i heard a wonderful rumour this past week that infamous scam school International Academy of Design and Technology, which gets a lot of play on sites like Ripoff Report, is closing its doors in March 2009. A quick look around my trusty Internets confirms it. i hope you will join me next March in dancing on whatever grave it winds up in.

This is like finding out that your cats can talk, or that vegetables are made of chocolate. i am so happy to see that this con is finally ending, but a little upset that it took so long, and that it ended without newsreel footage of white men in suits getting their heads pushed into the back of a squad car. It’s also a letdown that so many kids fell prey to the school’s technological wiles over the year. i was not one of them. i’ve never had that much money to squander foolishly, thank God.

So what are we left with? As for Toronto, we have a growing number of colleges and now Universities who are trying to ensnare high school grads with their “Game Design” courses. i’m actually on the advisory board for a few of these. In at least one program, the students’ final project is a walk-through of a first-person shooter level using Unreal Engine 3. That’s game design? Really? i’d thought that a game design program might end in something that has the feel of more of a um … like a game, really. You know? Something interactive, like games tend to be?

If you are unlucky enough to have been lured by this latest “Game Design Program” bait by the for-profit college sector, let me recount to you a conversation i had with one of the program heads of a Southern Ontario college that shall remain nameless:

Me: Unreal Engine is sexy and everything, but if you want these kids to be able to feed themselves after they graduate, why don’t you teach them some more Flash courses? This city (and the planet Earth, as i later found out at GDC last week) is desperate for people who can use Flash. It’s easier to break into, it’s easier to make a quick buck doing freelance, it’s easier to find full time employment at a reputable firm …

Program Head: Oh, no. No no no. No - we’re not here to help these kids find jobs.

Me: You’re uh … you’re not?

Program Head: No! Hahahha. No. They’re here to explore themselves and really … really feel a sense of their own creativity and artistic awakening.

Ahem. i ask you, College Students of Today: are you paying thousands of dollars in tuition and living on beans and toast so that you can “feel a sense of your own creativity and artistic awakening” ? Or do you want to learn some marketable skillz and get PAID, yo? Get your “bling” and your “rims” and your “bitches n ho’s”, and all that other stuff you young people are into.

Thought so. The next time you think your college is in the business of advancing your career or teaching you what you need to know, give yourself a reality check: it’s a business like any other. Take your education into your own hands and make sure you learn something that will pay the bills.

Freebie: “Bitches n’ Ho’s” would make an excellent snack food name. Take it - it’s all yours.