University of Phoenix onlineFollow

The wife's thinking about doing her masters online there. Anyone have any thoughts or knowledge about their creditability? (Nexa, I'm looking in your direction)

Her biggest concern is employers looking at it as less than other degrees and blowing over 20k+ for nothing. We've looked all over the net and found about 50-50 good and bad so I was hoping someone here would have some insight.


Aegis

You buy your degree. It's pretty much acknowledged by the business industry.

But, it is better than no further education at all. Some people don't have the time or money to attend a "regular" master's program, so it's the best you can do.

I once thought about them and asked the company comptroller if our tution reimbursement covered online classes. He said he'd be willing to go to bat for me to have us cover it if I enrolled as he had a very good opinion of them. He also mentioned that he was once courted to teach online for another university but he declined as he wasn't really happy with the teaching model. Not that he didn't think online courses could be effective but he preferred actual face-to-face contact with his students.

By the way, if you call UoP online, prepare yourself for a very hard sell from the guy on the other end of the phone.

Edit: The prohibitive cost was a large part of what kept from pursuing it further. Well, that and a lack of interest in the subject matter.

Edited, Tue Apr 25 16:54:03 2006 by Jophiel

So is this only available for Bachelors, or can you by a Masters or Ph.D?

They let female goats get college degrees nowadays?

So Mr. Math...did you price out the cost of the degree?

Yes, it's called a B.A.A.

It's really sort of sad that the midevil ages guild system has reappeared in the form of degrees. Along with expectations of grade inflation and all the rest. Lions, and tigers, and MDs {Run Away!}.

IMO, I would avoid this particular school if at all possible, as I would say credibility is bottom of the barrel. You might want to check out any local college possibilities including their evening and online course selections. It's hard to say whether local community colleges are more credible, but in this notorious instance I would say they well could be.

But I would qualify that by saying it probably really depends more on what field it is. If it's a field that's more performance based (like say the financial industry) you can probably get away with bottom barrel qualifications and still work your way up. Since it's the piece of paper that seems to matter most I would avoid degrees with "Online" or "Community" in them. Maybe you can look for that shady Panasoanic brand name knock off. {roll eyes}

I just cannot in all seriousness fathom the concept of pissing away $20k for stuff a person could theoretically do on their own for a few hundred dollars. It's bogus to the max to coin a phrase.

I also forsee major EU socialist state like problems down the road with frilly titles. Instead of the King granting title, it's now the University.

And you live where, roughly?

Nexa

As that's my subject matter, I'm prepared to offer online tuition in return for hawt G04t CyB0rz.

It's a fraction of what Harvard and Oxford pay me (Harvard = $175 an hr, Oxford = 5 minutes with the college chaplain) but I'm that kind of guy.

Grand Rapids, Michigan


[i][sm]Come get me *****************

No, you can get all the information required for the degree for a couple hundred bucks. Information + Study/Application = Knowledge. All the rest is snake oil gimmickery. You just know there are a ton and growing number of people with "Degrees" out there that are idiots. Like I said it's a huge growing classicism/midevil guild system. It's all rent seeking monopoly protection behavior, no different then patent and copyright "protection".

But I do know that I have heard more than one time that degrees through UoP and such are about as worthless as a degree from a community college. They will take anyone over you that has a degree from an actual University.


Kind of old actually but Year 2000 said:

Her views are reflected in a 2000 survey by Vault.com, a New York City-based employment research Web site. Among the 239 human-resources professionals and recruiters surveyed, only 30% report having encountered applicants with online degrees. Yet only 26% say an online bachelor's degree is as credible as a traditional bachelor's degree. About two-thirds -- 61% -- say an online bachelor's degree isn't as credible but is still acceptable, while the remaining 13% say online bachelor's degrees aren't credible or acceptable.

Likewise, only 37% consider online graduate degrees as credible as traditional graduate degrees; 54% say they're not as credible but still acceptable; and 9% say online graduate degrees aren't credible or acceptable.

Obviously, convincing employers of the value of an online degree is an uphill battle for applicants who hold them. Knowing the perceived strengths and weaknesses of online education will help you decide if this is the right degree route for you. You'll also want to review how to sell your new degree to employers if you decide to head down the distance-learning path.

Also, I remember applying to my local University for Grad school and one of the requirements was that no more than 30 hours could be taken on-line. If she decides to transfer to another university the hours may not transfer either ...

Sept 2005 agreed as well

Now you might say that 2nd link is from a college so it is biased, the only links I saw that approved on-line degrees were from on-line campuses.

Edited, Tue Apr 25 17:23:12 2006 by Kronig