Somebody Does Need To Take A Nice Long Look At The University of Phoenix
I'm not a fan of online universities and I'm definitely not a fan of the University of Phoenix. I think online education can be an important tool, but these programs are always doing something they should not. If it's not shady business with the student loans, then their graduation rates are suspect. I wonder about the quality of the courses and instructors.
And I would love to know how their students are doing after attending these schools and after earning those online degrees they offer - are they getting jobs, advanced degrees, and do they believe they got a quality education? People commit large sums of money and time toward their education, they should get the best their institution has to offer.
6 comments:
Professor
This is the wave of the future in education, and always boils down to the canidate obtaining the education.
I have a friend that is a Spelman graduate, and she earned a PHD online from UP, with the advent of globization you will see more programs moving in this direction.
I took my first online course back in 2005 to start a master's degree pursuit. As long as the institution is accredited/legit, there shouldn't be any concerns.
My mom is currently completing her bachelors with UofP. She seems to be pleased thus far. Her classes meet in person and she has A LOT of group work and presentations. If all goes well, we will both graduate in Spring 2010; me with my Masters and she with her Bachelors!
I'm taking an online class this semester. We have to meet in person onece a month. Bit I don't know how it have all my classes on-line. That would probably be different.
I have a friend who received an MBA from Phoenix. He seems to have learned all of the business and management concepts.
In my opinion a professional degree is as much about the relationships that you build as the stuff you hear in the classroom.
Now my friend is stuck with all of the student loans without the career bump that was expected.
My take on it is, it depends.
I'm a senior software engineer, and up until 4 years ago I had 10 years of experience and 2.5 years of college (UMass Boston, UMass Lowell), I wanted to go back to school but given my more than full time schedule a full time program or even part time on site was out of the question. The reason was that for the longest time all that mattered in my field was ability and experience (can you do the job and do you have a track record). But it had gotten to the point where the lack of degree was seriously narrowing my pool of available jobs, and the job I had at the time was seriously sucking. So I looked at Capella University and University of Phoenix, U of Phoenix came across as too hard pressure salesmanship, so I went with Capella.
It was a decent program, lots of projects and homework. I actually would put it on par with UMass Boston. I took some required classes and some electives that turned out to be great (Astronomy, which I love, only problem was I took it in winter and a lot of the projects required a ton of direct observation, being out at night in Boston in December, not fun). And I took a phenomenal philosophy class. Since I was an actual working professional, I took courses that were relevant (i.e Project Management) and fewer programming courses (since I already knew it).
So after 2 years of school, left my job, spent 3 months on my final project/semester, graduated and went job searching. And the job I got (which I really wanted), actually required a B.S degree.
Did I miss anything by not taking a traditional program? I don't think so, considering when I was at UMass I was commuting. I would hazard a guess that compared to programs where you live on campus it would not do as well. But we all live within our reality, and my reality was that I couldn't manage the time to commute to UMass Boston. The cost was a bit too much, I was spending about $15,000 - $18,000. Shortly after I finished UMass Lowell came out with an all online program for almost half the cost (grrr!!). But I am glad I finished my degree.
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