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[quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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