Send in the Cannibals!
It's become pretty obvious to me that MT has started eating her young. This is not exactly a new phenomenon, and I've railed for ages against the practices of entities like AAMT and the Crappy Schools that have made a career of marketing themselves for profit's sake, rather than for the betterment of the field of transcription. I think the disease is spreading, though. Everyone seems to want to ensure they get their share of the profits before the whole thing goes belly up.
The school approval process is a dud because AAMT chose to dumb down the criteria to allow more schools to earn it. Better money for them because more are willing to risk the hefty application fee for the process, knowing they stand a good chance of ending up promoted on an equal footing with the giants M-TEC and Andrews, but bad for the hapless newbie who thinks seeing a school in that list means they're all equal and invests all that time, money, and most of all, hope that this will result in a lucrative career. No, those are not the only two schools who can turn out good MTs--but the list is a mishmash, with no way to discern the level at which each school listed managed to qualify for the dubious honor. Like those top two, did they knock it out of the park and set the standard, or did they squeak by with the minimum criteria or even get special dispensation and fail to truly even meet them?
In my humble opinion, a good clue when picking a school is whether it even requires you to take a preadmission test before they accept your money. Those who are truly in it for the right reasons DO, not just for their benefit, but for yours. Do you have the skills necessary for MT? Do you perhaps need to spend some time getting remedial help in keyboard skills or basic English language/grammar first? As there is generally a finite time to complete a course, it's obviously best not to fritter that away trying to get up to speed on spelling, grammar, or learning to type. A legitimate school will test you and let you know that you will want to brush up on specific skills and invite you to return and try again afterwards, if it's obvious you're going to struggle with the material. They're not going to push all your trigger points for a quick sale, but are truly interested in seeing you succeed. If you want to factor greed in there, it reflects poorly on them to have graduates fail because they don't cultivate deals to funnel their grads into further on-the-job training; their grads are simply ready for the workforce and that word of mouth is their bloodline.
On the other hand, a red flag goes up when you see a course willing to accept your money NOW. All that is required is NOT a big enough desire to succeed, no matter how much you want to believe them. Ask yourself if that friendly come-on really indicates a desire to help you support yourself or if it's merely the ka-ching of the cash register they're interested in. You only have to get out your calculator and do some simple math to see why they would be so eager to accept everyone. . . It doesn't matter to them if anyone finishes their course at all or even if those who do manage to get jobs at the end. What matters is that they take in the most money possible with the least given out in return. Say a course costs $1500. Multiply by only 100 starry-eyed hopefuls a month (and man, you know they're snagging far, far more than that) by $1500 and again by 12 months, and you're talking almost a cool $2,000,000 (that's TWO MILLION) a year. Subtract a few homemade workbooks, maybe a dictionary (purchased with a nice bulk discount), a handful of people to answer the phone, run a basic website, and the profits are staggering. Bonus if you slap up a message board and can let the students "teach" themselves. Bigger bonus if you can sucker them further by helping to promote the school for you by letting them call themselves "partners." What's a $50 referral fee when you're doing all the work to bring them another $1500? It's multilevel marketing at its worst.
So you've got AAMT promoting everyone who wants in on their approval process AND anyone else who wants to buy ad space on their website--including schools that could never pass the approval. I'm sure that confuses enough prospective students to make it worthwhile. You've got bogus schools not only promoting themselves, but getting their students to do it for them. We also have more independent-minded folks who have opted to create message boards and website directories--ostensibly to simplify matters for those of us who might be looking for a clue, but in actuality simply following the crowd and looking for their piece of the pie. Just because a school or business is listed in such a place does NOT mean it is legitimate. It simply means that entity was willing to cough up the money to be included. Good or bad? It's apparently every woman for herself to figure that out. Caveat emptor is the law of the land now. By some miracle of osmosis, newbies should apparently "know" who's legitimate. If you're too ignorant and pick a course because it's affordable, you deserve what you get, I guess.
There are plenty of other ways to scam newcomers, starting with those self-described humanitarians who claim to offer undereducated graduates a way around the Catch-22 of experience. Without a proper education, you often aren't even allowed to test for jobs--or if you are, you're not likely to pass. Yet, no one will hire without at least a year or two of experience. What's a new grad to do? Enter the guy who tells you he'll give you that on-the-job experience. Of course, as you'll require massive mentoring and editing help, you're only going to be paid 2 cents per line, but hey--you'll have something to slap on your résumé! Are they filling a necessary function or just capitalizing on slave labor? If the school approval process works, why are there even graduates who NEED this kind of stopgap? Surely, completing an approved course means MTSOs will hire you, right? But wait, you say--there are nationals who hire grads of courses not considered great by the MT community at large, so how bad can those courses be? Again, consider the possible mutual behind-the-scenes back scratching, lower wages, and a need to find warm bodies, none of which reflect a measure of excellence. Beware, also, the MTSOs who have simply created a school as an offshoot. Occasionally, these might be legitimate, though limiting, because other companies might not see that kind of specific grooming as useful on a résumé. Worst-case scenario, it can be a way to simply get their work done for free, again benefiting you nothing but street smarts.
As a tangent, I think this all relates very well to the concept of how working in jammies is viewed as an integral part of MT, for good or bad. Of course, telecommuting and being able to work in ones jammies (heck, even NO jammies) is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not even noteworthy or relevant at all, but what IS bad is that it is specifically a concept being used to market the job to those stay-at-home-mommies who are having such a negative impact on our wages in general. Have jammies and baby? MT is for you! The very schools I gripe about above are the ones marketing specifically to this demographic. They don't care if these women are looking for a real career or just a hobby, they don't care if they even finish their courses or get a job--but in marketing this way, they are bringing in the MT hobbyists in droves and have impacted the legitimacy of MT as a true profession in the worst possible way. I think this has had a far greater impact than even offshoring, though cheap offshore labor and speech recognition are the nails in the coffin.
What is apparently very good for some individuals and companies has just been deadly to the field of transcription in general. I guess what really gripes me is that it's not just US versus THEM anymore. Many of the most egregious abuses, especially of potential and new MTs, are being propagated by people who come from within the field and were once newbies themselves. Forget honor amongst thieves, honor in general apparently means very little in the world today.
Dang. I really didn't expect to go off on another rampage this week. Having passed my terminology course with near-perfection, I should have been crowing! Onward now to pharmacology and pathophysiology, the last hurdle to my cancer registry management course proper. I look forward to the time I can "get off my high horse" (as I was recently described) and turn my back on MT with the rest of the cynics. Somehow, though, between my overdeveloped sense of fairness and vegetarian leanings, I doubt my old MT peers will be on my menu, even when I've managed to leave the field behind.