Isn’t that the purpose of attending a university?
It’s one of the reasons, but (as I think this thread makes clear) it’s seldom the sole reason.
True, but if you just want to learn college level material for learning’s sake, there are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered through Coursera, edX, Stanford and others that are free and offer undergrad and grad topics.
Edit: as noted, leaning may not be the sole reason. Most people want a credential.
To robert_columbia, there are at least a dozen valid reasons for attending a university. Learning is most definitely one of them. It should be at least a consideration in anyone’s choice of schools and programs, but the fact is that some people are indeed only interested in the credential, and for them, any school that can provide that serves their needs.
I myself have attended different types of program over the years. I’m in HR now, but didn’t train for it in school (my BS is in Economics). A few years back I wanted to take some college-level HR coursework, but didn’t want to pursue a second or advanced degree at that time. I took 30 hours of HR concentration coursework in the evenings at a local college. I didn’t care about the credential, but the rigor was very important to me.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I have an employee right now who left college to be married only 1 semester short of graduation. She is doing a degree completion program that asks very little of her intellectually. Her goal is the credential. Whether or not she gets high quality schooling for her last 4 courses isn’t all that material to her situation. She already has the basic knowledge.
The important take-away is to properly identify what you need from an education and to find an institution that fits that need.
WGU students are for the most part already employed, so their ability to follow deadlines isn’t so much in question.
There is a deadline though–they sign up for a six month term, during which they must enroll at least full time (12 credit hours). If they don’t pass the course by the end of that term, they fail the course. If they fail enough courses, they can’t enroll anymore. (Of course there’s a probationary status in the middle of all that, as at most universities.)
It appears WGU’s teachers college has done a good enough job with its graduates to receive the number one ranking for high school teacher prep at US News and World Report: http://www.usnews.com/education/nctq?program=secondary (I don’t really know how they arrive at those rankings though).
So the degree doesn’t just reflect content mastery (though that is definitely the focus in a “competency based program” like WGU) but also long term planning, meeting ones own deadlines, etc.
As an ex-college prof, I can assure you that an amazing percentage of students are going to college for the fun/social/family obligation type reasons. The majority of students I (tried to) teach in later years just plain didn’t care about learning.
Over the years it went like this: Students didn’t sign up for late Friday afternoon classes since that cut into their party time. Then Friday afternoon. Then Friday. Then Thursday night became a party night since they didn’t have classes Friday. So late Thursday afternoon classes started getting shunned …
I came in here to recommend this. I looked into UoP quite extensively when I went back to school, and they are freakin expensive.
Empire State College was awesome, and far cheaper. And it was (mostly) full of adult students, so on the whole they were far more serious and committed than I saw people my first time round at UAlbany. Well, it was our own money this time.
Over the years? Thursday was party night 30 years ago at least. Probably a lot longer than that.
That seems to be exactly what you’re saying. If it’s not, then what are you saying?
This is probably one of the reasons we’re so selective about which colleges we recruit from. My daughter went to the University of Chicago (where fun went to die) where the students prided themselves for coming in dead last on the party school survey.
I wonder how much of the nose-turning-up at online MBA degrees has to do with the type of people who get MBA degrees, as opposed to the specifics of the online program. In this case I’m leaning towards 100%.
Tossing out resumes based on school, to me is ridiculous. I’ve been in the workforce a long time now. I’ve worked with people who hold advanced degrees from prestigious schools who are complete buffoons. I’ve worked with people who went to local tech schools who are crazy good at what they do. Like someone said above, you get out of your program what you put into it.
You mean smart, ambitious people?
Or is it your belief that there is no difference between someone who graduates from Harvard Business School and someone who graduates from UoP’s MBA program?
Maybe you wouldn’t be working with buffoons and local tech school grads if you went to a better college.
When I was looking at the Univ of Md options, the Smith School of Business required GMATs, while the online UMUC did not. So, I’d be willing to bet that some not small percentage of online MBA students might not have qualified for a traditional business school.
I am glad someone said this. Schools like Phoenix team up with other diploma mills and create their own accrediting bodies. Basically UoP is self-accredited with just enough space between themselves and the accrediting body to seem credible.
What you get at the end of it a is a cracker jack box diploma. Calling it a “degree” in Canada is illegal. Calling themselves a university in Canada or GB would be a misnomer. Only in the US where credentials have been somewhat deregulated can an institution such as UoP fashion themselves after a real university and grant degrees.
In related news Everest College just got chased out of Canada for their malpractice. Good riddance.
UoP is what happens when you treat education like a donut franchise.
I can’t tell if you’re being touchy or goofy! Help me out!
They’re absolutely ambitious. (You’re going to have to convince me on smarter than others.) Being ambitious, they’re more concerned with status. Is that a reasonable assumption? I think it is. Therefore, it’s not unthinkable that there’s going to be a skewing of perception on the importance of going to schools XYZ over ABC, whether it’s justified or not. I’m just saying that ability is more an attribute of the individual than it is of the program they attended. Harvard vs UoP, yeah, I get that, but random online MBA degree vs random brick-and-mortar one? How much difference is there, really? (I don’t know, I’m asking.)
I went to a dinky little school and did worry about that. Sometimes I still get self conscious about it. While I’m pretty sure I could have handled any program, there’s always that nagging doubt, you know? Even though I do software development for one of the top IT services companies in the world, on a project worth millions, and I’m demonstrably better at it than most of these guys…I’m still secretly thinking What if I suck? As if missing out on that group project I could have had in Advanced Linear Programming at Stanford is holding me back.
A data point. My wife teaches at a college, which is mainly brick and mortar but offers a number of masters programs online or in hybrid form. Last year they decided that they would not recognize doctoral degrees from online-only universities. I don’t know any specifics, including exactly why they made this determination, but I’m sure they have their reasons; and as far as they are concerned, someone with a doctorate from an online-only institution…has no doctorate at all.
I can’t speak at all intelligently about MBA programs, as I don’t know anything about them and don’t work in fields that involve MBAs at all. Where undergraduate work is concerned, though, I think there is a lot less difference in programs than we often believe as a society.
I’ve known really incompetent people who went to Very Highly Regarded Schools and really amazing people who went to Schools You’ve Never Heard Of. So much depends on your family culture, your school culture, your financial situation, who your parents were.
I do believe, as others have mentioned, that what you get out of college has much less to do with where you went and much more to do with what you chose to get out of it. But we do have this notion that people from the more highly regarded school are automatically worth more…It’s unfortunate.
I’ve mentioned in a different thread that I am on (still!) a slow-moving search committee. We had two Harvard grads who remained in contention much longer than they probably should have, given their credentials overall, and one reason was that at least a couple of my fellow committee members were dazzled by the Harvard bachelor’s degree. It was a struggle at times to get people to see that these two were not necessarily any better qualified for what we needed than the candidate who began an academic career at East Los Angeles Community College …
This is not correct. University of Phoenix is regionally accredited by the North Central Association, the same accreditation body that accredits all legitimate academic postsecondary institutions in that region, and one of the six regional accreditation bodies recognized by the US Department of Education. Their accreditation is real and they do not meet the definition of a self-accredited diploma mill.
That doesn’t necessarily mean their diplomas are particularly good, but they’re real.
Just wanted to second this, as a member of the HLC Peer Review Corps. Here’s a link to their status, for those interested:
http://ncahlc.org/component/directory/?Action=ShowBasic&Itemid=&instid=1949&lang=en
I will say that things are tightening up a lot with how HLC deals with institutions, and a lot of the reforms are casting a sharp eye at online education. Notice their last review was 2013, and it was right around this time that HLC unveiled its new Criteria. This was largely due to historically passing many schools that should not have been. the new Criteria are much more focused on Academic rigor, persistence, completion, and retention- none of which are things UoP are known for. Full disclosure, I have never reviewed them personally, but am aware of their reputation.
As hiring manager, I would definitely look askance at anyone with it listed as a credential. With the current online offerings by many brick and mortar colleges (community to ivy league), I assume that someone that went through it was trying to get their ticket punched, and was substituting money for time and academic rigor.