anyone have any direct or indirect experience with online universities, or colleges with online programs?
i’ve been considering finishing my degree for quite some time now. with over 100 credit hours scattered around, i can’t be too far away from one. unfortunately my schedule more or less prohibits me getting a degree via traditional means in any less than 10 years.
i’ve been reading reviews of university of phoenix online. lots of mixed opinions, makes me wonder of their degrees are about as useful as an a+ certification. however, most of the negatives i’ve read about are the same stuff you deal with at a traditional university. i had some very shitty instructors at u.t., and i had some fantastic ones. you’ll get that anywhere.
i strongly recommend staying away from ‘bob’s online house of diplomas.’ the diplomas come on the back of used napkins… better than toilet paper i guess.
hey don’t knock bob.. i read all the time about fortune 500 execs that get canned for having bogus items on their resume. then they get some outragous severance pay!! pretty smart plan if you think about it… make big $$$, run a company into the ground, get fired, get phat retirement for it all.
I’m not quite sure why people still go to u of phoenix or any number of online only universities. Most good schools these days, you know, real ‘brick and mortar’ universities that have been established for awhile have online programs in addition to their in-person programs. I’ve been working on my grad degree at CTI at DePaul and have been incredibly pleased and surprised. And even though DePaul is this old, respected school – there was a rapid admissions process and I didn’t even have to take the GRE. Even better is that DePaul CTI is about 3 blocks from my office, but not everyone can have that convenience.
They’ve sunk a lot of money into their tech program (communications, technology and information) so the program is *really* incredible and so much better than anything I had at BG, even though BG and DePaul are around 34 and 35 of midwestern schools according to US News and World Report. And since we’re talking about online degrees – you got it – many of their cti degrees have an online only option.
Like most apps developed in house at universities of the caliber that I can afford, their distance learning app is kind of clunky, even though a bit better than blackboard. However, all of my classes so far, including the ones without online only sections, have been recorded and put on the their course-on-line website for me to use at my whim. I’ve also discovered a way to get around their shoddy drm to put the video on my ipod, which became really handy when I was in Japan for 2.5 weeks. Everything else for the class ends up online, syllabus, grades, course documents, announcements, chat, forum, etc.
Most importantly, I’ve really enjoyed my professors so far (for you bg kids, Dr. Miller’s son teaches at DePaul) and am really happy I signed up. I feel like I’ve learned a lot – I don’t know if that is due to the actual school being much better (which I think it is) or that I have a different attitude towards grad school than I did for undergrad. I mean, hell, I actually study multiple days before an exam and start/ finish programming assignments 2 and even 3 days before they are due. It’s incredible. Oh and another thing – they have a pretty long list of different majors from video game engineering to bioinformatics to network engineering and security to computer science to video prodution. Like I said, they’re sinking a bunch of money into the school. My plan right now is to get straight A’s for an MS in IS (project management and security specializations) and then go somewhere ivy-leaguish for a non-profit or ‘social entrepreneur’ MBA.
Anyway, the moral of this story is to look first at the online programs of well established universities all over the country / world (did I mention that DePaul is cheaper than Univeristy of Phoenix?) before settling for bob’s house of online degrees.
i’ve discovered that cleveland state and university of toledo both have online options now. u.t. may be convenient in that i wouldn’t have to bother with transferring credits.
i’ve decided against u of phoenix after talking to the “admissions counselor”…
i like sushi. more updates please. no more begging.
Myers University in Cleveland and Franklin University in Columbus both have online-only degree programs in business and tech-related fields. I’m looking into them. I like the fact that it’s an actual school, so that if I have problems I can see a real person face-to-face.