It appears there are some very good reasons to stay away from non accredited ultrasound technician programs. These non accredited schools are often private institutions that offer programs shorter than Associates or Bachelors programs, and cater to the desires people have to quickly get educated in this hot and lucrative field. As soon as you have people capitalizing on a desire like that, it’s time to be careful. It’s not that none of these schools are worthwhile, but there are many reports of ones that aren’t. They have a very mixed reputation, to put it mildly.
The main problem seems to be that these schools misrepresent the job prospects that their graduates will encounter. In most cases these schools, lacking extensive facilities that, say, state universities, community colleges, or teaching hospitals have, cannot provide much clinical experience training. Thus, they tell students that in order to complete the clinical field training necessary in this career, they must find a job right out of school and work at it for a year. This “year in the field” is in lieu of the intern and externships that most accredited schools offer.
The trouble is, with the somewhat limited and expedited education that these career schools offer, finding a job is not so easy. Listen to this account from a forum concerning allied health work:
Well, it’s been about 5 months now since I finish my externship and all I am able to get is crappy per-diem jobs working for cheap doctors and imaging clinics. And believe me I have fax my resume and made calls to about 100 different facility,clinics, and hospitals. Right now, I am getting only about 15 hours of work a week since these cheap doctors and clinics can’t afford to hire a full time tech. At the rate I am going it will take me close to 3 years to be eligible to sit for my ARDMS. I talk to them and they told me I have to document a full 1680 hours of work as an ultrasound tech, since the school I went to is not accredited and also because I don’t have my bachelors. Don’t let these fraudgelent schools fool you with the old “You just have to work a year first then you can sit for your ARDMS” prep talk to get you to enroll in their school because, NO HOSPITAL WILL HIRE YOU OR EVEN LOOK AT YOUR RESUME WITHOUT YOUR ARDMS!!
This type of story is unfortunately quite common. But sometimes it’s even worse than this. Some of these career schools, after receiving tuition from eager students, either deliver a lot less or sometimes nothing at all in return. They may have poor instructors or ones that do a disappearing act. As this unfortunate student notes: “I also went to ATI in Miami. What a joke. Half of the instructors left during the program. Others were very incompetant to teach ultrasound. Only two people out of my class got a job. I was fortunate to get a job but it was in another state. I had to leave my husband and my daughter just to get a job. ATI will not tell you that 99% of the students do not get jobs after paying over $34,000 for an education.” So that’s clearly a school to avoid. And in general you can see a pattern here of misrepresentation that is geared toward getting students to pay for training with the express intent of cheating them of the educational services they have paid for.
If you think that’s bad, hang on, it gets even shadier. Roger Bombalier, director of a school called Flagler Hi-Tech Institute of Ultrasound in Florida (Florida seems to be a relative hot bed for this sort of thing), was arrested in 2000 on charges of racketeering. He opened the school and enrolled students for a 12 month course, charging them between $5 and $10,000 tuitions, only to simply close up shop a few months later before any students had completed much study. What’s more, he charged the above tuition ranges for the same program, apparently deciding how much he could get out of specific students. There were a host of other misrepresentation and fraudulent practices, such as his submitting different catalogues to the Florida Department of Education than the curriculum he was offering students, and, of course, not providing thorough medical training and covering accepted requirements for employment in the field.
A student he had also hired as a secretary, Jennifer Newmans, grew suspicious and did some impromptu undercover work, copying documents, interviewing other students, and even videotaping him as he packed up his office and got ready to desert the students. All of that resulted in his arrest. While it’s good that he’s off the rip off circuit (Bombalier has pulled the same scam several times in Florida), now the students are left trying to recover their losses and complete their ultrasound education against financial hardship.
Often students enroll in these types of schools because of waiting lists and competition at established and accredited schools. But let the stories above be a lesson to you. Be extremely wary of institutions of the “fast route to a great career” variety in this business. It is a challenging field that is correspondingly well paid, so a good solid education is critical. Pick a good, accredited, school (look on CAHEEP’s website given below for a list of accredited institutions in your area) and do it right. The short cuts these non accredited career schools offer could be nothing more than a short cuts to financial and educational disaster.
Helpful links/professional organizations:
The Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAHEEP)
American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers (ARDMS)