The Andrews School review: False Advertising Regarding Wages 45

Nearly 5-1/2 years after posting this, I never once checked it until today. Delighted to see this much response!

Might be worth reiterating that wages quoted on the website for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics are, by the Bureau's own disclosure, numbers based upon national averages only. As also disclosed on BLS' website, these dollar amounts of reported average wages have not been adjusted and/or calculated to include wages of self-employed MTs. This is relevant, because these reported wage numbers are not entirely accurate, not reliable, and therefore of no real value--at least not for the purposes of a prospective MT student.

For any medical transcription training course to refer prospective students to the website of the BLS, in order to get an idea of realistic wages, is deceptive. Ask yourself what percentage of MTs are self-employed. Is that percentage fairly significant, would you guess? I sure would. I don't know the exact percentage of self-employed MTs, compared to MTs who are not self-employed. But even if this number is only about 20% or so, it should be factored into the wages BLS calculates as national averages, for MTs; otherwise, this wage information from BLS is not very accurate, is it?

From my experience, it seems unlikely that most self-employed MTs earn more than those who are not considered self-employed. Unless I am wrong and indeed self-employed MTs, on average, do earn significantly more than those who are not self-employed, then the real, accurate amount of this national average wage calculation (by the BLS) would necessarily be a good bit lower.

So if an MT school refers you to the BLS for information on what your wages as an MT are likely to be, please take the above facts into consideration.

Graduating from Andrews, my grade point average was figured to be over 97%, I was proud to have finished the course in 11 months' time; I had no objections to the tough grading system was or to any other aspect of the course. In fact I enjoyed the course very much and was optimistic getting my first job offers (plural). To me, the term "sour grapes" applies to the unjust criticisms of someone who does not have the skills and the work ethic to succeed. My excitement about being an Andrews grad gradually turned to sadness and frustration, when I realized that the School's advertisements about FIRST-YEAR wages for MTs were grossly exaggerated. As I personally spoke with lots of employers, I was repeatedly told of the enormous turn-over rate for MTs, especially during the first couple of years after graduation. And each time an employer would tell me this, the reason was always because recent-grad MTs are customarily and understandably VERY SLOW, meaning their line count is correspondingly very low and that their wages, usually based upon line count, are...well...a JOKE, okay?!?! Yes, it's HARD WORK! Linda Andrews always was writing on those student discussion boards, preaching to us that we had to learn to "WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER, " her words, verbatim. But where the rubber met the road, Andrews School fell way short of actually teaching how to "work smarter!" For one small example, the Andrews School course turned out to be woefully inadequate in teaching how to use macros, word expanders, etc. These are critical tools for increasing transcription productivity. Another small example of inadequacy of the Andrew School course was Linda Andrews' constant directive to recent graduates that (verbatim): "Unpaid job training is unacceptable!" But there was one company, then doing business as "ATT, " which I know for a fact had hired at least 20 of us at the same time, and the training they gave me was well over 12 hours, over a couple of days' time, and absolutely NONE of that was paid training. Linda knew perfectly well that large numbers of her recent grads were coming on board that particular national MT service company; Linda's office had been providing verification to that particular company, for each individual recent graduate's information, at the time of that grad being hired. Linda either knew or should have known that particular company, hiring numerous of her graduates, was not paying for job training. Another example was when I was offered a job at Webmedx (now known as "Nuance") and I personally had to be the one to tell Linda, in a phone conversation, that for an MT doing clinic transcription work, as opposed to acute care transcription, the wages are automatically lower. During that phone conversation, Linda questioned me (verbatim): "You mean clinic work does not pay as much as acute care?!?!" If she knew this and was pretending to not know it, from her tone of voice asking me this question, it certainly seemed very genuine, i.e., she did NOT know that clinic work automatically paid less, considerably less, than acute care transcription, and she seemed most surprised--unpleasantly--to learn this from one of her graduates. (Folks, this basic wage information is absolutely something Linda Andrews was responsible to know, as she was preaching so often that we must "Work smarter, not harder!")

One fellow Andrews grad was a retired school teacher, a lovely older woman who had completed the course roughly 8 years before me. She told me that some weeks she might earn as much as $15 per hour but that usually she earned about half that much. She also told me something of even more concern, i.e., that medical language had changed a great deal since the last time the Andrews School had updated its course. (I don't know the last time, if ever, that Andrews School updated its course, but if an MT school is not offering a course that keeps current with medical language, in general, then I believe a 10-year-old child can understand why that course would be totally worthless.)

No regrets on my part, not spending any time working as an MT. I regret the money I wasted on the Andrews School course, sure! But I'm not sure "sour grapes" describes my motivation for authoring this post.

My purpose was and remains simple: Warning prospective students of MT courses that the hard reality is they are unlikely to earn a living wage, at least not for the first year (if not much longer than the first year!). I pray that any prospective student of ANY medical transcription course will do sufficient research of this failing industry, necessary to ask the question of whether vocational school courses should offer training in any type of work for which you cannot earn a living wage.

Friends, MT as a profession is DYING! Please heed the post of "SSusan, " dated December 2, 2009, which I'm pasting below. "SSusan" has the experience and the real-world wisdom to be warning everyone far better than I ever could, and I thank her immensely for her post as follows:

"After being an MT for 30 years, it amazes me how these schools promote employment upon graduation. For those of us in the industry, companies like Webmedx continue to hire, however, there isn't enough work for existing workers and many are complaining that their income has dropped to below minimum wage. This is the reality regardless of what these schools tell you. Check out MTStars and read the posts and contact people who actually work for these companies. It's almost a crime to take your hard earned money to enroll in a program that very well may not yield more income than working at MacDonald's!"