I did enjoy meeting people from all walks of life, all over the world. However, I also saw a grossly wide range of educational professionalism in the students. In the introductory mandatory writing course, for example,there were a number of classmates whom could not grasp the idea of plagiarism being unethical. With a plagiarism assignment graded by those peers, it was difficult to not feel like higher educational learning was moving along for oneself at a progressively intellectually challenging pace.
I remember experiencing this at a private religious university. At the time, my hyper-religious mind was blown to see students outright cheating in the Testing Center.
Since then I've been exposed to additional perspectives on plagiarism. It is an extremely deep and nuanced topic. A few years out of school, I ended up mentoring and then teaching college students who seem to match the sort of person you describe. This was a huge shock at first.
The more I learned about these students, the more I learned about the sheer variety of perceptions involved: One person's fairness concept is, to another person or group, a latent power dynamic which ought to be questioned.
Or, this person's concern for the big-picture ethical questions is this other person's small-picture roadblock in an economic problem which seems more urgent with each passing moment. You want a big picture? Can you justify it in seconds, with something that's not simply a subjective perception or largely-covert moral construct of your own?
Yet another person's assumption of perpetually commonly-understood contract is another's baroque exercise in cleverness and flexibility. It's the sneaky laser dance from _Ocean's Twelve_, and _that_ kind of challenge is, psychologically speaking, extremely energizing for them. Don't think they didn't notice how things work in the "real" world! (When these two see each other face to face--so to speak--there are harsh outcomes)
Anyway--sorry to hear about your experience & thank you for sharing so that others can be more educated about their choice of institution.
The purpose of learning to write is to make yourself a formidable communicator. If you can independently analyze a new topic to learn something new and apply the results of those learnings towards a particular goal, you can be amazingly effective in everything you aim for. But if you plagiarize every assignment you rob yourself of your own training of this critically important competency.
Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you.
Advocating cheating because it helps a student from possibly lesser means achieve their 'check-box' in education is missing the point, in a very serious way.
We can always strive to have an open mind, to try and be sympathetic to the plight of others - but the Truth is pretty much still the Truth.
Plagiarism is not a controversial subject in the context you've mentioned, it's just wrong in every sense.
More pragmatically - if someone is in a situation wherein their need for the 'checkbox degree' outweighs their actual need to learn something, then they almost assuredly should not be there. It's pointless for society to be spending a lot of energy and resources only for people to waste them, and it ruins the credibility of the system. I'm not unaware of the fact that a lot of Uni may feel like jumping through hoops, but even then, if the hoops are merely jumped through, we're learning something. Uni is not meant to be enlightening at every step, it's also, like everything a grind.
A 'free public Uni' is going to attract a wide swath of students, and there will necessarily be all sorts of issues, probably very low graduation rates, challenges in communicating the material. I totally support the idea, at the same time, we should strive to maintain the credibility of our own ideals and institutions. Universities are there to help develop character, they're not just about 'absorbing data'. In the long run, it's worth it.
In my time at university, I knew many capable and bright people who cheated once in a while, but only in well-picked cases, not as their general policy. For example if there was a mandatory bullshit subject, or something that they regarded as worthless waste of time etc. and rather spent the time on the important things.
I think it's a very naive shielded "good boy" view of the world that there is some simple rigid moral rule like never lie, never cheat etc. It may work in a benevolent environment like rich protective parents and never dealing with adversity. One has to develop one's own sense of justice.
This can be easily misconstrued. The point isn't to believe in nothing, be exploitative and selfish. Rather, be mindful and don't just blindly follow someone's bullshit. Indeed much of the purpose of education is to kill this ability and to certify the capability for blind obedience and jumping through hoops without ever questioning it.
One guy I mentioned in the above parts is actually really honest in general and sometimes I wonder how he gets away with it in corporate environments, saying straight nos, not putting up with colleagues criticizing him for working too fast etc. I've usually been much more careful but he's more successful. And it's an art of picking your battles, refusing bullshit, sometimes openly sometimes secretly (at least don't lie to yourself), sometimes making a stink, sometimes just complaining to fellow students, knowing the unwritten lore of which courses are unofficially considered "cheats allowed" by most talented students and probably the teacher included.
The world is complicated, but for shielded kids with underdeveloped social skills it can be hard to learn how widespread "rule bending" is in real adult life and how much this is basically known, expected and part of life.
Again, this is not to say be selfish and disregard others. Rather, think for yourself, know when something is bullshit (there is lots of fancy official institutional stamped-and-signed authoritative bullshit out there, often coming from people who know it's bullshit but either don't care of feel their hands are tied).
You are making this way too complicated.
It's honesty vs. dishonesty.
Those of us playing on team honesty are right to view the dishonest as playing on the opposite team.
Which team is actually morally right, is the complex issue.
There are deep and nuanced ways in which people tell themselves and others how ethical they think they are taking credit for other people's work.
It's not really something that is up for discussion whether it's bad. The rules are pretty clear, and for serious higher education the punishments are extremely harsh. And deservedly so.
What does it even matter what it says on your diploma if you cheated your way to getting it?
These people might pat themselves on the chest for being oh so clever in subverting the system or whatever, but what does it really mean? That you're good at cheating, unwilling to do the work, and gladly take credit for other people's work. In other words, being a useless turd.
You could have been studying astronomy, physics, math ... but instead all that you really proved is that you're good at cheating.
But I don't see how this is more nuanced that being honest or dishonest. I really pride myself on being able to see where a lot of opposing viewpoints are coming from, but I can't see how any of the people you describe are doing much more than lying to themselves about what they're doing.
"Using counterfeit money is arguably OK because some of the people who use it might need it, or see the need to earn a living as a needless waste of time as long as there's idiots who'll accept fake currency".
Then you would have lost your mind during some of my upper division STEM courses, where the normal class average is in the mid 40% on the high end and high 30s most semesters. We had a class average of ~83% in one of them, and when the professor was in total disbelief about how blatant they were being (several didn't even try not to get 100%) he got upset and decided to stop re-using the previous year's exams that were circulating amongst the Frats/Sororities and the class average dropped back down to low 30% for the last 2 Midterms and finals. This personally helped me as I got my average to a B+ range after my Lab scores were included.
Academia, be it online of IRL, it always going to have that element of corruption, there has just been so much money to be made that it drew the worst from other sectors into its administrations. Eric Weinstein goes into the depth about the artificial scarcity within STEM that was created in the US to favour a 'race to the bottom' approach to wages since the the 90s, and he went to both MIT and Harvard!
My best professors were often disillusioned and jaded after having been in Academia for a few decades, one even having to petition and protest to the Dean of their departments to be paid for having taught back to back Summer courses during the budget cuts. A person who went to Oxford for his BSc, no less...
All of this is taking place while hearing about some high ranking official or executive is in the process of being disgraced for having plagiarized their Masters or PhD thesis decades ago, which begs the question how the hell did it pass back then? Don't they all have to go through dissertations defenses and have academic advisors who are PhD or Post Docs in the very same department?
I won't even talk about the administrative led favoritism and vetting they did for foreign students during my time there, either.
I'm a proponent of of Online Learning in general, especially as its disrupting the Brick and Mortar University exploitation model; you can now get a Masters in Electrical Engineering from CU Boulder entirely via Coursera for $20k with installments and Financial Aid available where applicable, whereas that's not even the total cost of a single year of Undergraduate studies there. Which really sucks for incoming students, but could be a net boon if they can start reaching the undergrad degrees in time now that most Universities are having to do that due to COVID.
I just think its worth keeping in mind that this institution (academia) doesn't deserve to be regarded anything more than the corrupt money-pit that it is, which occasionally avails itself to allow brilliant minds to excel in their field, after having exploited them to publish and use their labs until the can make a name for themselves and operate outside of it. I just think about the wasted Human capital, talent, and drive that you only have when you're young, naive and idealistic and determined to make make a difference in the World.
You're welcome!
Yes, many schools will not accept coursework from nationally accredited universities. This includes coursework from UoPeople. You will not be able to apply for many graduate schools as well. A degree from UoPeople definitely comes with limits, and I wish the school was a little more forward about that. (There are lots of discussions about this on the internal social network.)
Sorry, pet peeve. It's "who". "Classmates" are the ones doing "could not grasp" instead of "could not grasp" being done to them.
"He" could not grasp. => "Who" could not grasp.
I should vote for "him" => "Whom" should I vote for?
It might help to define what form of plagiarism you encountered as there are some behaviors that count as plagiarism (at least were counted as such back in my college ethics class) which I never found any valid reasoning for. I have no difficulty understanding the ethical issues of passing off someone else's work as your own, but you can also plagiarize by passing off your own work as your own.
For me UoPeople is a blessing. I'm able to pursue a higher education all while working and supporting my family. This will give me so many new opportunities for better careers when I eventually move back to the states.
The educational method is challenging. I do like peer assessment, but I feel that some peers don't really try when grading. I like to give grades that are warranted, good or bad. Being told my work is not good with no correction is highly vexing.
I hope to continue to grow as a student with UoPeople and see others do the same.
The students are mind numbingly average. (But don't worry they will let you know what college they went to 12 years ago)
Heck if the job requires any communication, you might be better off finding someone humble or someone who needs to prove themselves.
Or maybe the best of these students go on to work at companies that pay 250k/yr and I just don't meet them.
Your specific example of plagiarism is odd; I'm not sure what's difficult to grasp there. But wide ranging dedication (or professionalism if you prefer to call it that) is pretty standard at brick and mortar universities - it's pretty standard for a subset of people to prefer the partying and socialising aspects, and also pretty standard for quite a lot of people to drop out altogether.
If you steal a design for a jet turbine, you still have to learn how it works and you add that understanding to your personal/corporate skillset. Basically you have learned a secret.
If you have someone write your college essay for you, then you probably do so in order to avoid putting in the work to write the essay yourself. Basically, you have learned nothing.
I know there's nuance to both but I think your argument is overly-reductive.
Ultimately, however, I found the entire thing way too tedious - full of the classic "make-work" and silly hoops. The level of pedagogy was very basic.
I dream of (and am actively working towards) a day where the computer's potential as a new educational medium is fully realized, rather than the current parade of attempts at transplanting a brick and mortar classroom into a remote asynchronous delivery system.
One language app I tried for a few minutes was a VR app that put you, for example, on a train, and you had to have a relevant conversation. It was cool, not sure how effective because the GearVR I used at the time made me sick too quickly.
One of the distinguishing features of computers is easy simulation. Humans learn well by direct, tight, interaction with a system – poking at a thing to see how it works. Tight feedback loops are how we quickly build intuitions.
Explorable Explanations [0] are a great extant example of what I mean, but we can do more... Imagine a "textbook" constructed around a well built-simulator (extant example, Earth Primer [1]). Sections of the textbook would present the simulator configured in a pre-set state, with various simplifications and initial conditions. Students can poke and prod these simulators, reset them, test out new states, and answer questions. Assignments could be on the order of "Given Sim[Initial Conditions] figure out what gets you to Sim[Desired State]".
Current explorables are lovely, but (usually) incredibly bespoke. One concrete improvement would be to produce an OpenSim standard, which would allow other content creators to embed and customize these sims to construct new narratives.
Another powerful computer affordance is extreme specificity – a system should be able to build a representation of a learner's current knowledge / skill graph, and figure out a (or many) shortest path(s) from current knowledge to desired knowledge, scoped to that user's interests. (Many LMS systems attempt this, but we're still in the early, clunky days).
Next we have non-linearity. Most textbooks and courses impose a false idea of topic dependence. Yes, there are some intrinsic dependencies, but there are many MANY more ways (orderings) of moving through a learning space than your chapter textbook suggests.
I can go on like this forever. I myself am currently focused on constructing usable knowledge graphs (and localizing incoming students on them), and simulations students can easily play around with to build powerful intuition. For the latter, we've found the wealth of STEM tools available in Python to be a huge boon. We (I work for an ed-tech non-profit startup) usually teach students some programming, and then have them start building models (physics simulations) or interacting with existing toolkits (such as, recently, the Rosetta protein modeling suite). These tools act as a forcing function for real-world relevance, and allow for direct intuition building over rote memorization. More effective, and much more engaging.
To address your comment: VR (and IMHO, AR) look to have a lot of potential in the future, though they are still in their infancy. I think there's a lot of potential for the humanities to provide more immersive experiences of places and time periods. (Re humanities, simulations also work quite well. Mock trials, political re-enactments, etc. There's a reason simulation games are so popular...)
[0] https://explorabl.es/ [1] https://www.earthprimer.com/ [2] https://rosettacommons.org/
I assume you already know about PLATO, yes?
My ideas aren't novel, but every decade we try again and hope all the pieces are in place to start something which grows and thrives.
This online learning site is eligible for regional accreditation as of 2020, but they really play up the eligibility in a way that seems suspect. They aren’t clear if they have even applied, but they have 5 years to apply until they have to have a redetermination of eligibility.
Not saying this is a scam, but it feels like a scam.
This site was very hard to find, for what it’s worth.
https://www.uopeople.edu/student-experience/quality/accredit...
Not directly related to your specific concern, but every attempt to make a open / democratized degree has felt like that to me, unfortunately.
Example: There was an online degree program I saw that awarded a real, regionally accredited degree from a state university. The degree and course work were exactly the same, but the online program was basically open. No admission requirements except to pay for and pass some pre-requisites that would then grant you access to the rest of the degree. The equivalent brick and motar program went through the typical admissions process.
My first thought: "this sounds very close to for-profit school".
However, UoPeople is different in that it's much, much less instructor led. They use a "peer learning" pedagogical approach. It's something I quite dislike about the school. I consider it to be poorly implemented and leads to problems like "revenge grading." However, I tolerate it because it allows me to study in a structured environment for less than I'd pay at my local community college.
It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree.
To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. If the for-profit institution actually had a good reputation, I can imagine they could also implement more restrictive policies. But the way academia works, a large part of prestige comes with history - and this makes it nearly impossible for new schools to break into this echelon of elites. I suspect it's also for the same reason that for-profit schools are not able to consistently attract talent in terms of instruction, since the ones who can would prefer to be employed by more prestigious institutions.
During a hotly contested political debate in my city a person who called himself a doctor (psych therapist, to be precise) showed up at a council meeting and threatened a city council member from my district.
Being the data-fluent person I am I offered to help, so I pulled all of the person in question's educational, legal, and accrediting history to see what would turn up.
It turned out that the person was a state employee before moving to my state but was fired after burning a car for insurance fraud during a divorce. In fairness to him he admitted to that crime and paid his fines, restitution, and community service and what not, but he could no longer work for the government in his previous role (police) after being convicted. So he managed to get himself into an online psych program like the one you're describing (from a state university, but awfully scam-looking), which got him an Education degree, not a medical degree. In short, he could have been a high school guidance counselor and that's about it. But what his online undergrad and master's degrees in psych education did get him was the ability to make his entry into a PhD program look legitimate. But wait, you say, what would make any PhD program accept such a person who had a sketchy online undergrad and master's degree?
Presumably it's a lot easier to stomach such a PhD candiate if the university in question is in the African nation of Malawi, and is affiliated with the evangelical church that the person in question attends in the US. The Malawi university was one of the African universities that was churning out PhDs in suspect STEM disciplines back in the early 2000s to go around publishing papers about "intelligent design" if you remember those days. If you don't, it was the latest in a long line of hare brained evangelical attempts to end-around Charles Darwin in textbooks in the early 2000s. To this day, the person in question advertises himself as a "Christian hypnotherapist" providing all of the usual counseling services, and has an ID in the government medical provider database so he can accept Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance payments. The state I live in has since tightened up applications for medical licenses for people moving in from out of state. Previously, they had what seemed to be a fast-track process for people licensed in other states that did not involve re-checking educational credentials (that was in the late 90s/early 00s).
So I could discern from looking at all of this that there was likely some sort of coach, seminar, consultant, or similar that was training people on how to do all of this back then. If not, this guy planned the whole thing as his escape from the car burning bit and new career as a psychiatrist with shady credentials. First he got the state university degree, then the state university online masters which was fairly worthless, then the shady online PhD from Africa, then as soon as the ink was dry on his conditional (based on criminal background) therapist license in the state he lived in he moved to my state, and applied for a new license based on his existing license in his previous state, all in an attempt to get out from under the criminal record and reinvent himself as a shady psych therapist.
And it worked! As far as I know, his "medical" practice is open today.
In the process of digging all of this dirt I found other professors at other religious affiliated universities in the city I live in that had very sketchy African university credentials, including one listed as a neurosurgeon. I also found quite a few high school teachers who were making regular trips to African countries, including Malawi, from this area that they surely could not afford to make on high school teacher salaries. Those teachers per their social media profiles were all associated with the two evangelical sects in question that the car burning cop therapist and the shady neurosurgeon came from.
The likely erosion of educational legitimacy from of all of this (job markets, US university professorships, professional licenses, etc) are fairly obvious, I'd say.
National accreditation boards in general, and especially those that are not field-specific, are seen as being less rigorous, faster to accredit, and more profit- or prestige-motivated than the regional accreditation boards. Most are relatively new and some of the most prominent (e.g. ACICS) have been involved in specific controversy over the quality of their work. Because the regional accrediting boards are older and better respected, the first question about a university that advertises a national accreditation tends to be "why aren't they regionally accredited?". It is both symptom and cause of this difference that most for-profit and otherwise "questionable" institutions are nationally accredited and not regionally accredited.
While some national accreditation bodies are considered rigorous and respectable (e.g. ABET), they tend to be field-specific (in the case of ABET, engineering) and often require regional accreditation as a prerequisite to accredit a university, as they consider regional accreditation to be the indication that the broader learning institution is able to provide a quality program. Usually specific departments or colleges of a university will go to these types of accreditation boards to add a credential to specific programs (e.g. "ABET accredited computer science program") above and beyond the university already having a regional accreditation.
There are schools with a shit curriculum that have regional accreditation. The reason it matters to Americans is because most large universities are more significantly more accepting of transferring credits that come from a regionally accredited school.
I've been to nationally and regionally accredited schools. My degree was from a top 200 school in the US. The classes I took at the "lesser" institution were significantly more rigorous and significantly more effective at teaching skills relevant to the major I was studying.
I've known several people that went to schools that have been sued or otherwise have terrible reputations for being predatory for profit schools like ITT and the University of Phoenix. Their coursework was frequently more difficult than mine.
To be fair though, those schools were sued partly because of their shady high pressure sales tactics and for tricking people into taking on massive amounts of debt to take classes. That's pretty scummy, but based on the experiences of my friends it seemed like they at least had legitimate work to do in order to graduate.
Note: I don't doubt that on average the regionally accredited schools have been more thoroughly vetted. I'm just saying accreditation is not even close to perfect so the only reason it matters in the US is because the credits are easily transferable.
This didn't personally affect me very much, but I know of many people who had difficulty getting into graduate school or professional work because of this.
A degree from a nationally accredited university limits your options. I'm not saying you'll be completely screwed if you get it, but not as many graduate schools will consider you.
The tuition-free part is more of a marketing. At the end of the day, it cost me $4,060 for the whole degree which is quite reasonable.
Speaking of employment and red flags, from LinkedIn I know that those who had studied at UoPeople work for many big companies including FAANG. No problem here.
30 hours per week for just 2 courses? Are these courses covering more than a typical university?
In my undergrad, I took a minimum of 5 courses per semester (16-20 credits). Scaling from your expectations, that would be 60-80 hours per week? I doubt I went over 40/week, including lectures (admittedly, it wasn't a demanding university).
Just giving you my 2 cents so you don't assume that the time you spent per course is all that different from a traditional university.
My only worry is the Math course. Not having gone to University or high school in 20 years I'm fearful. The other courses have been easy so far though, but like you I'm working on the field, so it's not so new to me.
I'm happy I went through them, but yea, MATH1201 was kinda difficult and MATH1280 was super boring (but not as difficult to be honest).
On the other hand, I've had small classes worth only half the credits, with absolutely ridiculous workloads.
I got a bachelor in a normal university while having a full time job in the last two years. I see no issue about this point.
https://london.ac.uk/sites/default/files/prospectuses/comput...
https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...
Some people have brought this up about UoTP, and I think it may also apply to OU in the US: The name makes it sound fishy.
Slightly unrelated, but I find it weird that I, an American, can apply to some their law degrees, but not a number of fully-online STEM degrees.
[2] http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-software...
> However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional experience.
I don't imagine US employers would have an issue with degrees from there. You can find it easily and it looks reputable.
The one thing to note, at least when I took it in early 2000, is that its tough. I signed-up for their business/finance program and it was quite the course workload.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accreditation_mill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unaccredited_instituti...
For study and eventually work? No. The school does not participate in the student visa program. It's purely online.
Some students start at UoPeople and transfer to a better known school to finish. This saves a fair amount of money. So, that's a possible path. But, getting a work visa in the US might be a challenge even then.
Ordered based on cost. First 3 are online.
saylor.org - You only pay the fee for online proctoring. Has a list of roughly 20 total lower level courses that are ACE accredited. Self paced.
aleks.com - Like 20 bucks a month and they have some classes at the level of college algebra and precalc ACE accredited.
straighterline.com - Self paced, overall better course quality than saylor. Has professor graded writing assignments sometimes. ACE accredited courses. Normally $60 a class with a $99 a month membership fee. To keep costs down sign up and do as many courses as possible in a month.
The GED - You can get up to 10 college credits by doing well on the GED. Not online sadly, requires a testing center. If you have a non-traditional american high school background you probably need one of these to get into a university anyway.
CLEP exams - Are very cost efficient at $90 each and allow you to "test out" of many lower and higher level classes. Not online, requires. testing center.
Sophia Learning is currently offering their courses for free through July. They are ACE "accredited" (recommend is actually the proper term, I believe). I think they're normally ~$300-350.
There are several of us students doing courses there to transfer in.
Study.com offers many courses in CS and other areas which are ACE recommended. They charge $199 a month and an exam fee. If I recall correctly, you get so many exams in the monthly fee.
AP exams are another option.
DSST offers credit by exams.
And Excelsior College offers credit by exam as well, but I'm not sure of the costs.
The University of the People applied for regional accreditation in 2020. They are not regionally accredited yet. The process can take years.
Note: Good schools can lack accreditation and bad schools can get the most prestigious accreditations.
Another note: There are schools that set up accrediting organizations to, surprise, accredit their own schools.
Edit: I think this is the list of legitimate regional accrediting organizations:
University of the People stands out front and centre as different and sketchy as the name makes you think of protestors in a park waving the hammer and sickle and handing out diplomas for life experience.
I think your underlying assumption is that only an “exclusive” university can provide a good education, and not something en masse. I think UoP is explicitly trying to challenge that assumption.
Btw, I have a hunch that if we valued “life experience degrees” more than “law degree at Harvard” the US Congress would be a better legislative body
While we have removed most of the costs associated with attending a university, we do still have some fees to help us keep UoPeople running, and take care of all the admin and processing work we have to do for all of our students.
To cover these fees we ask for:
A one time non-refundable application fee of $60 and, For undergraduates: an assessment fee of $100 per course, or For graduates: an assessment fee of $200 per course Don’t worry, if you need to time to save the money and you want to start right now you can, as the fees don’t need to be paid until the end of each course. The assessment fees do not need to be paid until the end of each course which is very convenient for students who have to budget and save up. You can also apply for one of our numerous grants and scholarships to help you cover all the fees.
Please note the application fee does not include any additional fees that may be required for third-party evaluation.
After all courses we estimate the total fees for the:
Associate Degree are $2,060 Bachelor’s Degree are$4,060 MBA is $2,460 M.Ed. is $2,660 What are the costs for Transfer credits? If you have credits approved to transfer toward your degree, the cost per transfer course will be $17. This is instead of paying the assessment fee per course of $100 for undergraduates and $200 for graduates. Transferring credits may significantly reduce the total cost of your degree.
What Grants & Scholarships are available? UoPeople works with top corporations and organizations to provide grants and scholarships to students needing financial support when paying the required application fees. Students can apply each term for the scholarship for which they are most qualified, and once awarded it can last for a full year of study. It is UoPeople’s aim that financial need will not restrict students from studying.
How can I pay the application fees? Payments can be made through Western Union, Western Union Global Pay, Paypal, Cashier’s Checks and Payment via MoneyGram. PayPal payments can be with your personal PayPal account or by using major credit card or debit card – VISA, MasterCard, Discover or American Express. For more information on how payments can be made, click here.
Woah, that sounds insane at first, but I'm assuming some of these might be like history 101? Could you elaborate on which program and which classes this was?
https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/g7h1qz/bscs_87_credits...
On the MBA admission requirements page (https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/ba/degrees/master-of-busin...):
"As an accredited University, UoPeople has a number of requirements for all potential applicants, to help maintain a strong, intellectual student body. [...] In addition, applicants need to have:
" * Be able to demonstrate undergraduate degree completion
" * Have English proficiency
" * A minimum of two years work experience
" * One reference (from an employer/lecturer etc.)"
The phrasing of the first two bullet points doesn't agree with the preceding sentence. That's a poor example of English proficiency.
If they don't proofread and correct their own admissions page, I'm frankly not too optimistic about the rest of the university.
For example, the MBA program doesn’t have AACSB accreditation.
I don’t want to just be negative here and certainly for the price of free it’s a good resource to receive some kind of education, and ultimately a lot of people shopping for degree programs forget that a big reason to do them is to actually learn things. In that way this is a great resource!
But without that regional accreditation, I find the big bold claim of “accredited” to be just about as misleading as the way that for-profit schools throw around the term.
Of course, a lot of employers ignore the name of the college and don’t bother with researching its accreditation. I’m sure a lot of people want to just get through HR filters if you can say “bachelors degree” instead of “high school diploma.” Or maybe you need a masters degree to become a manager as a matter of company policy, and the company isn’t picky about the degree.
I look at the MBA courses and it looks like the program consists first foundational courses that make up less than half or so of the curriculum of an AACSB accredited MBA. The computer science program does look a little more comprehensive.
There are a ton of programs out there online with reasonable costs and more legitimate credentials. Since I was recently looking at MBA programs, I can tell you that public schools like the University of North Dakota, Ball State, Mississippi State, and many others are highly ranked along with a low cost per credit hour. You can jump on the US News online MBA ranking site and filter by credit hour cost.
The most expensive thing is your time, and unlike money you can’t get it back, so if it were my own education I would consider cost but also consider whether I come out of the program having wasted time with any of the concerns I stated above. Look at the curriculum and make sure it offers electives that might help you in your desired or current career (for example, a good AACSB business school will have courses on specific industries like Healthcare or IT Operations).
That said, the school started the process for WASC accreditation. They announced it about a month or two ago. Thus, those who start now and take 4 years to do a bachelor's may end up with a regionally accredited degree instead of national.
Edit: I know nothing about their admissions process, only that they have one. Somebody's unimaginative I see. "Admissions" should be filling out a form including contact info, bank info and so forth, and then verifying that it's all true. What could they (or you downvoters) possibly have vested in restricting admissions in any way beyond that?
To conserve scarce resources? No, resources are almost limitless, because it's online, and lecturing and presumably grading are partially or fully automated, and there's no campus with spatial restrictions.
To make sure everyone pays their way? No, everybody does pay their way, and it's a non-profit.
To maintain an air of exclusivity? No, it's the University of the People.
To make sure the on-campus community is vibrant, diverse, and full of people with interesting extra-curricular interests and leadership skills? No, because again, there is no campus and no on-campus community.
To make sure not too large a percentage of enrolled students flunk out or quit trying? No, because who cares? Only elite colleges that care about an air of exclusivity, and they care in the other direction, i.e. they want you to fail out so they appear rigorous and demanding.
So yeah. ????
There are reasons as to why there should be admissions. For starters, they require a high school degree. It's obvious that you should be well familiar with all of the school material before university. All studies and communications at the university are in English only. They accept people from the whole world so they need to ensure that you have adequate English skills. In the case of CS studies, they also check if a student has some basic math skills and any previous experience in the field or recommendation.
But even here university is trying to help students who don't pass minimum math and English requirements by offering them to take introductory English and math course. If they pass it, they can go on and pursue the degree.
There are good reasons as to why it is necessary. If you don't have basic English, you can't communicate with your peers. As a part of the study, you have to read and write a lot. You also need to understand your peer work and grade it. Finally, it is easier for the rest of us to study.
Before they were more lenient in requirements and it was causing problems. They had a very high drop rate because people who enrolled had no adequate English skills for example. It also made it difficult for others to study.
They can't "take it all the way." If they removed the requirements (e.g., English proficiency, high school diploma equivalent), they wouldn't be accredited.
See: Section VIII. D.
https://www.deac.org/UploadedDocuments/Handbook/Accreditatio...
BYU Pathway Worldwide and associated programs. It requires a Church affiliation but not necessarily membership (I think). I think tuition is much lower especially if you do the year of English etc first, bachelors programs (like IT, business, others) are available, programs excellent, and is also suitable for those who need to first become qualified for entering a university (edit: i.e., learning English which is used in curriculum, and other basic skills), then provides that university. More info is in Wikipedia and I have gathered a bit of info including linking to a news article that explains it well I think, here: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854578440.html .
And: https://www.wgu.edu/ (also mentioned in wikipedia): state aid available from multiple states it seems (per wkp). Others have commented about it in this discussion, and praised it in other HN discussions, IIRC.
My purpose for getting a degree is to A.) Have a degree, and B.) Have the competitive advantage over others in my field. Many employers these days want 2 things from employees: a degree and experience. I've already gone off into the world, worked for a few years, and started a family. Now it's time I complete my resume by getting a higher education.
Specifically with UoPeople, the educational method here is much different than what I've experienced before. Peer assessment has it's ups and downs. The fact that we are headed by peers (on written assignments) I think is an effective when done right. I'm an English teacher and I've started implementing it with my intermediate students.
Only time will tell how the rest of my path goes. For now, it's a good solution to my situation and I plan on taking advantage of it.
has anyone here applied to be an instructor?
> If you are serious about learning, look elsewhere.
This is unfair though. You can still acquire a decent education through the school. Depending on your goals, it might be better to look elsewhere.
There are plenty of students around your age range. There are plenty who attend school full-time (2 courses per 8-week term) while also working full-time. Some are also raising families in the process. So, definitely feasible.
If you have more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
One of my short-term goals is to help the community where I am living now and my home country with this degree.
Uopeople might not be accepted yet in other regions but I heard that they are working on it. When you want to help, you can get the most out of "a little". Uopeple degree helps you make that happen!
Howbeit, I 'have enjoyed the company and experience with good and positive professors and students. Thank you for raising the bars of education and professionalism
If this is the low cost, online version of a average public university, I think there should also be a low cost, online version of a “top-tier” school.
is this a marketing move to post it here?
Also, I watched the "Who is behind it" video and it did not answer the question, who is actually behind this? Is it a non-profit? Is it owned by by someone? Who founded it when?
Nope, I had found the university before but ignored it. Then was looking for cheap math degrees from the recent math books thread today, and came across this school again. Figured I'd post it, but I have no interest in attending there, as they don't have any programs I care about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kH-uYwt0qs
It's non-profit. Not sure who "owns" it. It started in 2009.
Edit: Addendum. I'm not sure they need marketing. When I started last year (Sep 2019), they had ~20k students. They've added another 10k over the course of the academic year. I believe they were at 5k students in 2016.
I'm actually concerned about the sustainability with this growth, but we'll see how this ride goes.
Thanks for offering to take questions. I'm intriegued by UoPeople and other similar ventures. I have a son who will graduate in a few years who may have social trouble at a regular university.
2. I am less concerned about the credential. I already have a bachelor's degree and some graduate school. Thus, it's not likely to give me any extra weight, and I don't plan to pursue jobs with it. However, some of my colleague who've moved on have found it both helpful and valuable in that regard.
I will note that the school is nationally accredited, so this can be quite limiting (e.g., grad school options are very limit, transferring credit is limited, etc.). So, this is a consideration that must be taken. However, I'm happy with the return on my investment (knowledge) so far.
3. Real, college credit which can be transferred. While it has limits in that regard, I am not aware of any colleges that will accept MOOCs for transfer unless they were explicitly designed to be credit granted (e.g., some of edX's stuff or maybe some Coursera's new stuff).
That said, I would argue that UoPeople is really "self-teaching" like you would with MOOCs. While the school implements a form of "peer learning," I find it to be poorly done and not very helpful. I do meet some others who are genuinely interested in the topics, but most students are just interested in getting through the courses.
And, ugh, I loathe peer assessment. While it's not the only form of assessment which takes place, it's the most obnoxious part of the school. It's worse when you peers don't understand basic things like how files and directories work.
This part term I was told by a peer, in the discussion forum, that my post was "wrong." (It wasn't.) And the student told me to read so-and-so's post to see why. The student subsequently marked me down. (Fortunately, it had minimal impact. So I didn't bother appealing it.)
I couldn't really give any advice for your son. If he can handle academic work on his own fairly well, then it might work for him. However, some students struggle with online learning and there's not a lot of support structures in place at the school yet.
The proctor requirement can be fulfilled through a professional local to you (librarian, minister, etc.) or through an online service called ProctorU.
If you use a local professional, there is no fee and you are not permitted to pay them. If you use the ProctorU service, you must pay a fee to that service. None of these fees are provided to the school. It's purely a payment to the service.
[0] https://www.uopeople.edu/about/uopeople/essential-uopeople-d...
The instructors act more as moderators rather than instructors. There are no lectures, and they have limited interaction (e.g., a few posts in the forums and responses to our weekly learning journals). Thus, it's hard to really take advantage of their knowledge.
Instructor are also volunteers. I've read that they're paid a small honorarium, but I've been unable to find supporting evidence in any school documentation. (Granted, I haven't looked hard.)
You will primarily teach yourself through course materials. The materials can vary from excellent to awful. Thus, it can be a challenge sometimes. (Fortunately, I've been to grad school [education field] in the past, so it's not much of an issue for me.)
The school talks about "peer learning," but it is poorly integrated. It mainly amounts to peer assessments and required discussion forum posts. So, as you might guess, the quality of the latter varies wildly.
There are definitely quite a few students who struggle, and there's not a lot of support structure built into the school yet. (It's still young. ~10 years old.)
The CS curriculum is fairly standard (e.g., operating systems, programming, algorithms, data structures, etc.).
It is borderline fraudulent for schools like this to operate without being very clear on the limits of the credits earned and their portability.
I already knew what I was getting into when I started because I've been in and around academia for more than 2 decades. However, many of the students don't understand the intricacies of American higher ed. And they can be hard to explain to current and prospective students who just want to know if the degree will help them get a job or obtain some other goal in life.
That said, if I am not mistaken there are rules about to go into place at the US Department of Education which is supposed to eliminate the distinction between national and regional accreditation[0]. This should be fun to watch how it plays out.
[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/03/17/pros-and-con...
What is there to against a revolution that serves a great purpose of demolish education shortage in different parts of the world. I personally enjoy the flexibility the school gives me so i can be partly working or traveling.
I have no regret studying at the University.
Many of those have rules about how if you have a Masters, you earn X more and you can just keep earning more the more degrees you get. $4000 lets the payback period Be quite fast.
https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/institution-profile/233675
The Master's in education is recognized by International Baccalaureate (IB) which is a well regarded program. I'm not sure of the exact relationship as the program is new. (It just started this year.) However, it likely wouldn't be accepted by the various state education bodies for teaching licensing. (This is a guess based on my past experience in education.)
University of Populi
Homines University
University of the People is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), a national accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). CHEA recognized accreditors can be browsed here: https://www.chea.org/chea-recognized-organizations
DEAC is a US-based, non-profit accreditation agency founded in 1926. Our university (quantic.edu) was also accredited by DEAC. It was a multi-year process, and extremely rigorous; we were evaluated across all aspects of our organization: academic, operational, financial, etc. Many schools that begin the accreditation process do not successfully complete it. As the name suggests, DEAC specializes in distance education, so it's a good choice for a university that offers purely online programs. Some accreditors have requirements that implicitly or explicitly exclude online universities; for example, there might be a requirement for a physical library of a certain size. Regional accreditation also often takes longer, or requires you to have been in operation for more years. However, when comparing notes with my retired academic family members, there were similarities in the required documentation for DEAC to what was needed in the regional accreditation renewal process.
A prerequisite for accreditation in the US is licensing at the state level and compliance with all state laws within which the university has a physical presence. This means that you need to be very careful about where your school has physical offices and from which states you advertise and enroll students. Note that licensing is also required for issuing certificates, not just degrees; this is a common mistake for education startups, especially bootcamps. Lambda School [1] and Flatiron [2] were both slapped for this.
The differences between regional and national accreditation often boil down to "regional accreditation means credits are more likely to transfer." However, one thing that's thrown a huge wrench into this is that in 2019, the US Department of Education revised its rules to eliminate the distinction between national and regional accreditors! [3] This rule change will take effect in July 2020. The impact of this (and related) rule changes on credit transfer and how universities market their accreditation are open to speculation.
Regarding the University of People's pricing, it's important to note that they advertise as "tuition free." Terms like tuition have a very specific meaning in the world of higher education, and are considered distinct from "fees," for example. This is why UofP does not market itself as simply being "free," like we do for our early career MBA program. To use the word "free" unconditionally, DEAC requires us to prove our early career MBA students can apply, enroll, study, and graduate having paid no tuition or fees whatsoever. On the other hand, if you do charge for tuition, like we do for our Executive MBA, DEAC requires you to disclose all payment details up-front; this is why almost anywhere on our website where we reference a price, or even affordability, we also include a link to display a breakdown of tuition, payment plans, scholarships, discounts, and other potential fees.
The higher education space is very regulated, so innovation can be challenging. It's important to remember that most innovative organizations have to (at least initially) make tradeoffs to better serve a subset of the market over incumbents. Our raison d'etre is active learning, for example; we eschew passive lectures (no video professor) in favor of a proprietary interactive learning format that's mobile-first and broken up into small modules. This has numerous advantages for the learner, but it also means that our bespoke curriculum structure can't be easily packaged up into transfer credits. As a graduate school, we decided that was a reasonable tradeoff to enable innovation in the core learning experience. Likewise, we decided to pursue a quality-first strategy (see: Tesla master plan), building a deep, challenging curriculum with a selective admissions process (less than 10% admitted) to establish the value of the school and alumni network, with the plan to launch more open programs down the line.
If you've read this far, I hope that you at least take away the fact that building something new in the higher education space is hard. If some aspect of a program appears odd at first glance, consider if the diversion from the norm might also confer an advantage with a specific audience. And when evaluating educational program options, don't discount the value of a licensed and accredited provider recognized by the US Department of Education or CHEA.
[1] https://www.educationdive.com/news/running-without-state-app... [2] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2017/ag-schneiderman-announc.... [3] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-department-education...
[EDIT: some sentences tweaked for clarity]
How much energy would you say goes into the student part vs the employer part?
And the faculty can be hit-or-miss. Some are awesome, some of okay. A few are just awful.
Personally, I had an instructor for Java who had difficulty managing different JDKs one a single machine. If I, as a student new to Java, can figure it out, I absolutely expect my instructor to know how to do so. Granted, this particular instructor was a "standout" in the negative sense. Most have been okay.
Fortunately, instructors are mostly inconsequential as there's very little interaction with them.
However, if you know that going into it, you know the primary shortcoming. (Fortunately, I have a regionally accredited degree already, so I didn't care about that.)
I can count on one hand the number of times I needed any calculus beyond first semester, and those were for very specific scientific domains.
Now statistics and linear algebra, on the other hand...
Their data structures & algorithms course: https://my.uopeople.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=45606&chapterid...
I'm more worried about the the apparent lack of basic algorithms (Dijkstra? DP?) than not having more semesters of calculus.
I have a reputable masters and PhD in CS and don’t recall ever studying a ‘calculus course’, except lambda and pi calculus.
I plan to do my math elsewhere.
However, Georgia Tech and the University of Texas Austin both have online MSCS degrees that come in around $10k.
However, it's potential utilization is much, much more diminished compared to a no-name state school.
This might change when (if) they acquire regional accreditation, but they've only just started the process. Thus, it could take upwards of 5 years.
"tuition-fee free"? I would hope you get at least some tuition!
Well, UoPeople is both good and bad, as everything in life.
On the bad side, some teachers are not only useless, but actively making your experience worse. This is mostly cultural, but teachers coming from Africa and some Asian countries really make you want to stick to the tiniest details of rules and assignments.
For example, if you have to write a learning journal (and you will), and the example of an LJ contains entries starting with date such as "DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM", African and some Asian teachers will ask you to correct it from any other format. I found this infuriating. What's more, when I had questions, most often, I got no help from these teachers. Some teachers would be amazing, most teachers would give me a non-helpful question, some would ignore my question outright.
I also feel like there's a ton of hoops you have to jump through. An associate CS degree consists of a number of health/philosophy/econ classes that I have zero interest in. This is, again, cultural, as UoP is highly US-centric. If you're coming from other country, you'll realize how many assumptions you had (and how silly the UoP/US system can be).
On the good side, however, I do feel like I'm learning a lot. If you really spend time in reading the materials, I have found the exercises in courses quite useful. I'm 100% sure it's not as rigorous as a brick-and-mortar university, no. They will let pass students who have learnt nothing as long as they put in work.
But, if you want, you can surprisingly learn a lot. Even after being a number of years in IT (engineering and now architecture), I found something new (especially their Database and other specialized courses are quite good). I haven't done math since high school (my brick-and-mortar degree was not in CS) and some of the math courses were really kicking my ass, which is great.
It's also insanely flexible in that it's online. You decide when to do stuff. You decide when to read. There's only deadlines for every week. Other than that, it's up to you.
Overall, I think my experience with UoP is quite good, but it takes a very specific mindset. If you're from a poor non-US and non-EU country, I'd say UoP is great for you (provided you can pay for it, since it's still not free). If you're from US or any EU country, UoP degree will have almost zero value in terms of having a degree, but might provide you with a lot of new knowledge. If you're in for the knowledge, I'd say it's nice. If you're in for the degree, I'd say go for Georgia's Tech OMSCS.
Feel free to ask any questions if you'd like. I'll be checking replies to this post for a day or two.
