Complaint Review: University of Phoenix - Internet Internet

It is true that the University of Phoenix is not a quality education. I am in the process of switching over to Colorado Technical University. Having taken quite a few classes now, here are my findings:

1. The instructors are poor
2. The students are worse (usually, but not always.)
3. The learning teams, which are a large part of the grade, are worthless
4. However, due to #1, neither #3 nor #4 usually affect your grade
5. It is possible to get an education, but only if you are a self-study and self-motivated.
6. The lack of quality education costs a fortune. Go elsewhere, get a better education, cheaper.

So, here some details. First, i am a senior executive in technology. I decided to pursue a degree simply to "check the box" to help prevent my resume from being automatically filtered due to not having a Bachelors. I'm not a typical college student.

At first, I thought the learning teams were going to be a huge challenge. The grading rubrics specified things like "correct grammar, APA formatting, specific expectations regarding content, etc." The general idea is: When you are assigned to a learning team, the first thing you are supposed to do is write the team charter, as a team. As a senior executive, I tend to think this team charter ought to have very specific rules with very specific consequences. This is particularly true because each class is divided into five one-week segments with deliverables each week. That means seven days to determine how to write a paper, create an outline, divide the work, complete the work, post the work, put individual pieces together into a coherent paper, cull for word count, grammar, and flow, proof and approve, and submit. Sounds like a lot, right?

Well, long story short, the teams never want to create a team charter that has any more content than "Let's all get along." Additionally, I have found that it doesn't matter. None of the instructors bothered to grade the paper on grammar, spelling, flow, and in many cases, even required content. Essentially, as long as it met the word count and wasn't about basket-weaving, it got a good grade.

Quite frankly, this is my single biggest issue with University of Phoenix. What is causing me to move are my two last classes:

(1) The instructor was as bad as the students with regard to grammar. He was unable to write his posts coherently. Then he thought he had the ability to comment on my grammar. No biggie, but when I already had an issue with instructors quality, this was beyond amazing to me.

(2) I had an instructor (for an ethics class, no less) who failed to write the assignments into the syllabus. The first one, I kept looking over the syllabus and couldn't figure out what my deliverable was, so I didn't submit one. He then assigns me a zero. I was stunned, but OK, I didn't even submit anything, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume I totally missed something. So in the last week, I reviewed the syllabus carefully, and performed what was in the syllabus. It's also important to note that being a professional, I usually try to stay ahead of class. Thus I submitted my week five assignment on Monday, when the last week began on Tuesday. Consider me beyond stunned when the class ended and I received yet another zero for failing to complete the final weeks assignment...the one that I turned in a day early. The result of this was that I spent $1850 for the five week class and received a D+. I don't miss assignments. Going back to try to figure out what happened, it turns out that every class up to that one had the assignments in the syllabus. This instructor didn't bother with all that. He posted details in the forums (which of course means that it can't be done early either.) I am pretty sure the requirement was supposed to be that the assignments are in the syllabus. Now that they are charging me $1850 for each five week class, and now preventing me from earning credits on those classes for unsatisfactory reasons, I am moving to a university that hopefully has far more skilled instructors.

To summarize, here is what you can expect: You can expect it difficult to interact with your classmates, even though it's required. Assuming you are a stickler for quality assignments, you will find it difficult to be a team lead, but easy to be a team member. You can safely ignore any real issues with the team charter and you can safely ignore any problems in the weekly team essays as well. You will have to teach yourself while logging on primarily to prove that you are still interacting. And for this, you will pay (assuming you pay cash, anyway) $1800 every five weeks.

If you're looking to check the box, it may work for you. If you're looking for quality education, quality instructors, feeling like the entity is really improving the quality of you and your classmates, look elsewhere.