This might come as a shock to you, but if a person can show that a hiring manager likely is doing such a thing, then the hiring manager’s company gets the hit.
This also might come as a shock: if a company has a policy that promotion is based on having the degree and performance and the candidate with better performance but a degree from UofP than the Harvard grad’s gets selected for promotion, the company management might be in the toss too.
One would hope the person who “doesn’t consider the school sufficiently rigorous or considers the school to turn out graduates who are not prepared for the job” would base such consideration on this nifty little thing known as fact.
Hit for what? In the U.S., at least, as long as the hiring manager isn’t basing decisions on items specifically protected under the civil rights laws (race, religion, etc.), the hiring manager may use any criteria he/she wants, ranging from skill level to educational background to whether the manager likes the color of shirt the candidate wore. There is no law forbidding discrimination based on which school you attended.
I’d be very interested to know on what you base this opinion. Do you, for example, know of any court decisions on topic? There is no law requiring companies to hire the most qualified or best performer (again, in U.S. jurisdictions, where UoP is likely to be in play).
Have you ever seen UoP listed in a “best colleges” ranking?
Beyond that, from a legal standpoint, the manager’s opinion that the school is not sufficiently rigorous is a perfectly legal reason regardless of whether it is based on anything other than the manager’s unsupported opinion. “Where you got your degree” doesn’t fall into the category as “where you go to church.”
You think a company can get “hit” for using your academic record in a hiring decision? That makes zero sense. If that were true, we wouldn’t even list what school we went to on a resume, just like we don’t list our race or family status.
Do you believe companies are legally required to treat Harvard exactly the same as Bob’s School of Heavy Thinkin’?
Your second example is totally different, as it applies to a pre-defined promotion process where academic work is not one of the deciding factors. Even then, in a promotion process that did not have that set criteria, academic achievement would be fair game.
That is not actually what I said and it’s pure BS to pretend I did say that.
Then what did you say, because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.
Hey, we had to do some pretty complicated cipherin’ at dear ol’ Bob’s.
Teachers sometimes have check-the-box promotions. But I don’t know many people who think that is a good thing.
Me too.
Discriminating against job applications who hail from an institution like UofP actually makes sense for some occupations. If I’m looking for a entry-level field biologist, for instance, I need someone who has racked up some hours doing field work. Now, it’s possible a graduate of a brick-and-mortar school to have managed to avoid a natural history course or field ecology lab. But it is a certainty if they went to an online school.
Even if UofP offered a module where students learn the basics of field work, it still wouldn’t compare to what they would learn at a brick-and-mortar. All of my coworkers and I have memories of being conscripted to assist in someone’s bad-ass diel study–where someone has to go out and take samples every hour of the 24-hour period. Or being stuck in the middle of nowhere, covered in mosquitos and mud, and waiting hours to be rescued. A school on a resume that messages “Hey! We have similar experiences! We have the same academic background! We know the same people!” can go a long way. Even if UofP had prestige, it simply can’t deliver the same set of experiences that whoever is hiring you may value.
Yeah, I have no idea what he’s going on about either. I wouldn’t give a candidate with a UofP degree more than a passing glance, unless other factors were extremely strong. My bosses wouldn’t bat an eye if that was the reason I explained for my hiring decisions. HR wouldn’t care either - that’s why education is on the resume.
IMO, I’d have a better opinion of an identical candidate without a UofP degree on their resume.
In my experience, candidates with UofP on their resume don’t get taken seriously. I’ve had this exact exchange with other hiring managers.
"Does she have an MBA?’
“Yeah, but it’s from Univ. of Phoenix.”
“Oh.”
And just like that, the degree becomes meaningless. Fair or not, it’s life in the real world. I have heard from people who had a bad experience from UofP, but I have no firsthand knowledge of the quality of education. The negative perception is strong enough that I would discourage anyone from getting a degree from UofP.
**
jayrocks**,
Do you want to comment to some of the responses your post generated? I see that this subject was important enough to you that you joined the board just to make a comment. I’m assuming that you will keep us informed of your progress with USC.
Good morning. I promised an update on Western Governor’s University and here it is. I put in a few calls to colleagues yesterday afternoon and got some information.
A - A degree from WGU would be considered as any degree from an online-only university. In other words, a tier under an online degree received from both an in-person and on-line institution.
B - WGU is a bit of a new age institution. They do not give grades in the traditional sense. You pass or fail, and you can continue to work on a particular course until you pass it, no matter how long it might take.
C - Because of the situation in B above, individual course credits from WGU are highly unlikely to transfer to any traditional brick and mortar university. So it isn’t as much about the quality of the education as it is the incompatibility of the grading system.
D - There is actually a decent amount of rigor in many of the WGU courses (they often require proctors for their tests and a videocam in the room to show the student taking the test and that there are no other people or material in the room), but the fact that you can literally take the course indefinitely until you pass isn’t viewed all that favorably.
Hope this helps those who were inquiring.
In my opinion, someone could leave U of P fully qualified to do a good job. For the most part, people get out of a degree what they put into it. For MBAs, the curriculums are pretty similar for the most part. You can skate through doing the minimum to get by or you can actually learn. You can do that U of P or a good school.
My problem with a graduate from U of P is that I would instantly assume that person has bad decision making skills and shaky judgment for choosing that school when other, better online schools exist for way less money.
One of the promotional spots on my local public radio station is from Arizona State University, which says that it has more than seventy degree programs available entirely online. So you can get an online education from a legitimate state university. Other public and private schools may also offer online degree programs now. Given that, I’d recommend one of them over the for-profit schools like University of Phoenix.
This is one of the biggest positives about WGU (other ones are that it’s non-profit and also fairly inexpensive, at least compared to UPhoenix). At most schools (including most online schools), there is a strict schedule of exams and assignments and you have to keep up or wash out. If you get behind, you start getting socked with bad grades and it can become a death spiral. At WGU, if you bomb the “final” or miss the deadline for a paper, hey, no sweat, just keep trying until you master the material (may also involve an additional tuition payment if you have to go into extra semesters). I believe they will get a bit upset if you flail around making little or no progress for a long time, but the “omg papers are due tomorrow!!!111!one” thing is much less prominent. Need an extra two days to prep for the Big Exam in Important Stuff? Ok.
Years ago, I thought about pursuing a MBA. I was in Maryland and the University of Maryland, College Park has the Robert H. Smith School of Business, which is pretty well-regarded. There’s also the University of Maryland, University College, which is brick and mortar but also offers many degrees online, including an MBA.
I was working for a company and the VP of my dept. had an MBA from Smith. We were talking and I mentioned the UMUC online option and his response was “If you’re going to invest in a MBA, get a real one.” The VP did a lot of the hiring at this company, so if UMUC’s MBA, which is from a legitimate online institution, wasn’t well regarded, I can easily believe the dismissal of a UoP MBA.
Are they any employers that have more or less “check the box” hiring? E.g. maybe they do interviews to make sure you aren’t a complete lame-o, but the real ticket to hiring is having the right degree (or GPA, or specific coursework). E.g. “We need ten Bachelors of Skullduggery, three Masters of Skullduggery, two Bachelors of Arcane Arts, and a Doctor of Sticktuitiveness. Look for the degree - we just need to check off the form that we have those people.”
The university that you attended is not part of your academic record?
This is a positive if you’re enrolled at WGU solely for the sake of learning, but it’s a big drawback as far as having the degrees taken seriously. Part of the reason employees look for completed degrees, even in jobs with duties that don’t necessarily require them, is that it shows the applicant has managed a multi-year project with set requirements, deadlines, etc. I’ve never had a job where it was no big deal to need an extra two days to prep for the Big Presentation, and I’d be reluctant to hire somebody who might assume that such flexibility would exist in the workplace.