don't know the answers and each time the questions are side stepped. I also suggested we talk over the phone and he still ignored that.

I also wanted to point out, that there was no other motive for posting my experiences other than to share them with potential students. My problems with the school were addressed to YDS long ago, despite the fact the school ignore them. This is the right forum to talk about experiences and I disagree that the YDS forum would have been more appropriate. I might also point out that after seeing YDS's response to this, would you share your views if you weren't satisfied? I personally correspond with a number of other students, and while they have not reached the level of frustration I have with the lack of professionalism, the majority are far from happy. That is there place to voice their own concerns, but I am not the only one with complaints.

 

This seems to have made up my mind about which school to select! I will go with the accredited one, if not for the very reason that should I have problems, I would hate to find my tutor discussing my problems on a public forum. I don't find that kind of behavior acceptable from a school whether they are in the right or wrong. ErikG I agree there are always too sides to a story, but I would have thought the Yacht Design School would have taken a more mature approach to resolving this. Sara, I look forward to seeing you at Westlawn - I think you would be making the right move!

John
Vista, CA

 

Thanks John for that, and also for the private messages I received from others.

 

Guest says:
"I would hate to find my tutor discussing my problems on a public forum. "

Would you, as the principal of a school, be happy to see your school discussed on a public forum by a disaffected student? I'm not taking sides here, but it seems that Sara started the ball rolling by airuuing her disaffectation in public. Tom merely replied in the same forum. I don't see a problem there, except that Tom and Sara obviously need to talk privately before either of them returns here to discuss this particular problem.
Steve

 

high satisfaction

I am a student of YDS.

Mr. Macnaughton has consistantly replied to my correspondence in a professional and timely manner. I have absolutely no complaints about the school, or Mr. MacNaughton. I expect that my education will be exhaustive and thorough, as it prepares me to open my own design office.

May I suggest to Sara, that desire does not indicate aptitude.

It appears that you have cut off your nose to spite your face. It is rare indeed to witness such a fruitful act of personal sabotage. Your actions have been akin to lighting the Dean's residence on fire, rather than merely placing a whoopy cushion on the Dean's chair. Were I Mr. MacNaughton, my ire would be particularly intense. I think that he is a better man than I for showing such obvious restraint, while you have shown none.

DC

 

I suppose before I say I disagree Steve, I should note that the majority of people defending the school are actually students and it seems to give them a motive. If they talked about any concerns with the school, maybe they worry about their own security as a student would be jeopardized - hence the need for accreditation.
I have been reading the postings on this forum talking about the pros and cons of different schools, and the students initial posting reflecting her dissatisfaction with the school is no different from the content of many threads. A school is a business and I can see no reason why a discussion on their ability to perform is such a problem.
If anyone read what the student was complaining about, it was waiting over 3 months for a reply. I would think this is vital in a distance learning school. So, I disagree Steve. I think the school have a responsibility to deal with any issues in a more appropriate manner, if for no other reason to maintain their own name. The school's response said it all - and I may be the only prospective student that think it is inappropriate, but YDS have lost my enrollment.
John

 

John - Let me put this another way. ;-)
THe point I was trying otr make is that Sara should not be complaining about Tom discussing this publicly. She started the discussion.....
Consider a business. Let's say it's a computer business. Let's call it "BowWow Computers". Now let's assume someone bad-mouths this business in a computer-user's forum. A thread something like "BWC sucks", with wording to the point of "I have a BWC and it inhales and they won't fix it under warranty."
Should the company not reply that this particular person thought they should be able to throw their laptop down the stairs and till have it covered? I think they should.
Tom has replied to a direct accusation in the same forum it was issued in. I don't see your problem. if you are dumping YDS because Tom has enough integrity to discuss things in public, I would have to say you are looking the wrong way. He is trying to solve a personal problem in public because one of his clients is dissatisfied, and has made some statements that would be considered slanderous if she cannot back them up. Accusations of "blatant lies" have been known to end in court, especially when the end result of that public statement is a loss of business, whcih Tom can prove by simply quoting your post.
More power for Tom to have desided to do this publicly, rather than just calling a lawyer.
Steve

 

Dear Guest,

Indeed, it seems that the majority of people defending YDS are actually students (of YDS) which only proves their satisfaction with the school. It is beyond my comprehension how my security as a student would be jeopardized by not defending YDS. I could elaborate on this point but I am sure that my credentials are of no interest to the members of this forum.

Now we come to the best part of it. In your second paragraph you indicate that in many threads there are postings expressing dissatisfaction with the YDS. So I did a search on this forum and what did I find? Your guess is right. No negative comments about YDS, and Sara again complaining, about what? But Westlawn of course, and praising YDS.

So it seems to me that, to put it mildly, Sara's expectations vis a vis yacht design schools and distance learning are rather unrealistic.

I am convinced that all three schools mentioned in this forum can do an excellent job at distance teaching. Choosing one over the other two has simply to do with one's philosophy on learning, lifestyle, and finances.

In closing I would like to say this: You have complaints with YDS? Post them but be specific, succint, accurate, and non slanderous. And something else. Unless you sign with your real name and everybody knows who you are please don't log in as guest. It might be misconstrued as cowardice.

Nicholas Cotzias

 

Seems I opened up a can of worms for some, but since some of the comments directly relate to me, there are my replies:

1) The point I made in the very start was my dissatisfaction with the school because they do not return work. I have work in their office mailed in in June, that I have not received back nor any comments about nor any reason why. The lessons were not bought in bulk, nor were they returned in bulk, but at least 4-5 weeks apart (plenty of time to mark the work in between). I do not think it is unreasonable to expect a reply to a letter asking why I have not received the work back or when I can expect it, which is after all, what I have been sending the school for months (yes, I have copies and can prove this). My post in this forum was not insulting nor was it unfair. And STILL I have not received any answers........ and quite simply what I wanted to know was when I might actually receive my work back and why it is taking so long! I highlighted a problem with the school, which after all is in the business of educating. This is an EDUCATION forum that discusses the options available. There are two options for distance learning, and this one hasn't worked for me because they don't reply, and still haven't replied, and instead make a public attack that is wholly untrue (do you really want to talk about legality?)

2)Talking about the school not returning work is a fact not an accusation, and it is my personal experience that has been documented over the months. The two other students that write in this forum are very lucky that you have not had the same problems and I hope that you do not in the future.

3) Mr MacNaughton's response and statement is not true and my own correspondence can support that by emails and letters between the two of us over the last 6 months inparticular. It is dangerous ground to get into talking about a court of law and why anyone would bother to suggest such a thing when they don't know the ins and outs of the situation, is beyond me. However, since my family come from a legal background I am well versed in documentation and its importance.

4) I have no objection to Mr MacNaughton responding in this forum. In fact, it is the first reply I have had in ages, though I know my correspondence is received by his office. I do believe if he wants to reply to my posting, that perhaps he should stick to the facts, and not cloud them with untruths.

5) I disagree that my expectation of distance learning schools is unrealistic. Since the whole basis of a distance learning school is sending in assignments and receiving marked work or constructive comments, and YDS have not supplied this very simple requirement, I think you have either missed the point or have not kept up with the discussion. I have not talked about the quality of correspondence when it is received, I simply have not received any, and after sending in a number of assignments at monthly intervals that were bought over a two year period, I think it is fair to expect some form of reply when I say, when I can I expect it to be marked.

6) Perhaps you could point out any slanderous remarks?

7) Mr MacNaughton's response did not deal with the real problem anyhow, so it is still a mystery to me!

8) Further more, I would suggest that those who do want to discuss their problems with any school sign in as a guest...it seems that talking about real life situations with any institution will only result in being bombarded with misinformed comments by those that really have no idea what they are talking about. So, please share your views because they really do help others make up their minds where to study, but if you are a student already, don't use your name!!!!!!!!!!!

Sara

 

Sara says:

"6) Perhaps you could point out any slanderous remarks? "

My post said distinctly (coz I cut and pasted this) "and has made some statements that would be considered slanderous if she cannot back them up." I was trying to say that if you cannot PROVE he told "blatant lies" then it could be considered slander. If you can prove he did, then fine, no problem.
I'm not tryng to apportion blame, just opinting out that things typed in the heat of the moment have a habit of coming bakc to bite you.
I wish you and Tom all the luck in the world sorting this out to your mutual satisfactions, but please do it offline. Let us know how it all turns out.
Steve
PS - I know nither of the antagonists personally or professionally, although I have (now) heard of them both.