Online education has become huge – so huge in fact that even respectible universities that people thought would be slow to adopt new trends are starting to come on board. And with good reason – the online education or online learning industry has exploded for billions of dollars. And with accredited programs now offered, full federal and state financial aid is available to sutdents who qualify.

So, that brings me to my point – is an education from University of Phoenix worth it?

I went to the University of Phoenix and earned by Master’s Degree. Given the choice, however, I’d think twice about going there. Here are my reasons.

1. High staff turnover. Just a year into my education, I had to call advisement. However my advisor was no longer there, so I was assigned a different one. When I went to call them back a few months later, they were gone. A few months down the road, I had a fiancial aid issue, and had to speak with someone in what would traditionally be called the bursar’s office or financial aid office. No such thing there. I finally spoke to someone, but a few months later…yep, they were gone too.  It is frustrating to have to call several times and reach someone different who is assigned to “look after you.”
2. They are clearly “business first.” In other words, give them your money. Now. Once you do that, hopefully you’ll learn something. I always got the feeling that my money was more important than me, or my education.
3. They have a sales force. Make no mistake about it, there are people actively recruiting you. Now, you might say this is no different than traditional colleges. And that’s true. But you’ll find University of Phoenix reps are much, much pushier than a traditional recruiter. And yes, there is high turnover there too.
4. The learning experience is only average, at best. If you learn by doing, then University of Phoenix is not for you. I am more hands on, and they offer non of that. Everything is more theory or informational based.
5. The required conversations in the classrooms are inane, nonsensical and utterly pointless. You are required to post to a “classroom” or newsgroup a few times a week and contribute to an intelligent conversation. There are two problems with this. First, you have to read through hundreds of threads and posts. And often times, the thread gets lost or the message gets removed – so you have to thi thumb through previous posts just to get the idea. And the messages make no sense. There was rarely something online worthy of responding to. Most people respond “I agree, because…” How do you respond to that? I agree too? There was a lot of that. It was worthless.
6. The required group work was unfair and always spread the load unevenly. Each class I was in had a group project. We were randomly assigned to a group, which was fine considering it was online. But the inner workings of the group were, well, crap. The work was always spread unevenly, and far too often one person would drag the group down. Now I know you’re thinking “Its like that in the real world…” True, but that’s face to face and you can have meetings to discuss.
7. The group projects were also pointless. It didn’t really serve to further our knowledge of the topics we were supposed to be learning.
8. The instructor only had loose control of the class conversations. It was more of a free for all.

Bottom line: you get what you put into it…most of the time. I was serious about my education, but found the University of Phoenix to be cumbersome and worthless to my professional career. My Master’s degree hasn’t made the difference between a job and being turned down – most was experience based. So now I have a piece of paper that cost me over $10,000 (and that was about 5 years ago…prices have surely gone up since then.)