University of Phoenix - legitimate degree or joke?

In My Humble Opinion
101

The only time an employer would consider the online degree valuable is if the other candidates did not have degrees. But if the other candidates have degrees from traditional schools, the online candidate will likely be at the bottom of the list.

This may mean that the employer misses out on a great employee with an online degree, but so what? There are likely many other similar candidates for the same job that are just as capable. In that case, there’s no reason to take the candidate with the online degree.

102

Monty, count me in with the people confused by your posts. There is nothing illegal about tossing out resumes because they come from a particular school (except possibly if the school is an HBCU.)

So, it’s delicious?

103

First, a disclaimer. I attended a small, private college for a very simple reason - they gave me the best scholarship.

Personally, I’d rather hire someone at the top of their class from a small, obscure school (as long as it was properly accredited) than someone at the bottom of their class at Stanford or Yale. You are looking for potentially high achieving individuals who will continue to grow and get stronger. You are not looking for someone who peaked in high school and has just squeaked by since then.

104

I wonder…

When your business is being accused of racist hiring practices, how far do you think the “But I only hired from those who attended Richerthan U! It isn’t my fault the campus is low-contrast!” defense will really go?

(Tokenism isn’t diversity, BTW.)

105

There are plenty of qualified candidates embodying every type of diversity coming out of thousands of better, cheaper, traditional universities. Any random state school should offer plenty of candidates.

But sometimes, hiring does reflect who the qualified applicants are. Facebook’s employees are 34% Asian, which seems really shocking until you realize UC Berkeley is 42% Asian.

106

Depends what you’re hiring for. The pool of PhD scientists and (non-computer related) engineers who are US citizens has a lot of Y chromosomes and not a lot of melanin.

107

As someone who works in Silicon Valley my reaction is: Only 34%? Kinda low for my department.

108

I can’t find the original post, so this part is not directed at this poster who’s the University professor:
Isn’t there a difference between accepting transfer credits and acknowledging the degree? In other words, if someone finished half their credits at the U of P, and then wanted to transfer to USC or any place else like that, would they accept those credits completely? That’s an important question, because credits even between traditional accredited colleges don’t fully accept every credit course taken elsewhere for a degree requirement. Degree requirement is important, because if you took a course they can’t plug into the degree requirement they might still say “we accept this credit” but it would count towards an elective which might not do you any good and extend the number of total credits needed for the degree to where you transfer to.

Accepting or acknowledging a degree from U of P for undergraduate work so you can do a Masters at USC or elsewhere isn’t always exactly as it might be. Again, I know of people who went to traditional accredited colleges and got their undergraduate degree at one and were accepted to do a Masters at another, only to find out they were required to take additional coursework either as remedial or because their advisor felt it was needed for the background and requirements of the Masters that were lacking from their undergraduate degree.

The only way to know anything for sure and have a plan of action is to take the actual courses you intend to take at one college and meet with an advisor at another and have them review them. Still, that won’t be 100% either because the college could change requirements from the time you take the courses till you arrive at the new college.

To the university professor: Is there any else this U of P undergraduate could do to be accepted into your graduate level program is he/she doesn’t have letters of recommendation? Could they perhaps go there for the summer as a non-degree student, get to know the faculty and show a keen interest that would perhaps encourage someone on the faculty to write them a letter and/or recommend them for admission to the program? My big question is, just because this person got their degree from U of P, are they “dead” to being accepted into your program forever, or could they somehow demonstrate the lacking requirements?

109

Different places have different rules about accepting transfer credit. Most of my experience has been along the following lines:

Note: It really, really, really helps to have the full catalog course description, the syllabus including the titles of the books of each course you want transferred.

Someone in admissions approves credit for “generic” courses. English 101, Western Civ., etc. If they seem like an okay match, you could get credit for the corresponding course at the new place. Sometimes, all you get is credits in a category only. E.g., you get 9 hours of English credit or Social Science credit. And even then you might get 9 hours of credit for 15 hours of courses. Just because.

For a bit more advanced (and frequently not the least advanced) courses, someone in the corresponding department checks it over. I was this person many, many times at different places over the years. (It’s a job on the “someone needs to do this” list and if you’re a junior prof, volunteering for one of the easier jobs is smarter than having one of the nastier ones dumped in your lap.)

So the admin sends the student over, I ask for the catalog description, syllabus, what text was used, etc. I get a blank stare. Send them away. Maybe they’ll come back later with the right info. (It is astonishing to me that students cannot name the book they used for an advanced course in their major that they just took. I can recite the author’s of books in courses I took decades ago.)

If there’s a corresponding course, I fill in and sign a piece of paper. Sometimes I also got to set how many credits matched up. (Having taken Operating Systems to fulfill a requirement isn’t the same as getting 3 or 4 credits for a course.)

The last place I did this the transfer credit stuff was required before a student could take a summer course or some such elsewhere. Once enrolled, all later outside classes had to be approved. This was smart. Saved a lot of headaches.

One key thing: There are always limits as to how much total credit can be transferred. Maybe half or so of the degree total in many cases.

If I was reviewing transfer credits for a UofP* courses in my field, I suspect the chances are the answer would be nope, nope, nope. The student might be lucky to get only credit for some of the hours, not for specific courses. Not rejected just because it’s UofP, but because I suspect the courses won’t really qualify. A distinction that certain people should note carefully.

*The University of Portland must be POed at Phoenix. Smear by similar acronym. It’s a really respectable place. Kunal Nayyar attended there. If it’s good enough for Raj …

110

Really?

I honestly couldn’t tell you what books I needed for last semester, let alone years ago. Maybe it’s because of the major? In history we’re reading about 1 book a week.

111

I’d wonder why the student was filling his or her head with rubbish.

112

If it’s an important author in the field of your major, often that author is referred to for years after graduation. If you were a business major I wouldn’t expected you to remember the author of the biology courses unless you had some special interest in it. Then again, there are people who never sell a text book back, keep them after graduation and might thumb through the books or stare at them while they are on the shelf.

113

I don’t think that a U of P transfer problem is indicative of their quality of education. At the brick and mortar CC I attended, my friend had a course in “X Dynamics”, whatever X stands for. The local big name brick and mortar would not accept it, and told him that he would have to take their “X Dynamics” class. The CC had an 'Articulation Officer", whose job it was to see that all classes were matched up and would transfer. He, having done his job previously, was shocked. Last time I saw friend, they were still arguing w/the Uni.
The transfer problem could be caused by a lamebrain advisor/instructor, who wanted to pimp his class. Could be a lamebrain advisor who didn’t know jack about “X Dynamics”, etc… I had one advisor, when I went to get my BA who made me go and get a letter from my Uni History professor, (my personal advisor) saying that my “English Literature Dynamics III (or whatever)” class would count as an English class elective. Naturally, the professor was out of town for a week or two. When we got together, the professor looked at me, rolled his eyes, and marveled that one could not understand that a 2000 level English course would automatically count as an English elective, particularly since it had the ENG prefix. I, for my part, marveled that such an idiot (advisor) could control my life.

114

I don’t really want to rag on RandMcnally, but that post and several others highlight an issue that really gets to the core of the OP.

Getting an education vs. getting a degree.

Yes, the two are quite different.

If you can’t remember the books you read last semester, you aren’t getting an education. You’re just passing a class towards getting a degree.

The class I took in college that had the most books was a SciFi literature class. I distinctly remember for sure 4 of the books from that class. Not so sure about one more. Would have been at most one other. And that was over 40 years ago and not remotely my major. I know the titles, the authors, the stories of those 4 books.

This is what an education means. You learn stuff and you retain it.

During my last years as a prof., I was astonished at how little my students were retaining. That had developed a “only need to know it until the test and then flush” attitude. Which meant follow on courses were a nightmare since they didn’t know anything from the prereqs. Of course, this short term attitude failed them. They literally could not remember anything from the previous lecture!

The students lack of interest in learning made me less caring about doing my job. It was a major reason for me quitting since I didn’t want to become one of “those” professors.

Anyway, back to the thread theme: The UofP is for people who want a degree but don’t want an education. You shell out a lot of money, dink around, presto, a degree.

The part that maddens me, is the huge number of people who are not just okay with this, but don’t understand the difference. When I try talking to people about it, they give me this “but the degree is the goal” attitude. They just don’t see it.

There have been airplane crashes where the investigators found out that the pilot had bribed an official to get a pilot’s license. The license isn’t the issue, the knowledge is.

You can buy a degree online for a couple hundred bucks. That doesn’t matter. The knowledge matters.

If you don’t get the knowledge, or don’t retain it, you have wasted your time and money.

115

This is to the side of the discussion, but I had a problem right before my graduation getting course credit for a course I had taken at my own university. Briefly, there was a freshman composition course requirement–two semesters’ worth. I took one class that wasn’t included as a “composition” class, but it was a writing course–Intro Journalism. I checked it out at the time and was assured it would count. The week before I marched I was told I couldn’t graduate because I hadn’t fulfilled the requirement. I had to do a lot of running around to different offices to make sure I got a diploma.

I suppose that’s another thing college/uni is supposed to teach you, it’s up to you to manage your degree program so that you qualify to graduate…

Anyway, I don’t think that’s really the issue with U-Fee courses or degrees.

116

I’ve always felt the reason to discourage or reject credits from other colleges was simply to pay their own tuition revenue. One college told me that if I tried to pass out of a class, I would have to pay the tuition for the class anyway regardless if I passed or failed their test. So what would most people do unless they were in a huge hurry? They ended up taking the class.

I think all colleges have a rule where you have to take the last X number of credits at their college in order to get a degree from them. Like the last 30 or 60 credits, something like that. So if you need 90 (my numbers might be off) for a total degree and you transferred in, they accepted every single credit and you just need one more class to get your degree, they will make you take the last minimum requirement there which could extend your time there another year or two especially if you are going part time.

The other part of going to college is networking. I don’t know if there is a chance to do this with online courses where you get to know other students with shared interests and end up staying in contact with each other. This can be very helpful in finding out about good jobs before they are announced or using them as a reference.

117

Good post.

As from the prospective of a student. I entered college thinking that every course and each assignment was very important. I wanted to learn as much as I can and as a result it would spark my interest in knowing more. The problem was, there was never enough time to pursue my interest in knowing more without missing what was required for the course. So I had to adapt an attitude that I would come back to this material some day and really learn it properly and explore it. But for now, I had to memorize this stuff so I could pass the classes. Towards the end of my degree, I had turned into a machine that was most concerned with 1)What is going to be on the test?, 2)How much effort does this take to do?, 3)What resources are needed?. This is not learning or acquiring knowledge. The worst part of it, is that the course work got more dense as the term went on, so that even on the last class I’m franticly writing down notes which I’m going to be tested on the final within a few days. I started off with college thinking that everything was important to know, but at the end it was much more about the economy of my time. I have a couple of courses I got a B or C in, which I learned the most and others where I got an A, and they were a complete waste of time. I should have gotten an A in the courses where I learned the most, but there wasn’t time to do both. The problem is, you have transcripts and a GPA, and no one cares if you learned anything, you have a lower GPA they think you didn’t work hard and didn’t learn anything, when decades later I know more about the class I got a C in and I use those skills each day, where many of those who got an A in it, barely remember taking the course and their information was lost the second they took the final, because they headed to the book store to sell their book back.

118

The colleges don’t have a vested interest in you graduating on-time. It’s nice to see it as a way to teach you something to take care of yourself, but it’s really about them increasing tuition revenue. I’ve had professors stop me in the hall way asking me to take a new class they were offering which I didn’t need for the degree requirement and already have plenty of electives. It was a hard sell, but I simply said I didn’t have time to take it, even though it sounded interesting. This hard sell was not in my best interest, they or a friend were trying to fill up a new course so it could be supported for their own purposes. Asking me to extend my degree by another term simply to take this new course which didn’t sound useful to me was working against my best interests. One of the professors who did this was my advisor who damn well knew what I needed to finished at the end of the degree.

119

That’s a fair question. Looking at U of P online, they offer two Bachelor of Science programs that could potentially be preparation for my field. The closer I look at those programs, though, the more skeptical I’m getting. U of P offers classes in 5 weeks that we teach in 15 weeks. They teach general chemistry without a lab and geology without field trips. The most suspect thing, though, is that they allow up to 30 credits within the BS program to be earned “experientially” - by writing a 3500-4000 word essay about the course subject and your life experiences that relate to it. In a real school, you might be exempted from a required class based on past experience, but you’d still have to replace those credits with another elective class. An on-line school offering credit for “life experience” is a huge red flag.

In terms of what ftg is saying, I would start with the assumption that the U of P degree was about the credential rather than the education, and the student would have to somehow convince me otherwise. (S)he could enroll in some of the core grad classes in the field at this or another school (on his/her own dime - the credits here are considerably less expensive than U of P credits) and do well. That would give the student contact with faculty who can better describe them than the U of P “faculty,” and successfully completing those classes would offer an assurance that the student can perform at the appropriate academic level. That’s probably the best way.

Work experience also counts a lot with me, and I’m generally willing to take on students with lower GPAs if they have an employment record that shows them handling progressively responsible work - after all, that’s how I ended up in grad school. By demanding work experience, though, I’m just passing the buck - the student would still have to get that degree past a hiring manager somewhere. Bottom line is that a student with a degree from University of Phoenix is in worse shape than a student with no college experience whatsoever, because the U of P grad paid close to $50,000 for a useless degree.

Those online degree providers prey on students who don’t know about these questions. First generation college students, in particular, are encouraged by everyone to go to college. It’s great when they do, and it’s really, really great when they succeed there. But because they’re the first in their family to attend college, they don’t get good advice about what to expect. What’s important when choosing a school, and what’s pretty much the same everywhere? What is the student responsible for vs. what responsibilities does the school have? What do employers look for when hiring college grads? Without this background knowledge, first generation college students are easy pickings for diploma mills and other online frauds.

120

Colleges do have a vested interest in you graduating on time, because that’s one of the metrics that goes in to a number different college ranking schemes - including the all-powerful US News and World Report rankings, as well as US Department of Education statistics.