I've never heard of this place, but I would be careful with any institute that runs themselves more like a business than a school. A business just wants your money through the door and after that, they couldn't care less about your education. See if you can talk to any of their graduates.

It sounds like your instincts are kicking in nicely though. So good luck with finding a happy graduate of theirs or at least another reputatable online school.

Thank you for the advice, I think I'll dig a little deeper before I commit to anything.

There must be a dozen colleges in Portland. Don't any offer certificate programs or online courses? While you may be able to get the basics from an online course, critiques and interaction with peers is better for the practical stuff.
Is MECA too steep?

As far as I have been able to determine, MECA doesn't offer a certificate program (I did take night classes there in Graphic Design and Illustration), nor does U.S.M. Southern Maine Community College does offer some certificates, but I don't much like their program, which is something like "Communication and New Media."
My main goal is really to get a piece of paper that will make sense to Human Resource Directors ("Oh, you have a piece of paper, I guess I can consider you human now."). I may go back into doing volunteer layout, and this time I'll try to see if I can sit in on the process when it goes to press, something I was always too shy to ask about the last time I did it. But, as far as paying work goes, you've gotta play the game to some degree, I just don't know that I can play it to a four-year degree.
I'll look into the local colleges a little more thoroughly and see if I can find anything that fits my criteria. Thank you.

Hi Nobert,

I don't know much about Maine's higher education, but do you guys have "community colleges" there. In Texas and many of the states I have lived there has been an alternative, community college or something like that. The reason I ask is that many of the community colleges here in Texas (in fact most) have now gone to adding certificate programs through online programs, other than their own program. For instance one of the local CC's here offers several online programs in graphic design or web design that focus mostly on the nuts and bolts of how the programs work, the basics of design, typography, different things like that. The packages are often a complete curriculmn from which you will recieve a certificate and many of them claim that you should be able to pass the profeciency tests on several of the programs, many of these course are very fast paced, but some of the programs allow you to take them more than once if for some reason you struggle. The advantage to me to taking them through the local college is that you can take campus courses to bolster the learning you getting....like print driver suggested...and you also get some assurances that the college has checked out the online courses for accrediation.

Check into something like that. I have been considering it, because I already have a fine arts degree, but I am behind in the area of software and internet technologies.

Thank you for the input. I have looked into Southern Maine Community College, because I know my roommate is getting a certificate in carpentry there. I wasn't able to tell whether they had a certificate program in G.D. though and, as I mentioned, the closest thing they offer is more like a communications degree, more about website development, whereas I am primarily interested in print.
I was unclear on this, the only reason I'm searching for online courses is that my initial look at local colleges seemed to indicate that there wasn't anything of the type I wanted available in my neck of the woods, and moving to another state is really not something I want to do right now, for various real-life reasons. I should probably do a little more research into local options.
Thank you all for the advice.

Just stay away from the CCs in Castle Rock and Derry. Weird shit going on there.

Yeah, supposedly the Castle Rock Tourism Department has the highest employee turnover in the state. A thankless job for some reason.