SOS
I would like to start this by firstly thanking all of you that use this forum
like I sometimes do – by responding with instant emotion to issues that concern
us all…when we read this material and type in stuff (late at night, mostly)
we react from the heart first and then our head sorts it out later while we
wonder who we might hear from!! Folks, this note comes from the heart.
To all of you (present and past) who have put in all your time serving on
Autodesk committees, providing input and working toward making education a
"better thing"…We may not always agree with you but we trust you to represent
us and you always have. All the instructors in public education from the grant
writers that have some sort of AutoCAD in Junior High shop that they managed to
finagle (sp?) to the high school teachers to the vo-techs to the colleges and
universities, Autodesk owes you a debt of gratitude. The ATC network grew FROM
YOU, that is where it all started, our school taught CAD before Autodesk was
created and offered evening courses in AutoCAD before the ATC network existed.
Many of followed this path. We became ATC's because we already were offering
training and Autodesk could help us do more because if you were an ATC you
could get cheap software…software that you could use in your other programs
because you didn't have the budget to obtain it otherwise. We offered the
courses and 'they came'. We used the software in our full-time program,
graduated masses of students that knew how to use it and Autodesk sold lots of
software.
..And every year we received our new contract and ATC managers looked to see
what new "requirements" were in store…an interesting way to offer a contract,
complete with the "take it or leave it clause".
..ATC managers 'took it', they are doing it now, many of them very quietly.
Where does this burden fall? In public education, it falls on the teachers,
many of them who are also ATC managers or have other duties. Sure, there are
some large universities that have a full-time ATC manager on staff with a
$20,000 advertising budget, but that is the exception in public education, not
the rule. So the small schools renew their ATC contract and stay quiet. Why?
Because they are not adhering to the rules. They can't adhere to the rules.
They don't have the budget, they don't have the resources, and they just flat
don't agree with many of the requirements…And they probably are good
instructors who KNOW what they are doing and do it quite well and they are
doing their best to please both "Mother Autodesk" and their own administrators.
That is one reason why we don't hear from them on this forum, they know that
they are not meeting all of the requirements and they just don't want to hear
about it anymore.
Remember when they showed us the layout of the "Virtual Corporation"? I was so
damned proud to be included in that diagram as part of education.
As I participate in this forum I try not to be negative. Wayne, Matt, and
Mike, you guys are right, we must try to do something constructive. You must do
something constructive for schools like mine and schools like Steve's and the
other ATC's out there who are on the edge, the edge of "to ATC or not to ATC".
I KNOW that this is an ATC forum, not a full-time academic forum. Please
forgive us when we mention our academic programs, it is what we DO. You can
tell us that they are seperate, and I know that by contract they are, but they
are married in our school and no company can put our labs asunder.
Wayne, Grace and all you Autodesk people, you got lots bigger problems than
ATC's "bucking the traces". Your academic pricing policies are driving schools
out of AutoCAD. These other "cheap software" deals are driving them into
Microstation, CADkey, and DesignCAD like crazy. High schools in our area can't
afford to keep these softwares in their programs, companies are picking them up
for production and we are getting more and more requests to train on products
other than AutoCAD. If you want to look at it from a profit perspective,
imagine that 8 years ago we decided to stick with Microstation (Intergraph) as
opposed to AutoCAD. In a remote area such as ours, it does make a difference.
Now, before you get your hackles up, just settle down and try to get this
message…The virtual corporation concept is VALID, you have had a good thing
going for many years, but ALL education IS tied together. This includes every
ATC, every high school, every evening program, everyone training on AutoCAD.
You are fostering an "elitist" approach and while this makes a few people look
real important, this makes a lot of people uninvolved and isolated. Take a
lesson from IBM and the microchannel architecture. When you try to dictate too
much, people will find another way…
I didn't write this to be negative, on the contrary, I wrote this to try to
help, to try to get Autodesk to listen. The ATC network has been trying to get
Autodesk to listen for some time. Do we support the ATCEC committee? ABSOLUTLY
YES. Have you been listening to the messages that they brought you?
What we all want is quality. We use AutoCAD in the workplace because it is a
quality product. We brought it into our classrooms (ALL kinds of classrooms)
because there was a demand. We teach the best that we can. We want quality
students. Autodesk wants a Quality ATC Network that presents Quality classes
in a professional setting on quality machines led by Quality instructors. I do
not believe that anyone on this forum has ever disputed that. The questions
now seem to be "how much quality can we afford" and "at what cost" (and we are
not simply talking money here).
How many ATC's can you afford to loose? Do you care? Or will the approach be
"well, you weren't good enough anyway, so who needs ya"?
It is becomming more and more obvious now that Autodesk is mandating that the
ATC be a "profit center" operation. I do know this, I have read the contract,
we will do our best, but we will not survive as an ATC beyond our current
contract. Most colleges and universities cannot justify a lab that is for "ATC
only" that is composed of (in many cases) the best newest machines on campus
and we are certainly in that category. The concept of dictated curriculum
leaves an acid taste in my mouth. This stomps on the very core of academic
freedom concepts that exist in every university around (most) of the world. I
suppose that (if there are any) ATC's in communist china, they don't have a
problem with it.
I suppose that the dealers that are becomming ATC's and the private ATC's don't
have a problem with much of this. Just try to realize that they are not of the
same "mold" as educators. This point seems as hard to get across to the ATC
Administrators as it is to get across to the programmers that in a drafting
software, you should have the linetypes available when you begin a new drawing
and go to the layer dialog!
What to do…what to do…Wayne, what I really need to do is build some
contacts between MSU-Billings and the Partners in Education division. I am
currently pursuing this. I want to keep AutoCAD in our school. If it is a case
of what must go, I will save our AAS program and cease the ATC. After the
current contract is up, please let us keep our software.
I am more than willing to work on education solutions. It is just becomming
more and more obvious that public education is not going to survive the
restructuring of the network and that your software is being used less and less
by non-atc educators in our area.
After all the hard work that so many of us have put in for all these years it's
a damn shame…
P.S. If you read THIS far, I know that many of you will have lots of remarks
to make, some pro, some con. As long as we can still talk, there is hope that
we can solve (not only) some of these ATC dilemas, but get Autodesk to
recognize what public education is all about…