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Don't want to derail, butBrainworm posted:I haven't yet seen a for-profit university that wasn't either an outright scam or a short step from it, and they don't live long -- the usual practice is for the investors to rake in a couple years' worth of tuition, run the place on state loans, and shut down before accreditation problems catch up with them (like BCTI and CRI did). Or they run simpler scams, like Crown College and Florida Met. I wanted to give you an inside view from someone who has attended a for-profit college, University of Phoenix, for the last four years; in the on-campus program for the first two years and the online program for the remaining time. I'll start with the disclaimer that I don't believe by any means that I am getting the same quality of education I would get at a school such as the one that employs you. However, I can say with complete confidence that I am getting a better education than I would get at the average Cal State school, because my wife has been attending San Francisco State University for the same period and I have far fewer complaints about my learning experience than she does. There are certainly some cost-restraining practices. For example, all the instructors use a standard, university-published syllabus, which they can then modify as they see fit. However, I find this is often valuable, since I have not taken a Celtic literature class where the primary text is Dracula, as my wife has at her far more respected state university. The instructors do put a great amount of effort into the courses, including guiding discussions. In my 3.5 years with University of Phoenix, I believe I've taken exactly 4 multiple choice exams, all for math courses. The rest of the courses rely on papers and projects that provide an opportunity to use the knowledge gained to analyze a business case that is often directly applicable to the student's current job or future job requirements. I get good feedback. In fact, your bracketing system is exactly the proof system offered by University of Phoenix, through a tutor review that is facilitated by an online submission system, so that students can improve their writing before they turn in their papers. This is useful since we usually have a 3-4 page individual paper and a 5-6 page group paper due every week. (I'll take 3/4 of a useful finger, since you were half right on the pre-made material). I am who University of Phoenix is for. I had a horrible time in school due to learning disabilities, left high school early because of depression, worked for several years and got to a point in life where I was unable to afford to go back to a traditional school full-time. If I wanted to get a bachelor's in less than 7 years, I needed to go to University of Phoenix. I'll agree with your point that cost can drive courses, but reversed. University of Phoenix works out to about 12,000 per year if I were attending a semester based school taking 12 units per semester. That's around the cost of UC Berkeley, which is a superior school in most aspects (though I am generally in classes of 15, and get lots of individual attention and feedback from my instructors, something I'd be unlikely to get in a 300 person lecture hall at Berkeley). I don't consider my bachelor's to be the end of my education. I would be more regretful of the fact that I ended up at UPX if it was. I'm applying to an MBA/M.Eng. program for 2010, and would like to do a Ph.D. in Sustainability after that. But grad programs are designed for people in the middle of their lives and careers, unlike undergrad programs. I think that you're generally right. There are a lot of very shady institutions out there and diploma mills. But implying that every for profit and online program is a worthless waste of educational resources is disrespectful and ignorant. EDIT: As a better measure of the disparity between your expectations and mine, having read the rest of the thread: You couldn't decide until you were 22 if you wanted to get your Ph.D. in physics, English, or philosophy. I didn't think I'd ever be able to go to college, because that expectation had been pushed out of me, until I was 21. The best I was hoping for was that I would be able to work as a dental assistant (what I was doing) and maybe end up as an office manager of a big practice. The most important thing that University of Phoenix has taught me is that I can learn, and that sounds pretty close to the mission of your school, if in a different sphere. Riven fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 13, 2009 |
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May 13, 2009 22:52
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Glowskull posted:yeah, how does it feel to not be accredited? Hi. How does it feel to make baseless assumptions and look like a fool? University of Phoenix is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, part of the North Central Association. Same region that accredits some other crappy schools, like Notre Dame, Northwestern and Ohio State. The business school is accredited by the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, which also accredits schools like the State University of New York. It's not the AACSB, but that's because the AACSB puts most of its focus on research, and UPX doesn't focus on research, it focuses on teaching. Seriously, Glowskull, there's not really an excuse for that one. As to the graduation rate point from Brainworm, that's because the DOE calculates grad rates in a manner that is inconsistent with how the University operates. The DOE, more specifically the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, tracks graduation rates of four year students who come in with no prior credits. This demographic represents a little under 7% of UPX's student base. So, yes, only 16% of 7% of the University's students graduate. I transferred in with three credits, so even though I've done 117 credits there, I wouldn't be counted under the DOE's system when I graduate in September. In addition, I was part of a pilot program that was designed to reorient the program to encourage students with fewer than 12 credits to complete their degrees, so it's something the University is actively working on. Overall, however, the University tracks an internal graduation rate of about 59%. I apologize again, I'll stop here, because I don't want to turn this into a thread about University of Phoenix, but Glowskull's comment really needed a response since it was just so flat out wrong.
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May 14, 2009 19:42
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Brainworm posted:All good hearted people love the Oxford comma. Without it, it's impossible to create a list of compound elements without introducing parsing difficulties. Thank you. This is the element of APA formatting I dislike the most. I regularly create long lists and I struggle to make them comprehensible without that last comma.
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May 27, 2009 16:39
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