Long Beach has its more traditional post-high school institutions — Long Beach City College, California State University, Long Beach — but there are other private programs in the city that have been here for some time and specialize in preparing men and women of all ages for a long-lasting career.
The officials from the following five institutions offered different curriculums, but all emphasized the importance of making sure their students could get placed in the workforce as soon as possible.
DeVry University
DeVry University was founded in 1931 as a small program in Chicago to take advantage of emerging technical careers in the motion picture industry, said Scott Sand, the college’s president of the Los Angeles Metro area. The Long Beach campus opened in 1998.
DeVry started off with an associate’s degree in engineering and technology, but has since expanded its roster of offerings to include subjects like justice administration, communications and green technologies.
“Really, the crown jewel has been engineering and that’s what a lot of people look to us for,” Sand said.
One of the larger advantages Sand said he believes DeVry can offer against other colleges is the ability for smaller classes — most contain 15-18 students, with the largest lecture having 50.
Students also can take online courses to help them graduate more quickly — earning a degree can take as little as 2 1/2 years, but it is a 4-year college.
“We focus on degrees with high growth potential,” Sand said. “We’ve been able to maintain a pretty robust career outcome for our students.
“My ultimate customer is the student. As a result we really focus on what students need to graduate. It’s not the state or the donors, but the students. Our mission is to help them attain their career goals and that is our focus.”
DeVry University is located at 3880 Kilroy Airport Way. There will be an open house on Aug. 13 and the new 8-week session begins on Aug. 29. Call 427-0861 or visit www.devry.edu.
To read the full article written by Jonathan Van Dyke and featured in Gazette Newspapers, please click here.
