I've attended Pierce College for 2 years and I've gotten 70 college credits. I was studying Pre-Nursing and was trying to get my Associates degree. I used to be a Nurse. I was a Certified Medical Assistant and a Registered Chiropractic Assistant. So I already took Biology classes and Pharmacology which consists of Chemistry at my previous college. I also worked with Doctors and real live patients. Pierce College refused to transfer my college credits from my previous college due to its accreditation. This ridiculous "oh it's nationally accredited and not regionally accredited", which is just a bunch of garbage. Nationally accredited colleges teach the same things. An example is Clover Park Technical College; their Pre- Nursing classes are the same as Pierce College and their Nursing program as well. I spoke to a representative at Clover Park Technical College and they said they would transfer my college credits from my previous college. So if I had attended Clover Park Technical College instead of Pierce College, I would've gotten my Associates degree by now. I regret I attended Pierce College. I should've went to Clover Park Technical College. The military promotes them "big time", and that's what got me caught going to Pierce College. Pierce College has a bias against Nationally accredited Colleges. How about Pierce College warn students of this before they attend? Tell us future students about how Uppity and snobbish you guys are about a previous college's accreditation so that we can avoid Pierce College. This college really deserves 0 stars, I had to put a star just to post my review. read more

The people at FINANCIAL AID are a bunch of script reading knuckle draggers. They can't give straight answers and then issues happen with counselors when it's time to begin classes. Questions of funding would seem to be something that financial aid should have the answer to. Don't rush to that conclusion. They can't give straight answers and counselors are in the dark. Face time with financial aid is limited. They are on campus on a rotating basis. DON'T EVEN try to get them on the phone, get an email response or a timely response from a counselor. Pierce College is a clown show. read more

I am so happy this offers mental health counseling and it has many different areas that it can help you with. Mental health is not taken seriously enough, thank you guys! read more

just now NEW I tried to apply here and they made it so hard. The first time I applied, it was spring of 2020 which was covid and my family was affected and I couldn't attend. They don't care. I tried again this summer and they barely respond and I had to go to the office twice because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. They barely reply. So I went to evergreen state college which I love. Highly recommend that college. Pierce sent me an invoice of over $1,000.00! I really tried with this college. I work with children in a private school and I don't recommend this college to parents who want to send their kids because Pierce used to be really great but not anymore. Evergreen state college is way better and you actually learn stuff and the counselors reply so fast and the staff is just amazing. I want to educate children for our future and how can I do that if it's so hard to enter and they are so money hungry that they just don't care. I sent them a whole letter about how I almost lost my sister to COVID and they were like "sucks, pay up". read more

As a parent, I am less than impressed. I went to Pierce over 20 years ago and felt it was a good choice at the time. I was happy when my daughter decided to save some money and live at home one year and attend CC before transferring to a 4 year. She played a sport in which the coach was less than lackluster. There is 1-2 returning players for next year, that should tell you something. The lack of communication and organization at the collegiate level was unbelievable. There was little to no assistance with registration or academic advising from the person who was supposed to help freshman athletes (who she was told she had to use instead of a regular academic advisor). She would email him 3-4 times a week to get what she needed to register and leave messages and he wouldn't even have the courtesy to respond. He also acts as the head baseball coach and it is very clear that is his real priority. Other teammates relayed the same experience. It is crazy to me that this man is being paid to help advise these young students yet baseball is his priority. My daughter has told me horror stories of things her professors have said in the classroom. Crazy ridiculous things such as the professor saying she wishes Trump would be assassinated. First, I don't care what your political affiliation is, to say you wish someone would be killed is evil. Not to mention, Pierce is a PUBLIC school paid for with PUBLIC funds. Keep your political views to yourself and TEACH instead of trying to indoctrinate. Lastly, availability for classes for a freshman is pretty much non existent. I cannot tell you how frustrated that has been. Her counting down the seconds to register, going online to register for classes to find they are all already filled. Very limited selection of classes. We are not paying money for her to take underwater basket weaving because that is all that is left by the time it is her turn to register. i am so glad she is going to a 4 year next year. I will not ever recommend Pierce to other parents or people I know. Overall, a very disappointing experience. read more

this is for the gawd awful financial aid department. i loved the school and the time i spent there learning and getting a degree. but the garbage backwards financial aid office needs a clear overhaul and time to get new bodies in there that actually want to do there freakin job and do it right for once. in the 2 years and 3 months i spent there not once did my money arrive on time, well maybe once but I will only give them once. other then that ALWAYS LATE alway and i mean always late by month not weeks. they NEVER called me ever, but low and behold on the last check that i earned and am suppose to recieve they call me. the day before the check is suppose to be sent out they call me and want me to answer fcken questions. are you freakin serious it took you clowns 2 year and 3 months to call me to make sure if u am taking classes. did you garabe workers call me before that in the all that time? NOPE... i had to call i had to go to the office i had to get big wigs involved becuase they are and continue to act like the money is coming out of their personal pockets. Like come on were is my final check at? I met all the quilifications to recieve it but it has not been disbersed. the day before i can't believe it they call me to ask me if i enrolled for spring are you freakin kidding me you call me to ask me that but not once called to make sure i had classes or enrolled before that. not once but yet you want to act like you guys are actually doing our job. well the like the academy awards telling will he cant show up for 10 years is to little to late. how freakin dare you guys act like you've done nothing wrong and held my checks months on end? acting all surprised when i had to get the deans invovled. looks like i have to take that route once again seeing that you guys are holding my final check hostage. some of yall must have worked in one of those arem S1 shops or something because nothing gets done right. what is the reason for my checks being late ALL THE TIME? what are your reasons for making me wait months on end to recieve the money I QUILIFIED FOR? Where were the phone calls to make sure i was enrolled and to let me knwo my money is on the way. NONE I TELL YOU NOT ONE CALL, and don't get me started on how i gave and would give them the proper paperwork regarding my high school days and or any other thing to do with me as a student veteran. you guys with your revovling door of agents in your cubicles. the school awesome the Professors well some need to get there head out there a*s because they thing their degree is cart la blanc to treat others like if we were beneath them. I let them know what was up in the intro to classes. not all but some, and back to the horrid financial aid office. they need an overhaul and a new staff that is not complacent and actually is helping the student get there money on time instead of placing "i didn't know" or "we still are waiting on your high school blah freakin blah" even though i've brought you every thing you need to send me my freakin check!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! make sure your on their a*s when it comes down to getting your financial aid because to them it is no inconvienence to have you wait and suffer. trying to get homework done with the looming bills rent what have you, hovering over you head waiting for a financial aid check that is sitting in limbo because the office can't do their job whta they got and get hired for. 2 y 3 m to get ahold of me to make sure i am going to school, you guys are hot sweaty garbage. read more

Giving it 1 star due to no communication from Financial Aid. Not sure what changed but I remember when students were awarded prior to the new quarter starting and that it didn't take this long. The Financial Aid office is very slow with awarding and disbursements. They rarely answer the phone or email. And at this point a week into the quarter and no sign of getting awarded anytime soon. It's frustrating because this has become a distraction from my learning and buying books. read more

The Dental Hygiene program is the worst, most prejudice, unprofessional place ever! They fail over 1/2 their students & take pride in this. They openly joke about this. They openly make comments that they don't like young students. So absolutely Don't apply here if you are a young running start graduate. They will fail you. If you look at their photos their graduates are all white females. Do not apply here if you are not a white, blond female. Just do not apply here, especially if you are a male. They like to fail students right before boards even if you have been a top student. Just know that their passing rate is rubbish since they don't take into account that they kicked out 60% of their students before boards. The director actually tells everyone that she will step down the day everyone makes it. The director is awful and should have been fired years ago. We have Never seen such a horrible unprofessional program. We have also heard from multiple former students and staff how terrible this place is. They also make you find all your own patients. Many fail out of the program because they can't find their own patients and have no support in this toxic atmosphere. We highly recommend Seattle Central, they provide patients for you, are not prejudice or racist, and all their staff have been amazing! This years graduates at Seattle Central have ALL made it through their entire program & all passed their boards on the first try! How it should be. Stay away from Pierce College's Dental Hygiene program. It is the worst place ever! It is worth the drive to go to Seattle Central. Save yourself and tell everyone. read more

Not only does financial aid have the worst attitudes, response time, and false givings, but this school in general loves to ignore the absolute living h e l l out of its students. Not to mention invading privacy about your vaccine status and kicking you out unless you tell them your info. That didn't happen to me but it clearly states that you must give them your vaccine status for on campus classes by a certain date or else you will be kicked out of your classes. Wont be surprised if they catch a few law suits. I used to like this college and after my trying to return to educate and get a degree, they have made me decide to not attend, and have made themselves out to be A-holes. Good luck if you go here. I don't get how its one of the top schools if this is how i was treated!!! read more

Great school. Beautiful campus. I transferred here from an online school and a majority of my credits transferred with me. I went here for two years, didn't have to take out a single student loan because of all the scholarships and grants that were given to me, and graduated with two associates degrees. I've now transferred to the University of Washington at Tacoma with more scholarships. This school changed my life. read more

Pierce College Fort Steilacoom - The view from the tutoring center employee break room. - Colleges & Universities Near Me - Lakewood, Washington

This is probably my favorite college that I've attended. They offer a very supportive atmosphere and endless amount of resources to take advantage of. They have an awesome welcome center with with great resource team and tons of options for assistance with any aspect of the student learning process! read more

Needing to take one class here, the woman at the front desk was incredibly rude to me and cut me off. Was not answering my questions at all. I'm starting to rethink coming here because of how I was just treated. Acted like I was bothering her. Sorry but you work at the welcome center, it's your job to welcome me and answer questions I have. Hire someone new please! I just can't believe she was so nasty and I feel bad for prospective students coming here. Just wow. I'm also not getting financial and paying it if pocket for classes and this is how I am going to be treated......yeah not happening. read more

I would not recommend Pierce College for a high school running start student. As others have noted registering for courses is a nightmare. Pierce College emphasizes that parents of kids in the Running Start program do not have access to the on-line class information for their child nor will anyone speak to the parent directly about their child while in the program. My 16 year old son had registered for the correct class that fell into the Running Start program. At some point after the class began, the college changed the course number. My son did not think anything of it as it was still covering the topic as he understood it. Half way through the class, he said that he discovered that the class number was a different and no longer fell into the "Running Start" program. Even then he did not fully understand what that meant for him. We found out that he would be charged $500 for the class because it was not a Running Start class. He brought the issue to my attention and we tried to address it on four occasions, in person & by phone. We kept getting pushed to different people, a constant run around. We were still addressing the issue over a year after and no resolution. We completed a form so that the staff could talk with me directly. No resolution. Now it is over 2 years after the fact we are getting notices from a Collection agency. The $500 class that they state we need to pay has now increased to $667. My advise to any parent considering this program is to go to a different Community College. It feels like they pulled an okey doke on a 16 year old kid and left us with no recourse. Now they will ruin his credit over a class that he ultimately did not pass. I've talked to other parents that have had the same thing happen. The idea of Running Start is great but I would send my child somewhere else and make sure that the school doesn't take advantage of their inexperience. read more

Beautiful campus and good professors! I'm finishing up my AA here and I'm planning to transfer to one of the UWs to study psychology. I would definitely come back to visit after I transferred! read more

Seems fine. Sometimes free food. School for students.very good college yes yes. I learn a lot. The review is too longer

I have attended 4 different colleges in three different states, so I wanted to help my sister navigate the world of higher education. Pierce is close to where we live, so it was naturally one of the first schools I helped her look at. I will never make that mistake again. This school has the most incompetent, unhelpful staff I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. For starters, their website is a mess, and had literally no information about the financial aid program I was interested in. It's only because I'm familiar with the procedures for the program that I even knew that BFET exists for students on food stamps. A similar program, the Opportunity Grant (a lot of colleges often have staff who dabble in both OG and BFET) had the wrong phone number AND wrong staff member name listed on the website. That was bad enough, but then I tried to get in contact with an actual human being to ask some questions. It is not an exaggeration to say that Pierce's phone menu is the ABSOLUTE WORST I have ever encountered. Period. There are understaffed government agencies with better phone systems. Imagine the worst automated phone menu you've ever encountered, times it by ten, and you have Pierce's system. Most of the menus led to automated messages to check their website (a poor suggestion, as I've already covered), with no option to speak to a customer service representative. Other menus rattled off the office hours, confirming that I was calling while the office WAS open, then proceeded to tell me to call back during office hours (which, I remind you, I WAS ALREADY DOING) before automatically hanging up on me. At one point, it transferred me to what was supposed to be the Financial Aid office, where I got a busy signal. A BUSY SIGNAL. In 2013. Hitting the 0 to try and talk to ANYONE was met with an apparently unstaffed, automated "information" desk which also confirmed that I was calling during business hours before hanging up on me. In the end, I started calling random numbers for specific staff members that I found on the website, and was lucky enough, FINALLY to talk to an actual human being, who referred me to the staff member I needed, and gave me her number. When I called this person, I got her voicemail (the first voicemail box I had encountered in the whole of the Pierce system--everything else gave me no option to leave a message and simply hung up on me). I left messages for a week with no answer. Finally, using the same "call random numbers from the website" technique, I was able to find someone who could make me an appointment to talk with this person. My sister wouldn't be able to come with me, but since I'm more familiar with navigating college bureaucracies than she is, I had no problem with scouting things out for her. I was told when I made my appointment to go to the "Welcome Center". When I got to the campus, I discovered that there were no maps indicating which buildings held which departments, unhelpful arrows, and no signage to indicate where visitors should go for information. By a lucky guess, I found the right building. The Welcome Center is beautifully decorated. Clearly, a great deal of money has gone into its decor. It is also staffed by people who do not care. At all. But they weren't even the worst part. When I FINALLY, after over a week of frustration, had the opportunity to talk with the BFET coordinator, the second she found out that I was not the one who might be enrolling, she just plain shut down. She told me that she could only give out ANY paper information about the program to the student who might be enrolling, which I know for a fact is a LIE. I have gotten information packets about BFET from multiple colleges in the area. If the school only has enrollment paperwork and no information pages to give out about the program, that's because the staff are either lazy or incompetent. I have NEVER met a BFET coordinator so disinterested in doing their job. I came away from my experience dedicated to making sure that no one ever has to go through what I did. Having experienced so many different college cultures, I can guarantee that a school that cares this little about cultivating a competent administrative staff cares even less about their students. I have no idea if the education Pierce students receive is up to par or not, but you can be sure it's not worth the aggravation of dealing with the staff, the broken website, or the even more broken phone system. There are plenty of other small colleges in this region. Find one with a competent staff, and stay far, FAR away from this place. read more

I have to make this review to save anyone else the trouble!!! This review is for the VET TECH PROGRAM.. my daughter has a history of being responsible and capable- we leaped many hurdles to get her into this program this Fall as probably one of the youngest to enter the program (18). For three months, things went well until we received a letter that the program was BOOTING HER OUT. Why? turns out she did not do so well on ONE test which was part of one of the classes that only receives 3 grades so she could not continue with the program. What kind of program removes a student for not being perfect? There were no discipline issues, not showing up for classes, respect, etc... I spoke to the director on the phone who said they were on Christmas break. I basically asked him to give her another chance to take the test which was demonstrative and she was really nervous which caused her to miss a couple of steps- things she would not normally miss. He said he would speak to the instructor and get back to us. HE NEVER CALLED BACK. My daughter left a message with him AND NO CALL BACK!!! Don't waste your time and money with this school!!!!!!!! read more

Going through the Diagnostic Health and Fitness Program was one of the worst experiences of my life. I have never worked so hard and gotten so little. When you graduate from the program you obtain a certificate that most gyms do not accept by itself. If I had to do it over again I would have just studied for my ACSM on my own. The level of unprofessionalism at the school is astounding. The constant bickering between to two head professors makes for an extremely stressful environment. One professor is in to intimidating/bullying students when you disagree with her (questionable) teaching style. Overall, save yourself some stress, money and effort and just get nationally certified on your own or go through a different program- this is NOT the one to go to if you want to learn how to, properly, train clients! read more

Really wish I had read these reviews before I started here. This is my fourth college to attend and third as online while working full time and has been an absolute nightmare. The Homeland Security program sounded great but I have had nothing but problems and won't even be going back for a second quarter. They have no idea how to do online classes and professors can't even figure out how to put lessons on canvas. Then they don't hold their professors to a standard and make them accountable for their mistakes but will gladly give a student a 0 for an assignment because of their mistake. Two of my courses this quarter have had three weeks where the professor couldn't get the lesson online on time which is a huge issue for people with limited time and they didn't give additional time to complete the work. They also don't make their professors follow the syllabus and allow them to screw over the students as much as they want. If you are military don't waste your time going here. AMU is so much better and I will be returning there as they actually know what they are doing and functions much better for working adults. read more

Compared to Tacoma Community College & Clover Park Technical College, Pierce College surpassed everything I hoped to be served as a student and as a parent to a Running Start student. They have such an awesome & positive culture that transmits throughout all the different departments (Welcome/Guest Services, Student Services, Admissions, Testing, Advising, Financial Aid, Security & more). I was always greeted professionally & served well all throughout the process. This is my second Semester here & I also took my GED here years ago. This school runs smooth & has all their steps in order so you know what to do next. Definite AAA+ for Pierce College. read more

This College isn't the best for Veterans trying to get a degree. I have been told they will accept my Military time to go toward my degree so I can graduate earlier. Well here it has been over 2 years and still not even close to graduate. I work as a full time Government Employee and when I first started school it was out at the Puyallup campus due to the fact they only had the class I needed there. I live outside of Mckenna and when I finished work at JBLM I had 1 hour to make it to school. This caused me to drive extreamly fast and I was always late to class the teacher knew I just finished work and where I was driving from but that didn't help at all she failed me because I missed test and was not allow to make them up. I filed complaints over this and it came back being my fault I couldn't make it to school on time. I would of just went to an online school if the VA would allow me to do so but I have to be forced to have one inseat every quarter to get full benifits that I worked for all my carrer in the Army. Finally I was able to get on JBLM and take classes but applining for my loans I had to go through Steilacoom campus and even know our school started earlier in Fall then the outside campus never received my loans or grants till I was almost done with Fall 1 quarter. This made me fall backward in school and since then they did away with Fall 1 from JBLM and I had to back off school due to it was being affected by my work times from the classes I still need to take. So be aware Vets of this College before you apply check with other Colleges that are Military Friendly this one says they are but after being enroled they change their ways real quick read more