The July 20 article regarding Brooks Institute of Photography on the Inside Higher Ed website includes interesting commentary left by former Brooks students, current students, those who support the school, and those who do not agree with the school.

While reading the APAD Weblog, I found that Brooks Institute of Photography , located in Santa Barbara and Ventura, CA and subject of my first post, faces possible closure over false recruiting claims. According to the Los Angeles Times:

After a review that included an undercover visit, the Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education told Brooks to prepare for closure in 2007 if it does not meet a number of conditions, including giving an undetermined sum in restitution to students who have attended since 1999.

In its review, the state concluded that Brooks routinely inflated claims of its graduates' success in order to draw new students. Posing as a fledgling photographer, an agency employee was told by an admissions counselor earlier this year that she could expect to make $50,000 to $150,000 in her first year out of school.

"The sky's the limit," the counselor told her, according to the state's report.

But agency officials contend that the limit is considerably lower, saying their investigation found that only 45 of the school's 151 graduates from the class of 2003 are working full time. They make an average of about $26,000 and owe $74,000 in loans, according to the state's report.

This sounds strikingly similar to what I experienced when I was enrolling in the Fall of 2003. I was told by the admissions advisor that Brooks had a high graduation rate and an excellent job placement rate, finding jobs for 90% of its graduates. With tuition costing around three to four thousand dollars every two months, job placement and average salary was question that was in the front of everyone's mind heading in to Brooks. While at orientation this question eventually came up, and we were told by instructor and photographer P.F. Bentley that we should not worry and that our loans would be repaid in a few years.

Also, while attending Brooks, Career Education Corp. faced allegations of lying about the services that it offered its students and faced losing its private accreditation. At that time we received a letter from the President assuring the students that Brooks would pass inspection and remain accredited. Being curious, I logged on to my personal Brooks site (yes I am still able to sign on, though I have not been enrolled for over a year) to find a similar letter to the current students:

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center in NY on September 11, 2001, a photo began circulating that allegedly was the last picture ever taken from atop the WTC observation deck by an unassuming tourist. While receiving a picture from his wife, SJSU Tech Guy Steve Sloan asked his readers to "Imagine if folks on the top of the world trade center on 9/11 had such phones." In the June 06, 2005 post he also stated:

According to a story I read in this morning's paper those in-phone cameras will soon be as good as regular cameras. What will this mean for news coverage? What will this mean for politics? What will this mean for education? What will this mean for the world?

With the transit bombings in London this past Thursday, July 7, 2005, this possibility became a reality. Those caught in the attacks were able to use camera phones to capture their surroundings, and then upload then to services such as Flickr. In fact, shortly after the attack the Flickr group London Bomb Blasts (now 7/7 Community) was formed so that related pictures could be uploaded. News stations also asked for anyone with camera phone pictures to send them in to their stations. As Professor Dennis Dunleavy points out in his article in the latest Digital Journalist:

Photojournalism history was made last week. For the first time, both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran photos on their front pages made by citizen-journalists with camera phones.

Some, such as Dave Goodman, used the group to send messages to concerned family and friends.



This trend of "Citizen Shutterbugs" will only continue with the release of camera phones such as the Samsung SCH-V770, a 7MP camera phone with a 3x optical zoom that was announced this year at Germany's CeBIT show.

Earlier this year I was in a podcast put together by Steve Sloan. Apparently some commotion has resulted from that event, but luckily, it seems to have sorted itself out. During that podcast I made a comment to the extent that the technology being developed today was not actually revolutionary. It seems that being without the internet for a week or so has made me realize just how dependent I am on it. Not only has it changed how I read my news, but it was much more difficult to stay in touch with friends (even those that live nearby), share photos with family members, update this blog, and do all the things that I normally rely on the internet for. Even something as simple as getting to a photo assignment proved more complicated as I could not simply bring up Google maps and print out directions. Luckily for myself, the internet will be returning to my house in a matter of days. Hopefully I will then be able to get back into the swing of things and finish some posts that I had started a while back.