Q for ex-pan am students

Hey JustMe-

I really wasn't going to respond, but what the heck, I guess I will after all.

Do you need a degree to excell in flight school? No.
Do you need a degree to have the best chance of your choice of airlines? Yes.
Will a degree give you furlough protection? Not necessarily. But not having one lumps you in the job hunting demographic as "work truck Jeb" from Yuma, AZ with a GED.
 
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This is my first time writing on here, but I saw all this Pan Am crap and just had to put my two sense in. First of all(just to respond to what this thread began with) I have a 4 year degree and am currently a student at Pan Am. Having a degree has exactly jack sh*t to do with anything, least of all excelling at pan am. The only thing it could possibly help you with(which it doesn't)would be the ground schools. However, the ground schools are useless, and if you can basically memorize the gleim, you can accomplish everything the GS does. As far as the flying goes....a college degree means sh*t. I think I'll stop here for now. You don't want to get me started on what I really think of Pan Am.

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I would hate to share my airspace with this guy!! Let a long have him fly my family!!
 
Just to clarify what I was meaning....Believe me, I know how important a college degree is as far as getting hired at the airlines, but that is not what we were talking about. The point was, that having a degree says nothing as to how well you will do at pan am. Just because someone has a degree does not mean they have a greater "willingness to suceed" or have a greater level of responsibility then someone who does not have a degree. You don't have to have a degree to be a motivated person. That being said, if you want to fly for the airlines someday, there is no need to even try if you don't have a degree.
 
I want to hear what he really thinks of Pan Am. As for the degree, it sure can't hurt ya, especially with the airlines and finding a good paying job if you are furloughed. As far as the degree being beneficial at Pan Am...it not worth the piece of paper it is written on.
 
Hey Doug,
Apparnetly everyone misunderstood what I was saying. Everybody knows how important a college degree is in getting hired with an airline(including me). My point was that having a degree does not mean that you will do well at pan am(or any other school for that matter). Doing well at these schools simply requires self discipline and being highly self motivated(and being able to put up with gigantic amounts of bullcrap
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. As for me I have my 4 year degree so it looks like "work truck Jeb" is riding alone today.
 
there are, for the most part, serious differences in the performance of students when it comes to those with or without a degree. no, it doesn't mean that if you don't have a degree you're going to do horribly, but for those who are not so self motivated college helps to teach them how to learn effectivly. it gives the every day person who has attained a degree a huge advantage in so many arenas.

not to mention having a higher degree of education doesn't really hurt you... at the least it gives you a better understanding of how the world works. even the personal interactions of daily college life teaches an individual so much in terms of how they'll react in future relations, and thats equally important to how much knowledge you'll have gained during school. like a good Jedi, you should understand the difference between KNOWLEDGE and INTELLIGENCE.
 
No, a degree does not guarantee that you'll do better in flight school.
 
You've got to be kidding!
First, what are you basing these serious performance differences on? In my IR ground school class there were some of us that had a four year degree, a couple people had a two year degree, and some had little or no college experience. Almost all of us finished the gs with an average of over 90+ percent. I can assure you it had nothing to do with our college experience, or lack thereof. Furthermore, some of the most motivated and highly successful people I know didn't even finish high school (let alone college).
Second, if you actually think that the academic world even remotely resembles the real world, you must be living in an entirely different world then me. The academic world is a joke(however, a necessary evil).
However, this whole degree topic is kind of pointless since I think we all agree on the importance of having a college degree if you want to be an airline pilot. For those of us that already have a college degree....more power to us, right? For those that don't have one....get one. Simple as that.
Just for the record, I'm not trying to be rude or offensive, so pardon my cynicism.
 
&gt;&gt;Doing well at these schools simply requires self discipline &lt;&lt;

But do you not think that college is one the best and quickest way to learn self dscipline? I learnt a bit in high school, however with exams like I see in college (70-100% of my grades are based on one exam paper, pretty big deal) I have really learnt to study, and work hard on my own! I think college teaches you far more then knowledge, it teaches you about life (how hard cooking really is and how much laundry sucks) and about how to study and learn, which I would think will help you at Pan Am or any other flight training facility.
 
I have found that those who are making sacrifices to undergo the training do the best. A guy who sold his house and moved his family will almost always work harder than 21 year old son of 777 captain who's paying for everything. At least in my experience.

Chunk

PS--Not to sound self serving, but with one notable exception, I've noticed that prior military guys do well.
 
your view is limited to what you've experienced, so try not to generalize what you consider fact. i totally agree that you don't need a degree to do well, i think thats an obvious fact. the person makes or breaks him/herself either way. my point is college is so much more than just an academic experience...and for some it never even was an academic experience. but when you try and say you don't grow as a person because of it, you've obviously missed something during your time there. damn, i mean i don't think getting the 4-year was any feat to be really proud of, but i really matured and had a better understanding of what it was i wanted to do in life. if anyone wants to advocate that just having a high school education is good enough, then i openly challenge that belief. just for the record, i've also seen many during my flight training at Panam that did outstanding work, but that doesn't necessarily make them intelligent, and you or i having a degree doesn't either. the person makes or breaks themself.

on paper everyone during my ground schools and elsewhere, for the most part were equal, but those who had a higher education (college, self educated, military, etc..) understood the material more completely. how do you truely start to understand physics of flight if you don't know what physics is. how do you begin to be able to do almost anything without having any basic math skills, let alone advanced math skills. if you want to guage everyones performance by how they did in a groundschool that only requires you to memorize answers then you're not getting the picture. students need to understand why things are the way they are, especially in a field like ours that lays the lives of countless passengers solely in the hands of all of us who really want to be up there piloting the aircraft.

ok, i'm done...blah blah blah
 
Naturally, my view is limited by my experiences(as is everyone elses). I don't believe I missed out on anything with my college experience. It served its purpose...that of getting a degree so that I can get a descent job some day. Do I think I grew tremendously as a person because of college....absolutely not. As you said, getting a college degree is not a feat to be particularly proud of....its really not that difficult. It is through my other life experiences, outside the academic world, that has caused me to grow as a person. And for the record, I'm not suggesting that having only a high school education is "good enough", but I would be curious to know why you think that it isn't. I know how important it is to have a degree if you want to fly for the airlines, (not because it will make you a better pilot, but simply because thats what the ailrines want to see) but I don't believe that having a degree is required to be successful at most things.

As far as understanding the physics of flight goes....It certainly doesn't take college physics to get a grasp on that concept. The physics of flight is not that difficult of a topic and it certainly doesn't take an Einsteinian understanding of physics to fly an airplane well. I am a science major, so I've had plenty of experience with the sciences, as well as math for that matter, and there is nothing that I've had to learn in flight school that a high school physics course would not have adequately covered. As far as the math skills go, flying does not require advanced math capabilities. Again, any high schooler(or probably even a junior higher) could perform any math functions required by a pilot. However, I certainly agree that flight students need to understand the "why" behind concepts and not just the simple facts behind them, but I don't believe that college prepares you any better for that then high school does(academically or otherwise).

Anyway, on to a new topic Dakovich. As I've said before, it has only been recently that I started writing on here, and I haven't read all the posts about Pan Am, but I am curious to here your story and thoughts on the school and where you are now with your training and/or career, so feel free to let me know your thoughts about that.
 
the thing i noticed is that even those basic high school skills people should be at least somewhat proficient in are the ones i see so many students not understanding. i went for an arts degree and i still at least know the basics, i guess i can thank the first two years of college for that. but its true that many don't comprehend the basics, i guess thats what i was saying.

i see college as like having your Commerical Pilot License, it makes the skills you learned in you Private License seem basic to you, but when you first learned them they may have been somewhat of a challenge. the Commerical license makes you perfect those skills you first learned as well as teaching you so much more in terms of aircraft control and other topics. as you progrees eduacationally you fortify that for which you have already learned.

either way i like flying airplanes
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I started trainig at Pan Am's Ft. Pierce campus in January, 2001 and stayed there for about a year and a half. During this time I got my Instrument, Commercial, Multi, CFI, CFII, and instructed for about 11 months.

I left because they gave me an ultimatum: get your MEI or you're fired. Everyone knew they didn't need MEI's (the existing MEI's were fighting each other for students) they just wanted another $5K. I don't like to be blackmailed - so I quit. I didn't leave due to any academic difficulties. Just for the record, while I was there, the majority of the students who left did so because of the way they were treated by management - not due to academic difficulties.

Now they're doing it again with the ACE program. The word for existing instructors is: Go through CRM, Route, and ACE or you're fired. I think it's policies like this, rather than academics, that are causing people to leave.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a single flight school that treats their students with any amount of respect. It's like, "Just give us your money and if there's anything you don't like you can speak to that brick wall over there". Sad, but true. (If anyone knows of a flight school that DOES treat students well please share!!)

On a positive note Pan Am has the finest fleet of training airplanes out there!

Bottom line: I'm glad I went there, I got some first rate instruction (thank you Bob Jex!), but in the last year the whole climate of the school changed. It's not the same school as it was in early 2001. They want your money and they're not shy about letting you know it.
 
Turtle, those are the exact reasons I left Pan Am. So feel rest assured that you are not the only one who was robbed and thrown around like a rag doll by the Pan Am administration. Like I've said many times before, when your loan money is in their bank account, you lose any freedom you have of your dreams and your career.
 
Wooo! Dang! Now don't beat around the bush and tell us how you REALLY feel!
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I do miss those Pan Am airplanes, though!

Somebody refresh my memory on what it's like to have two-way comms for an entire flight!
 
Thats exactly the problem wit Pan AM, Turtle. It has nothing to do with acadmeics or the intensity of the program at Pan Am that causes people to leave the school. Frankly, I personally don't believe that the program is that difficult and intense at Pan Am. I am currently a student there but have recently started looking around for another school. I'm just sick of being treated like crap by the management(and others). They simply don't care about the students....its all about the money. That is painfuly obvious with requirements like the new one requiring all instructors to go through ACE. I know some pretty pissed off instructors about that one. Some have taken equivalent courses from other flight schools and they say there is no way in hell they are paying for it again. Can't say I blame them. Furthermore, does anyone know where that briefing charge comes from....where I'm from, we call that highway robbery.
I will also agree about the nice equiptment there. That is the only reason that is is hard to leave the school. You get kind of spoiled with this stuff. Oh well, the equiptment isn't worth being raped everyday, but kudos to those that can jsut bend over and take it up the pooper
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Those are the main reasons I left Pan Am too. My poop chute just couldnt take the raping anymore. I am glad I am not the only one who was really questioning those brief charges. Once you really take a good close look at the entire program, it is designed to get you where you want to go but you will pay one hell of a hefty price to get there along with the red tape and disrespect that you get from the administration. I am definately NOT saying don't pay your dues, but I AM saying don't get ass raped and pay more dues than you actually have to. There are many cheaper alternatives out there that can get you to the same place, and they won't ream your toot hole like Pan Am does. If you go elsewhere, flying might become fun, cheaper, and you just might get treated like a human being instead of a number or a bank.
 
Justme,

Those briefing charges were a constant source of student complaints when I was at Pan Am. Finally, the Chief Instructor gave us a cost breakdown. He compared Pan Am's hourly instructor rate with Flight Safety and several other schools. I don't remember the exact numbers but even when you added the 20% brief charge onto the hourly rate, Pan Am was still less than Flight Safety (I haven't verified these numbers - I just figured he was telling the truth). What's Pan Am's hourly instruction rate? We should find out from other students on here how much their schools charge and do our own "bottom line" comparison. Anyone want to help out with this?
 
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