Of all the things that concern the most in the OP, I am most concerned that one would believe that The University of Phoenix is an institution with a campus and/or offices on Phoenix.
I always thought they just picked an imaginative name that one might associate with an actual brick and mortar institution.
I always thought the name was just meant to evoke one’s sad halted career rising from the ashes after attending their institution.
They do have offices in Phoenix.
Scroll down.
Nice “campus”.
I’m sure the classrooms, if there are any, are fetid little dens crammed into office gogolplexes, but the fact remains that the University of Phoenix actually does have a physical location and you concern for mrald is (at least in this case) misplaced. He’s right to suppose there’s someone in Phoenix, AZ he can yell at, were he to make it. He never suggested that the U of P would have a spacious green and stately buildings covered with ivy.
Did you suppose the faculty and staff lived completely in cyberspace? Is Phoenix so pastoral and romantic a locale it’s inconceivable that whatever six web programmers and one weary secretary make up the operation must really be somewhere else?
Just curious. I have my doubts about U of P’s quality, but I never suspected they were really in Lexington, KY or Duluth, MN.
When I was doing my undergraduate studies, I was taking a required lit course (required, but I loved lit, creative writing, and so forth) and was sitting in my class close to dismissal time patiently, jotting down notes while the professor outlined some general instructions for the final term paper.
I had to get to work after class so I was scribbling down my notes as he talked and a portion of my mind was on grabbing something to eat before I headed out to work.
However, when the prof wrapped it up and said, “Are there any questions?” one guy piped up, “Do spelling and grammar count?”
In all seriousness, he asked this question, in front of a lecture hall of over 100 students.
Everyone - and I mean everyone - broke up laughing hysterically. The prof was one of those serious-but-I-have-my-humorous-moments guys, and even he lost it after trying to keep a straight face for a short few moments.
Ya know, I don’t recall seeing the guy at final exam time. 
mrald didn’t they send you the APA manual?
I’m attending the University of Phoenix. The point of the first few courses is to get you accustomed the quicker pace of their online courses and for most people who have been working for a few years, getting used to being a student again. The courses are only 5 weeks long and it is a lot of work to cram into 5 weeks. It isn’t easy at all.
I am working in psychiatric research at the moment and have to use APA style all the time so this is a cakewalk for me. The first course is pretty heavy on plagiarism but if you ask me they could spend more time on it. Half the people I was assigned to work with didn’t get the difference between quoting and paraphrasing someone and couldn’t cite correctly.
In some defense of the university, it is for profit so it is more expensive and they do push you to join, but the online courses are run supremely well (IME) and they stay on you to attend classes and participate. Which is good for their demographic (working adults mostly) who have a lot of pressing concerns to get distracted by. The professors I’ve had are reasonable and the counselors seem genuinely willing to help with anything they can.
One more note: MLA and APA formats are not miles apart, so once you learn one, it’s not too hard to learn the other.
Format guides are widely and freely available. Why, I do believe I just saw an ad for one at the bottom of this thread…
Woud that be the writing styles handbook? Yeah. But it differs form the instructor’s direction most of the time.
I will catch on…
The university does require each new student to obtain a copy of The Little Brown Handbook and they have a writing lab that allows any student to submit his or her work for review within 48 hours. The resources are there. Additionally, I’ve rarely had an instructor give me any unclear or evasive response to a question I’ve asked. There is a survey at the end of each course, and each instructor I have attended class with has been a highly qualified professional. In my opinion, this is an unfounded complaint.
mrald
I take courses there when I have the time and have completed just over 20 of them. As I recall, one of the very first courses they had me take was a basic writing review. As Jaade says, they make you get a copy of the Little Brown Book that lays out the APA and MLA formats as well as one other that no one seems to use. There is also a service that will help you if you need it.
Aside from the class where they were actually teaching the APA format, I’ve never had an instructor get seriously picky about how things were written.
Judging from your OP, you could use some help with spelling and grammar and UOP is trying to force you to improve. What else would you want?
Testy
Let me defend the somewhat incoherent OP for a minute.
The reason why places like University of Phoenix and various small state schools insist on absurdities like APA/MLA citation format (or even document format) and have strict, often bizarre, plagiarism policies is because they are not academic-oriented educational insitutions. They are career-oriented educational institutions, and as such bring people down to the lowest common denominator of the “entry-level professional” by enforcing rules where others would use their head. If you cannot communicate your citation clearly, or it does not contain enough information, you are not citing properly, and should be marked down. If you wish to use one of the standard formats, it should be your choice. After all, you do not intend to publish your paper in any academic journal and your target audience is just the professor. Your goal should be to communicate clearly and effectively, and your citations should contain all the information required to easily identify the work cited and verify your citation.
My state university’s mandatory resume/proposal writing class insisted on a specific format for everything, with a fixed layout, fixed fonts, fixed wording, fixed number of pages and page order, fixed section titles, fixed everything. It was repeated over and over that this fixed format is the only correct way to write a resume/proposal. When I asked how can they teach something so absurd, the reply was that if they would teach general principles of resume/proposal writing instead, the majority of students would not be able to produce a passable document on their own after taking the class.
As for plagiarism policies, they arise from having a plethora of meaningless general education classes and filler classes that differ only in the catalog description. General purpose English, history, economics, philosophy, etc. classes basically amount to an iota of material any respectable 8th grader knows by heart and mostly consist of a lively discussion of politics, current events and what I call “touchy subjects” (feminism, racism, environmentalism, epistemology, etc.) . It’s almost insulting to write papers for these classes and if I wasn’t able to hammer out some bullshit paper at 4 pages per hour on any subject, I’d probably plagiarize too.
My university’s plagiarism policy included a clause which states that submitting one assigment to two different classes is plagiarism and is as reprehensible as copying without attribution. Except it is your own work, and in a proper academic setting it is hard to imagine a situation where one paper can be submitted to two different classes for two different assignments. Says something about the school’s curriculum, doesn’t it?
It depends on what classes you’re taking at the time. I had to write an exemplification paper for English Composition and the topic I picked was life in an English village during the 14th century and my research paper at the end of the semester was on the origins of Roman military dominance. Both papers were in MLA format and I imagine that it would be possible to recycle them for a history course if I were to convert them to CMS format.
Marc
It depends on what classes you’re taking at the time. I had to write an exemplification paper for English Composition and the topic I picked was life in an English village during the 14th century and my research paper at the end of the semester was on the origins of Roman military dominance. Both papers were in MLA format and I imagine that it would be possible to recycle them for a history course if I were to convert them to CMS format.
Marc
I may not care for APA, and that’s simply because I’m unaccustomed to it, I don’t think it’s absurd to insist on standards for paper formatting whether it is APA, CMS, or MLA. You are aware that many of these formats have been adopted by academia, right? If you’re going to major in English then you’re going to have to adopt MLA format, if you’re going for a History degree then CMS is the standard, and if you’re an Anthropologist then you better become good friends with APA because these formats are now the academic standard in those particular fields.
That’s only one of the goals of an English course. You’re also expected to be able to analyze the written word and write in the proper format in addition to effective communication.
Marc