With wifey maybe not working much in the near future, she is planning on going back to school and working on getting her degree. U of P advertises constanstly but I am skeptical about the actual value of an online type University.
Anybody have any opinions about such a school / degree.
You can probably find some happy campers too if you look.
I think that any school is what you make it. You can pay big bucks to go to Harvard and not learn anything or you can go to a state school and get well educated.
Dunno about that particular school, but getting online credits or degrees are quite viable. The main thing to watch is the accreditation of the school. There is an online education forum on the net. Do a google.
Depending upon the degree there are a lot of reputable online options. For instance I think that Purdue has both Eng and MBA online options. I know that Miss. State has an online MBA. But, you need to make sure that the accreditation is there. For instance, you want an engineering program to have ABET accreditation and an MBA program to have AACSB accreditation. But, for instance, I think that there is an online law school, but it is not ABA approved, so it might not be such a good idea. IIRC there are no ABA approved/accredited online law programs…
I do not believe that U of P programs are accredited by the “major” accreditation boards, but I have not looked into it. Of course, if all she’s interested is learning, then accreditation does not much matter.
What does she want to do?
Hi,
I’ve taught for them since 2001, and have taught just about all their IT courses. The design of their programs is heavily team-oriented, so a big part of her experience will depend on the quality of her teammates in her cohort (the group of people that enter at the same time she does). They have also made a big push to mostly online programs, with the first and last class meetings in class, and the rest online. What major is she considering?
Some of the degree programs work better than others in the mostly online environment - I don’t think the IT courses work very well in this format which is why I haven’t taught much for them recently. The courses are short (5-6 weeks), which means that there isn’t a lot of time to cover the material and so the coverage can tend towards the superficial.
Chris
What does she want to do?
Good question. Right now she is trying to finish up her sophmore year and basically taking basic stuff so she can at least get an Associate of Arts degree. She has been working as a lease analyst in the oil and gas industry. She basically reviews oil and gas leases for accuracy, runs title on tracts of land etc. Pretty specialized stuff that is probably most closely related to legal work. She loves what she does and would like to stay in the industry doing something similar but options are not what they were a few years ago.
I am skeptical about the actual value of an online type University.
Anybody have any opinions about such a school / degree.
I can’t talk specifically about U of P, but as an employer, I’ll offer that I have a tremendous amount of respect for any working adult that takes the time and initiative to pursue their degree while they’re already in the workforce.
I’ll happily consider an on-line degree from someone with some maturity and experience, who had to make some personal sacrifices to get it, alongside someone with a more traditionally obtained degree, even from a top-rated school.
Good for her!
I think that you’re in TX. I’d first check with the state system and their extension service. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have extensive online options.
See for instance http://www.telecampus.utsystem.edu/ or http://www.depts.ttu.edu/distancelearning/
Would paralegal schools be an option? Where are her Fresh/Soph years from? Has she talked to that institution(s) to get their thoughts? Because one needs to be mindful of credits transferring, etc.
my wife began her Masters (Teaching) with U of P but stopped after one semester. The team/online efforts seemed contrived and way too much work.
For example, each week she had to do x number of blog responses, y number of responses to other folks blogs, z number of responses to this and so on and so on . . . some weeks it naturally fit in with the actual topic and course delivery
but often it didn’t so she and her fellow teammates had to contrive contributions
and if her teammates were late in their blog entries responses, she would have to wait to respond to them and so on
and one team member is in Maine and another in CA she’d have to wait for one to wake up and another to get back from work and it was a major pain in the butt.
It was seductive to do this online, but in her case, she was on the computer day and night.
She eventually got her Masters in a conventional manner.
I got my undergrad in business admin from UoP and elected to attend ground campus courses vs. online courses because I simply don’t learn well online. They are accredidated, so there is no concern there. However, there are stigmata about UoP, and I went into the program knowing that. In my opinion they do it to themselves with their banner ad marketing campaigns and the like.
I got through all of my lower division credits between the Navy and Mesa Community College in AZ. I have been in IT since I got out of the Navy and have held multiple industry certifications - MCSE, CCNA, PMP - and knew that I did not want to live my career as a techie. I just don’t have it in me, but I love business. So, rather than get an IT degree I pursued a BSBA with the understanding that I would move on to an eventual MBA at a “reputable” school given the stigmata about UoP.
This was no shortcut, I spent every Tuesday night, and sometimes Thursday nights, in class for 4 hours for 2 years straight. It was not always easy, but it was not always exceedingly difficult. And as other have mentioned, education is always what you make of it. Since getting my degree I have only had one interviewer make mention of my degree in a suspect way. He was a young hotshot VP who was probably a bit too big for his britches and asked if that was the same school that was on all the billboards. I knew right then and there that I would not be offered the job, and if I were, that I would not accept it and work for the jackass.
I am currently looking at MBA programs through Notre Dame, Purdue and Ohio State. They are all within driving distance and have executive programs geared toward the experienced individual. And it is the same MBA that each instituion awards for any program, so it is not an executive MBA, that is just a reference to the structure of the curriculum. If the curriculum format, or online availablity, is the appeal I would recommend exploring state universities that will likely be a good deal cheaper and provide access to funding/grants/financing. UoP was expensive and many schools are now offering similar curriculums to compete with UoP and others. Best of luck to your wife and her pursuit of education!
I got my undergrad in business admin from UoP and elected to attend ground campus courses vs. online courses because I simply don’t learn well online. They are accredidated, so there is no concern there. However, there are stigmata about UoP, and I went into the program knowing that. In my opinion they do it to themselves with their banner ad marketing campaigns and the like.
Accreditation is a tricky subject. U of P has the minimum regional (north central association) accreditation and that allows it to receive federal funds. But in business, for example, the premier accrediting body is the AACSB. U of P is accredited by the ACBSP, an organization created by online for profit universities so they could say they were accredited. The AACSB wouldn’t touch U of P with a ten foot pole. You’d have to be a pretty well informed consumer to read through the hype.
That said U of P does some things well, especially in training. I wouldn’t recommend it for a degree though since there are now a lot of “real” universities offering online degrees for far less money.
I am a prof at a big uni and actually teach in an online MBA program that is AACSB accredited. I think the last time I looked we were about 30% of what Phoenix charges and you get an accredited degree.
The team/online efforts seemed contrived and way too much work.
For example, each week she had to do x number of blog responses, y number of responses to other folks blogs, z number of responses to this and so on and so on . . . some weeks it naturally fit in with the actual topic and course delivery
I hear you regarding the overly contrived online efforts. I got a traditional classroom format MBA while working full-time, and one of the classes had an online component. The class was intended to really emphasize online collaboration. We had a giant semester-long group project that we had to work on, and one thing that we were graded on was how each group met in a virtual chatroom to discuss our project, and we had to have an agenda, purpose, details, action-items, etc. Of course, the logs of these virtual chats were read in their entirety by the professor at a later time, so we had to minimize the whole “Hey Susie, how was your day today?” kind of chat. In fact, physical meetings among our teams was strongly discouraged by the professor, as he was very big on “virtual” everything. That class drove us nuts.
Without AACSB acreditation, I wouldn’t spend my money to be quite honest. I don’t think you will learn anymore than an undergraduate business degree would provide. In order to receive AACSB the class schedule and delivery method must meet a pretty high standard. Even unranked business schools that are AACSB accredited are much more demanding than an online curriculum.
If she seriously wants an MBA, search for accredited part time programs or weekend programs in your area. Otherwise, I would save your money. They simply are not the same, not really even close.
As an employer I would not view it as a “real” degree. If given a choice between a candidate with a U of P degree and one with a more traditional degree (holding all others things constant) the choice would be easy. And considering most job application processes are competitive with many more qualified applicants than openings why would you waste your time with a U of P degree?
No AACSB, no ABET, their credits no accepted by other schools (of course since other decent schools are accredited)…
Their argument that accreditations are bogus because done by academic folks with no connection to reality doesn’t hold water since the accr. boards are a mixture of academic folks and industry/corp. folks…
I wouldn’t waste neither money nor time/energy, since most employers as P-Rex said won’t even look at that as a real degree.