The University of Phoenix is holding its own

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Southern New Hampshire University or gtfo

SNHU and UMGC are non-profit and University of Phoenix is for-profit.

This is the critical distinction. For-profit higher ed companies like UoP are all about signing students up to take out loans that they often can’t afford on the (faulty) premise that their degrees will pay for themselves. It’s horrible. Read “Lower Ed” by Tressie McMillan Cottom for more.

That’s not to say that someone with a degree from UoP can’t be impressive—on the contrary, I would guess most are, given the motivation it takes to pursue a degree while working/parenting/etc., as is the case for most UoP students. But they likely would be impressive even without the credential, and UoP’s incentive is to convince them that the credential is worth the crazy debt they take on to get it.

I think the large non-profit online schools exist to subsidize their state systems. They are still just trying to get bodies they can charge, the only difference is where the excess money goes.

[Anonymous]

West East South North (WESN) Uni covers all directions. Da Best!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Usually successful University of Phoenix graduates are already adults who are already employed and fairly successful, who need a degree to move up.

This is accurate. They are checking a box getting a degree that their employer likely helped fund.

Less likely is that Univ of Phoenix is setting 22 yo down a path of success.

[Anonymous]

I have successfully hired from UMGC for project management and IT, mostly cyber. Many, not all, are former military.

We also hire from community college for cyber, very low level cyber.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a job that involves me writing down where a variety of fairly successful (and, in some cases, very successful) people in non-STEM jobs earned their degrees.

In the past year, three people reported having degrees from the University of Arizona, two had degrees from Arizona State, and five had degrees from the University of Phoenix.

Obviously, the University of Arizona and Arizona State have a better reputation. The fact that the University of Phoenix is coming on strong may have more to do with people needing to fill resume slots than educational quality.

But it's interesting to see that, based purely on alumni career progress, the University of Phoenix seems to be on the rise.

And who are these people?

And for full disclosure, what if your role with the Univer$ity of Phoenix?

I’m the OP. I have nothing to do with the University of Phoenix. This is just a funny, news-of-the-weird thing that I started to notice.

I personally know an intelligent, college-educated person who got an UoP MBA because she actually wanted that kind of knowledge. I don’t know her well and don’t know what she thought about the classes

I assume that, in most cases, this is really a credentialism thing. People who have no real need for a degree may get a degree from UoP just to meet a meaningless requirement. But the hilarious irony is that, by selling what could be weak degrees to those people, UoP is developing a respectable-looking group of alumni.

As for the UoP alumni, here are a few I just looked up (and aren’t ones I noticed in connection with my work):

Vela, a school district administrator - https://www.montereycoe.org/about/contact/cabinet/

A chief nursing officer - https://www.conehealth.com/news/news-search/2022-news-releases/antrum-named-chief-nursing-officer/

The CEO of a health care provider organization - https://www.wmcarey.edu/news/2022-05-11/dr-geroldean-dyses-family-establishes-wcu-scholarship

A school district CFO - https://www.episd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=76&ModuleInstanceID=101&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=47384&PageID=145

McElmurray, a health care executive - https://healthcareexecutive.org/archives/may-june-2022/executive-news

I also found many articles about the UoP president resigning a couple of days ago, so, there are obvious issues, but the alumni I’ve noticed in connection with my job were in different, probably higher-paid types of jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have successfully hired from UMGC for project management and IT, mostly cyber. Many, not all, are former military.

We also hire from community college for cyber, very low level cyber.

Someone started a thread a few days ago about a coding skills verification test, showing that, for example, UVA alumni who took the test had great results.

It would be interesting to develop a collection of “work readiness” tests, including a general teachability tests.

Get data for all 4 million U.S. high school graduates, including high school grades, standardized test scores, a family support score, and a general physical and mental health score.

Five years later, give the work readiness tests to all 4 million people in that group.

My guess would that, when the UoP is competing head to head with regular bachelor’s degrees programs, the UofP gets a wildly different group of incoming kids.

My guess would be that, everything else held constant, the very best schools, through their own efforts, add about 50 percent to absoute employability, relative to the worst accredited nonprofit schools (example: really weak community colleges) for readily teachable technical skills and 20 percent for other skills, and that most of the rest of the gap comes from the intelligence, health, academic preparedness and family support level of the incoming kids.

My prediction would be that a UofP type school probably does 5 percent or 10 percent worse at adding to preparedness than the worst in-person accredited nonprofit schools.

But it’s possible that a UofP type school might look a lot better in comparisons of its performance relative to the performance of nonprofit, fairly selective programs that suddenly went online due to COVID. From the what my son describes his experience as a freshman, at a semi-locked-down in-person program, engagement was pretty low. Some kids simply drifted away.

The streaming systems at his high school and university have worked well, but I could imagine some really classy but broke colleges are way behind online degree mills in terms of tech.

So, it will be interesting to see if the real competition over the next few years will be between kids who went to better and worse colleges, or simply between kids who stayed engaged enough to meet class requirements, whether the classes were any good or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach for UMGC, and it feels like for profit in some ways -- the "advisors" upsell having students take too many courses

I have had many students who were not prepared for college, and the university policies try to help them through anyway. I am not entirely opposed, but I think the better plan would be a pre-college program rather than saddling professors with students who can't even write coherently. They also coddle plagiarism and force us to allow students to resubmit even if a large chunk was copied verbatim. I questioned this and was chastised by the VP of academic affairs for not acknowledge the student's "good work" (the 60% non plagiarized that was actually not good work)! Then she compared my accidental; misspelling of her name to the student's plagiarism, suggesting that she could infer that I had ulterior motives of demeaning her by misspelling the name, so if mine my misspelling was accidental, we should assume the student's gross plagiarism was also accidental. It's insane. (And, I am someone who typically looks for teaching moments with small infractions).

All this aside, I usually have a few to several good and sometimes great students each class. Lots of people want these online schools for the flexibility because they are working adults. Some of them are college ready and prepared to put in the work.

But, I would say, many of the classes are watered down at UMGC. They won't require any materials that can't be acquired publicly on the internet. No textbooks, etc. They also won't let us purchase materials for the class. Want to study a play? Enjoy Shakespeare or pre-20thC public domain (& that goes over really well with the students who aren't prepared for college). I add to my survey course, but it's still not the equivalent work-wise to other places at which I've taught. Students frequently say it was one of their hardest classes.

I think, though, UMGC has the best reputation of the online schools.

Thank you for your honest assessment.

[Anonymous]

I'm in a position where I have final review of pre-screened CVs before hiring. While UoP is not a deal-breaker, it is a big red flag for me. I realize it is/was the only option for some, but going against an equally qualified candidate with credentials from a not-for-profit or accredited public school, the UoP candidate is going to lose. I realize this is a bias, and may not be fair, but it is one many of us in similar positions share.

[Anonymous]

Strayer!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Strayer!

Lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a job that involves me writing down where a variety of fairly successful (and, in some cases, very successful) people in non-STEM jobs earned their degrees.

In the past year, three people reported having degrees from the University of Arizona, two had degrees from Arizona State, and five had degrees from the University of Phoenix.

Obviously, the University of Arizona and Arizona State have a better reputation. The fact that the University of Phoenix is coming on strong may have more to do with people needing to fill resume slots than educational quality.

But it's interesting to see that, based purely on alumni career progress, the University of Phoenix seems to be on the rise.

Quite honestly I’m not surprised. There are many very smart people who didn’t fit into the traditional college path early on that use these online programs to check the degree box. They’re going to do well. I’m sure if you looked at the performance of the entire cohort it would be much less impressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Usually successful University of Phoenix graduates are already adults who are already employed and fairly successful, who need a degree to move up.

This is accurate. They are checking a box getting a degree that their employer likely helped fund.

Less likely is that Univ of Phoenix is setting 22 yo down a path of success.

+1

It’s a waste of money for real education. It’s just for checking a box at the masters level.