Recently, the New York Times published an article about the University of Phoenix that condemned the school for providing low-overhead education that focused more of the profits of it’s parent company than on educating students. The full article can be found here. The schools president responded with this rebuttal here.
So beings it’s now out in the open, I figured I should contribute my two cents on the issue.
I do not completely agree with the NYTimes article. Not because I think UOP is the greatest university ever created, but becuase he focused on issues beyond my control. I do however agree, that the quality of the education that UOP deliveres is sub-par and for these reasons.
- Admission Requirements = Check Writing
If you have the ability to write them their check every 5 weeks, they will get you a college degree. I have had teachers tell the class at the first night that they will do anything to ensure that you complete the course. This is college, some people are not going to have the ability to do the work. If everyone did, then the college degree becomes no more valuable that completing the 6th grade. By not having any academic checks or controls on it’s incoming students (specifically those with prior college experience) then university ensures that the level of intelligence in a basic class room is so low that even the most gifted instructors can’t have a hope of really imparting all the knowledge students need on a given subject - Excessive Team Focus
UOP has so much wrapped up in the “Learning Team” concept that they can disenfranchise students who are academically more capable than their class mates. You are given two options when you work with a team, either let them turn in poor quality work and share in the poor grade for it, or you re-do their work and ensure your own grade. Either way the poor performing members of the team do not learn anything more, and do not understand that their work level is not sufficient. Talk to the counselors on this issue, (which I have many times), and they will suggest that you switch teams. I have 21 people in my current class (I believe) and I only really respect the academic abilities of 1 of them. 2 people can’t make a team under the UOP guidelines, so unless someone transfers in, someone gets smarter, or I give up fighting, I don’t see this getting resolved any time soon. - Lowered Expectations
Much like the SNL skit that used to run by this name, UOP has forced everyone to lower their expectations. I have seen papers get turned in, including from teams I was unfortunately a part of, that I would have found unacceptable from a junior high or high school student. Yet, this was in a 400 level class at the end of a bachelors program. Their is no excuse for this level of work being found acceptable unless the expecatations have been lowered so far that this is now acceptable. I showed one such paper to my academic counselor, who after she picked her jaw up off the floor, stated her surprise at the level of quality. However, the paper only suffered a 1/2 point loss in grade, and no comment was made about the quality of the writing. Now, thankfully not all of the instructors would have been so generous, but in my experience I have had only 1 instructor who consistently demanded the highest quality of work. 1, out of the 15 classes I have completed.Some people have told me that the writing style shouldn’t be graded, even some instructors have alluded to it. But that’s crap. These are people getting business degrees, and could reasonably be expected to have to create various papers for their employers, most of which are used to convince management to follow their idea. Would the CEO of your company really like to read a 3 page paper about quality management where 3 consecutive sentences started with the words, second, third, and fourth? Or give a presentation where during the introduction phase of the presentation, you said “This is the introduction where we are going to explain what the purpose of the presentation is”? I can’t make this kind of stuff up, I have really seen it in presentations. And more than once. Not only did it not get corrected, but the grade was not penalized for it. God forbide that someone on a project I work on does a presentation like that to my boss. I would have to shoot them just to save face.
Overall, the UOP experience has left me very disheartened. I do not intend to walk through the graduation proceedings because to be honest I am not really proud that my degree will say UOP on it. I am almost going to have to go back and get my masters somewhere else (even though it won’t really help me in my career), but just to say that I was able to actually handle the work load at someplace people might respect. When it comes right down to it, the NYTimes article is probably right. If the Apollo Group, which owns UOP, is really focused on achieving higher profits, then lowering the academic qualifications and expectations is probably a good way to do it. But they are lowering the value of a college degree for all people, and are giving these students who do graduate a sense that they have bettered themselves when they probably haven’t. Because from what I have seen if the people going through this course feel like they actually earned a college degree when this is all done, then they didn’t really have any business attending college in the first place.
