Blue Ridge Community College

"TLDR: Imo, one should avoid this school for the online I.T. program! I'm sure there are good majors at BRCC, but I.T. isn't one of them. I've met only a couple of PHD level technology professors whom I respected and who had great courses. But we're talking a few compared to nearly a dozen bad ones. To begin with, this has been a 'conceptually' poor experience for me from the jump. The intro courses have been childishly bad. We're talking 'Scratch' "programming", ebook quizzes (with unlimited attempts), or study this youtube video, which you can do on your own for free! The organization and delivery of building the basic concepts (e.g. the function of computer components) into the more complex ones (e.g. hardware arithmetic, subnets, encryption/decryption) is never fully realized. It doesn't flow in a meaningful way and I have struggled to grasp these concepts because of their poor teaching methods. In other words - they don't have a proper grasp on it either! Instructors should be required to make lecture videos for their online courses! The OSI model, an organized methodology for thinking about software/hardware/network interconnections, is invoked here and there, but should be a crucial and ongoing part of every course - from start to finish - but it's not. The cybersecurity courses have an especially important responsibility in this regard, since securing all of these complex interconnections is very challenging, but they don't do nearly enough with it. Overall, they haven't properly laid the groundwork of I.T. in any meaningful capacity for me as a student. Just require a student to purchase ONE excellent textbook, per course, rather than an ok textbook and loads of "additional reading", which wastes a lot of time and money. I can go online anytime and watch a YouTube video, article, blog, etc. for free, but here they will just dump all of that stuff in there, and require the student to buy an "ok" textbook and usually another textbook that won't even be used! Additionally - quizzes, tests, and exams are quite poorly done also. At least with the I.T. program, I've encountered countless spelling and grammar issues here. We're talking 'just plain wrong' "answer" choices, where I had to spend more of my own time to email the instructor about it, on many occasions. They usually correct it. But the problem here is that they'll offer the same course, in future terms, without having proofread or corrected anything for the next poor group of souls to deal with! I know this because I've gone back and checked what a problem course looked like in a following semester after I took it. They just kept it the same! They're not thinking about improving or correcting any of these problems, even when students bring them up and tell them something is screwed up. So, if you feel that you are the kind of person who has an organized way of thinking and you VALUE learning new concepts, and you CARE about how that concept is being presented to you, especially difficult subjects like I.T. then I would urge you to avoid this place... Maybe find an institution that knows how to teach I.T. the right way, with meaning and purpose because this isn't it. There are free certifications out there, and even if you were focused on just one certfication to start with, you STILL would be doing yourself a huge favor because you wouldn't be focused on 3 or 4 classes a semester while working or whatever. So, while a degree is certainly helpful, at the end of the day, an employer will be gauging someone on their actual knowledge and suitability for a job role. If you continue to choose BRCC for I.T., I would then urge you to fill in the inevitable knowledge gaps in whatever spare time you have, because there definitely will be! Hell, maybe even complete a certification before enrolling here. Because "most" of the I.T. people here don't know how to teach this subject very well and, even worse, some of them won't have any input whatsoever! A lot of the time the student is teaching themselves, and that's just unacceptable."

"Being an over-30 single mom of two, I genuinely believed that it was too late for me to go to college. There was absolutely no way that I could afford it and I barely had any time to myself, much less for classes. THEN the pandemic hit, and I found myself out of a job because everything had gotten shut down. I was encouraged by a social worker to go apply for classes at BRCC. Thanks to the efforts of the financial aid department, admissions department, advisors, and staff at BRCC, I'm about to receive my degree, that which I never thought was possible. Everyone worked with me, every step of the way through my education, helping me get over every hurdle and even provided counseling services for when I got overwhelmed. I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was to get through everything, but everyone at BRCC made things so easy for me and I can't even express how incredibly grateful I am. They've given me an opportunity to prove to myself that I can accomplish any goal, they pushed me to being a better version of myself, and have helped me achieve the opportunity for a better future. Thank you BRCC!"

"This is an excellent school with many worthwhile programs. I have the privilege of working in the art department. It is a friendly work environment. The teachers genuinely care about the success of their students. I enjoy working at BRCC."

"I taught chemistry at Blue Ridge CC in the mid 70s. It was one of the most enjoyable times of my career. Reading the comments from later students let me know that the atmosphere at this great school has not changed over the years."

"It took me a really long time to decide to finally return to school. As a 27 year old first year undergrad, I likely don't have as much knowledge as my peers do about BRCC. From what I know, however, this place is great. All of the instructors I have met are well educated on what they are teaching as well as being compassionate with their students. The student body as a collective is warm and welcoming. Ranging from fresh from high school to nearly elderly, the points of view on campus are so diverse that anywhere else it would be Bedlam. It isn't. It's refreshing and positive. I dropped out of National College about three weeks into my first semester because of all the stress and negativity. It wasn't worth my peace of mind to try to carry on there and I wasn't learning anything anyway. Just under a decade later, I couldn't be happier with my decision."