Complaint Review: University of the Rockies - denver Colorado

EMPLOYEE PERSPECTIVE:

I worked at University of the Rockies (UOR) as an Admissions Counselor for almost a year. It was by far the worst place I have ever worked in my life. They treat their employees like prisoners, you are constantly micromanaged and threatened with termination if you are not meeting admissions quotas. If you spent more than 5 minutes in the bathroom the manager was likely to ask you why you were away from your desk for so long. We were also required to make a certain amount of phone calls every day (I believe it was around 150) and if you were off the phone for more than 45 seconds you can believe that your supervisor would ask you why you weren't dialing. The supervisors were able to monitor who was on the phone and who wasn't using software install on their computers.

I worked in the San Diego location back then and there were thousands of employees between UOR and Ashford Univ which was the sister school right next door (both operated under the umbrella of Bridgepoint Education). It seemed like at least 20 admissions counselors were hired and fired every week sometimes a lot more than that. Most of the time it was people from Ashford, UOR was much smaller in comparison. The turnover rate was still extremely high for a so called university.

Most people working there were just trying to make ends meet, they pay pretty decent and it isn't commission based. I can't say that I knew anyone who actually believed in the degree programs. Everyone working there knew it was BS and you could choose to manipulate people (which is what your supervisors encourage you to do) or just tell them the truth and get hung up on. Many employees would "drink the kool-aid" and pretend to buy into the whole thing because they wanted to impress the manager and possibly get promoted or transferred out of admissions. It's understandable but I was still disgusted to see how fake these people acted.

I have to say that I have never worked with so many weird and messed up people in my life. Many of my co-workers were also complete morons as well. I would hear them make up words on a regular basis. I once heard a girl sitting across from me say "Oh yes we offer that degree program! It's actually our most popularist program!". She kept saying "popularist" for about a week or so but I guess she eventually figured out that it wasn't a real word. That was just one of many examples of poor word usage and just overall terrible English I had to listen to everyday.

It was actually very interesting that the dumbest co-workers I had were the best at enrolling students. I think it was because they just did whatever the supervisor told them to do no matter how stupid it sounded. Some admissions counselors would enroll students that didn't even have a computer or a car because the supervisor wouldn't let them take no for an answer. They would ask them if they could take a bus to the library every week to complete their assignments. If they can't afford a car or basic computer what makes them think they can afford to pay $30k in student loans when they graduate?

I remember one co-worker had a student all signed up but his son passed away and he had to cancel his enrollment, sure enough our supervisor was on my co-workers back 6 weeks later to see if he had called that person back to enroll for the new course offering. I couldn't believe it. I asked my co-worker how old his student's son was and he said he was still in middle school. I can hardly believe that the father is ready to receive calls about going back to school just 6 weeks after his son died.

This actually wasn't that rare of an occasion. So my supervisor would have little meetings and sometimes discuss how to overcome objections. One of which was dealing with prospective students who said they needed more time because a close friend or family member passed away. Our manager told us one tactic would be to ask the student if they thought that their deceased friend or family member would want them to put off their education because of their death. WHAT?!?!That was just way too personal for me to discuss with a student. Trying to convince someone to go to school after dealing with a death is way out of line but that was the normal practice.

Employees were applauded and congratulated for telling these stories of how they got their students to enroll after some crazy situation happened in their lives. One counselor enrolled a student who had just lost their house in a tornado but this student was apparently determined to start a degree program with no computer, no car, and no place to live.

This is just a little of what went on behind the scenes and of how employees were treated and how they conducted themselves. It's easy to see how you can get these Admissions counselors to bend the truth and focus on numbers rather than the student’s best interest if you are threatening them every week with losing their jobs. Numerous times I would see co-workers distraught and stressed out after speaking with management because they feared getting fired the following week if they didn't enroll a student soon.

I was in the same boat for about 2 months, I couldn't seem to enroll a student no matter how hard I tried. I was giving them too much info and letting them make their own decisions. Little did I know that a successful UOR counselor did the opposite, you're supposed to give very little info further than what is actually required by law and you must pressure them to make the decision that you want them to make. I soon gave up and just accepted the fact that I needed to start looking for other work.

I continued to just provide the students with the info they asked for in a straight forward manner. I made more than the required amount of phone calls everyday even though I wasn't getting any enrollments. I was having weekly face to face meetings with my manager and my director of admissions about my performance. They made me write a 2 page paper on how I was going to change my strategy to get more enrollments. I complied with everything they asked, but I refused to resort to using shady or misleading tactics. Things became so easy after I just stopped caring about losing my job. I was able to stay there for about 9 months before I moved on to something else. I realized the threats were empty which was a complete shocker to me. I saw people at Ashford getting fired every week but for some reason UOR didn't follow through with their threats like Ashford did.

It may have been because UOR counselors needed to have a Bachelors degree to get hired and they were a little more in demand so maybe that is why we didn't get fired as much. Once my managers saw that I stopped worrying about losing my job they stopped harassing me. They just gave up but they still kept me on board. It was actually pretty hilarious. I had 2 enrollments in 9 months of working (both students dropped out after a week and got a full refund) and there were still employees that were enrolling 2 students a week that had a noticeable amount of pressure on them and they STILL had managers on their back about their performance.

It seemed like they definitely used fear as a motivation tool there and really took advantage of the very bad economic situation in San Diego at the time. They were the largest employer in San Diego and one of very few places that were still hiring.

This is just how things are from an employee’s perspective so far. If I knew that a school I was thinking about attending treated their employees this way I would probably rule them out.

WHY IT'S A RIP OFF FOR STUDENTS

First of all every one of the Admissions Counselors knows that none of the UOR programs lead to licensure. Only clinical programs in psych can really claim that. Those are typically campus based programs. I do believe that UOR has clinical programs offered on their actual CAMPUS in Colorado but we exclusively dealt with the online portion in the admissions dept in San Diego.

Many times I would hear a phone conversation around me and it's obvious that the student told the UOR counselor that they are looking for a program that offers licensure because they wanted to pursue a career that requires licensure, and almost every single time you can bet that the counselor would then talk about how difficult and time consuming a clinical program is and they would immediately try to discourage them from even thinking of pursuing a clinical program.

Although it is true, clinical programs are not easy, it doesn't seem like it should be our responsibility to shoot down their hopes of enrolling into a program like that. A normal admissions counselor at a real university wouldn't do that because it's not their job to sell. A reputable university actually denies admission to several applicants every year because they want the best and most responsible students possible.

UOR is not the typical university and it's definitely not reputable. They are a FOR PROFIT SCHOOL and they definitely act like it. All they need to know is if the student is eligible for Financial Aid, and if they have at least a 2.0 GPA from their accredited Bachelors program. If they have those 2 things then admissions counselors are encouraged to enroll them at any cost.

So many people we called were interested in a Masters in educational leadership because they thought it would help with getting their teaching credentials but it doesn't. Countless times a student would say they want to be a counselor or a therapist, well guess what? Our online programs wouldn’t help with that whatsoever. But they were persuaded to look into those programs anyway. It was so hard to get someone to talk to you on the phone that counselors were used to pitching every possible program that the student might bite on before they hung up.

Truthfully most of the people we talked to had no idea how to go about researching universities in the first place. They probably clicked on an ad that said "Do you want to have a higher paying job in a new and exciting field?! Click here!". Then boom, we get their info in our database along with about 5 other schools sometimes. These people would get bombarded with calls from maybe 4-5 different online schools and we were forced to call these people 5 TIMES A DAY for the first 2-3 days until they picked up!

The quality of students enrolled was just terrible as well. A lot of counselors had trouble getting the students to do something as simple as printing out and signing the online application because these students were typically unmotivated and irresponsible. A lot of the students only enrolled because of their admissions counselor which sounds nice but it really isn't. If a complete stranger that called you was the catalyst for you deciding to enroll in a Masters program, then I find it hard to believe that you will be responsible and motivated enough to do well in your studies once you get into the program.

It sounds terrible but most of these students were delusional and inept. So many of these people had no job, no computer skills whatsoever, and no job experience in what they wanted to do yet they really believed that if they just got their masters degree everything would be fine. I'm sorry but enrolling in a $30,000 masters program isn't going to bail you out of the current situation you are in. I don't believe in telling people what they can and can't do but I certainly wouldn't encourage this course of action if you don't have a job and especially if you HAVE A HARD TIME USING A COMPUTER! This is an online program, you need to know how to use a computer otherwise you WILL FAIL and WASTE YOUR MONEY!

I think that UOR is definitely engaging in shady practices but if a student asks an admissions counselor if the program offers licensure or teaching credentials the admissions counselor MUST TELL YOU THE TRUTH and say NO! I'm sure there are some circumstances that students were actually LIED to but in most cases it's also the students fault because they get persuaded into settling for a program they don't want.

They record every single conversation so if an admission counselor tells someone that they can get clinical licensure to become a therapist or a psychiatrist etc. then you definitely have a case against them because that person lied to you. But in most cases the counselor tells the student the truth in a way that will get the student to settle for a program that won't help them in the long run. When that happens I consider the student as much at fault as the counselor.

Like I stated before, most of the people that give these admissions counselors the time of day are irresponsible unmotivated people with no clear goals. Mainly pipe dreamers that have been thinking of going back to school for +10 years and haven't had the motivation to even look into it. They are so unmotivated that they need someone to call them to pressure them to go back to school.

When I would call legitimate people who were considering both campus and online programs they would end the conversation pretty quick after they found out what kind of degrees we offered. Those people knew better and were well informed because they were already doing research on their own.

The moral of the story is, beware of all FOR PROFIT ONLINE SCHOOLS. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! You can’t rely on these people to give you every single bit of information. They’re in the sales business and they aren’t going to say anything that will keep you from buying their product unless they absolutely have to by law. You are the one making a $30,000 investment in yourself so you better know everything there is to know about the school you’re looking into and you better ask the right questions. Unfortunately this is how these places operate, you would think that they are there to just help but that’s not the case. They don’t want you to do too much research, they don’t want you to look at other schools, they want you to act now and sign up! The sooner you do that the sooner they get paid.