A Waste of Time

I just finished a training class on Cisco MARS (Monitoring, Analysis and Response System). It was a Cisco authorized course put on by a major training company. It was two days and cost $2300 (luckily I used Cisco Training Credits so it wasn't "real" money). But between travel and the actual class time it cost me 4 days of work. I can't believe how useless the class was. When I say useless I don't mean that I didn't learn anything but I didn't learn anything that I couldn't have learned on my own for a whole lot less money.

It just wrong when a company like Cisco charges an outrageous amount of money for a class that doesn't do anything. I've been to other classes that were either free or less than $200 for 2 days that I gained much more from. After the class was finished we filled out a class evaluation and I made sure to let it be know that I was unhappy. I was nice and constructive with my criticism. One of the questions was "Based on your experience in this class would you take another Cisco Authorized Training Class?" My answer was a resounding "NO!". This is my first CAT class and I'm sure that many of them are very well done, but his isn't one of them.