University of Phoenix Enrollment Down by 42%

http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/01/14/university-of-phoenix-enrollment-down-by-42/

by audreyw • 16 years ago

57 47 16 years ago

phamilton• 16 years ago

I wonder how many saw academicearth.com as a viable substitute. It's great for the random "looks interesting" courses, but a diploma, accredited or not, is at least a tangible demonstration of completion.

TomOfTTB• 16 years ago

University of Phoenix was part of a trend that took advantage of the rigid nature of traditional academia and actually customized educational programs around working adults schedule. The problem is they charged outrageous rates for their service.

(The most telling fact in the article is that University of Phoenix still increased their revenue even with this drop)

But with accredited online universities like Western Governors University gaining traction and traditional schools realizing they need adult students University of Phoenix (and others) have lost their unique advantage. Which means a dramatic drop in students.

bane6• 16 years ago

It may also be a function of the first couple generations of students from UoP finding out their expensive degrees carry fantastically little weight in hiring decisions.

I know several UoP graduates who have found themselves without any additional employability, no improvement in salary and a huge student debt to pay off.

brudgers7• 16 years ago

That's also not unusual for bioscience Phd's from land grant universities, english majors from small liberal arts colleges, or recent Master of Architecture graduates from the Ivy League.

If the measure of education is that it provides vocational opportunity, then all we can shut down all higher education except the nursing programs in the community colleges.

michaelbuckbee2• 16 years ago

There was a really interesting Frontline Documentary - College Inc - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/ that covered the University of Phoneix in depth.

arctangent• 16 years ago

I watched this last week and I would second your recommendation.

Some of the individuals represented in the documentary could have come straight out of the Enron documentary.

angstrom2• 16 years ago

This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this. For-profit colleges could be a viable venture if they were partly liable for the loans students must take to attend. That would align their profit motives with the success of students and investors.

Right now it's a pyramid scheme about to bust. Banks, and by virtue of lender of last resort, the government end up swallowing this debt.

michaelbuckbee2• 16 years ago

I'm far from an expert in this area but one aspect of the situation that I hadn't realized was that federal student loans aren't dischargeable through bankruptcy?

Does that put the onus back on the students who borrowed so much money?

Sumyungguy• 16 years ago

Rightfully so, you can get a better education with google search.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

You can get a better education than at any University in the world through self-instruction. But not everyone has such skills, nor does that make it any easier to prove to others that you hold such knowledge.

booduh• 16 years ago

Good.

timurlenk2• 16 years ago

While this doesn't speak for all its graduates I have met two of their products. One quite young, early thirties, one much older, early sixties. Both had the maturity and view on life of someone, well...who didn't go to university.

Is a degree from university of Phoenix taken serious by employers?

julius_geezer• 16 years ago

A relative who works in an HR-related field sees a lot of persons with Phoenix degrees, and is generally not impressed.

haploid• 16 years ago

"Both had the maturity and view on life of someone, well...who didn't go to university"

I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean here. What maturity and "view" would this be? A lack of "getting drunk at the frat house and banging some sorostitutes" stories?

But in all seriousness, I'd like to know what kind of "maturity" and "view" spending 4 years at a constant party would grant someone, that is somehow superior to the ~12 and ~42 years of actual real world experience that the people you cited likely had?

ben1040• 16 years ago

While you have a good point that it's unfair to claim people who didn't attend university are narrow minded and immature, it isn't any better to say the four year university experience is universally a four year long constant party.

I know people with no degree who are extremely successful, practical minded people. Most people I know would also recall university as four years of hard work with little time left for partying.

timurlenk2• 16 years ago

I seem to have offended some readers and I apologize for that.

Personally I come form a different background (eastern Europe) and at the time i went to university it meant working your ass off on projects and papers, working for professors that seemed unreasonable and obtuse and building relationships with colleagues and professors.

That time did give us a certain maturity and taught as an approach to people and work. Little did we know, the people we ended up working with were even more unreasonable and narrow-minded.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

bane6• 16 years ago

Is a degree from university of Phoenix taken serious by employers?

Not really. Typically a degree means "this person can start and finish a difficult, multi-year project" even if the school isn't top tier. However, the UoP degrees are of such limited rigor that they are more or less treated as a "certification of hobby" by HR departments -- particularly since it isn't an accredited school it's only one step up from a diploma mill.

A 2-years Associates Degree from an accredited community college carries more weight than a UoP M.S. sadly (for the folks that paid all that money for it).

brudgers7• 16 years ago

>"it isn't an accredited school"

Phoenix is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission [http://www.ncahlc.org/#ncahlc.org] by which other schools in the region are accredited, e.g. University of Michigan.

Specific Phoenix programs are also accredited by the usual suspects as well. [http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/accreditation.html]

kls2• 16 years ago

I have a degree from UOP, I was a product of the .com boom in which it was foolish to stay in school, with all the money floating around. To that end, by the time it was all over, I was a career man with a family. Attending a traditional university was out of the question. With family responsibilities and a start-up that had taken off, UOP was really the only option. To be honest, I had low expectations going in, but they where accredited and if I wanted prestige I could do my masters at a better school.

Anyway, I was surprised that the academics where better than that of a community collage, I would put them somewhere between a community collage and a state school. I think they earn their accreditation on the merits of academics, but lets not mince words they are by no means a great school.

Their was one thing at UOP that really was worth the price to me and that is in almost every class, they make you stand in front of the class and give a lecture on the subject. Doing this for over a year made me a very good public speaker. So much so that I started speaking at conferences.

If someone had ever told me that I would be speaking at international conferences, in front of thousands of people, I would have laughed at them, that was just not me. I credit the UOP with providing me with the platform to have all of my awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassing moments on stage in a format that no one cared if you screwed up. For me becoming a public technical speaker was worth every penny, I ever paid to UOP.

Now for most, UOP is a rip-off especially given the economy, but as far as quality of academics, if you would hire someone with a degree from a random state school then you should have no worry about hiring someone with a UOP degree. As with everything it is the applicant not the pedigree.

bane6• 16 years ago

I credit the UOP with providing me with the platform to have all of my awkward, uncomfortable and embarrassing moments on stage in a format that no one cared if you screwed up. For me becoming a public technical speaker was worth every penny, I ever paid to UOP.

For people that don't understand why degree programs (regardless of school) require communications & speaking classes, this is it. Public speaking has probably gotten me further along in my career than any other skill I learned in school.

Most people groan in their normal classes when they have to give a speech about their project, but I think it's invaluable. You can also see immediately the difference between a brilliant student who is otherwise a lousy speaker, and students who may be so-so in the subject but great speakers -- and think about the future prospects of both students. I'd be willing to guess that 9 times out of 10, the speaker gets into higher positions in their career and makes more money.

aonic2• 16 years ago

What's a good & accredited online university for CS courses?

alexwestholm• 16 years ago

MIT: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/#electrical-engineering-and-compu...

brudgers7• 16 years ago

There's no degree there.

_delirium2• 16 years ago

The closest I know of (but there may be others) is this Virginia Tech program for an online masters in IT: http://www.vtmit.vt.edu/

jeremymcanally• 16 years ago

Troy University has an online bachelor's in CS, but the curriculum isn't exactly inspired. It's a mish-mash of good CS stuff with WTF's (such as being forced to take a senior level course on COBOL).

MichaelSalib• 16 years ago

I've heard some good things about UIUC's online program [1]. My spouse took some graduate level electrical engineering classes at Columbia's online program [2] and had a mixed experience. Some of the classes were really good, but in some cases the adjunct profs weren't very dedicated to teaching; then again, failure to maintain quality control on professional instruction is a problem at lots of reputable schools.

[1] http://www.online.uillinois.edu/ [2] http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/

aonic2• 16 years ago

Thanks! I found this as well, not CS, but close enough: http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/BachelorinIST_CourseList.shtm...

firemanx• 16 years ago

Regis out of CO - http://www.Regis.edu. Check out the college for professional studies. I'm currently doing a combined bachelors / masters in CS, all online. It's spend, but a decent education.

brudgers7• 16 years ago

Disclosure: My spouse teaches online for Phoenix.

Phoenix's success and also a source of criticism is due to its liberal admissions policy and therefore it accepts students who might not be considered fully prepared for college level courses by other institutions. People can legitimately come down on both sides of such an enrollment policy, on the one hand, it can be argued that it deprecates the value of a college diploma while on the other it can be argued that the enrollment policy provides access to capable people who would otherwise be denied.

With nearly half a million students and a liberal admissions policy, there are a lot of poor performing students. It is statistically inevitable. But I would suspect that the least prepared students are not much worse than those major US universities admit on athletic scholarship based on their meeting the NCAA's minimum qualifications. Like the major universities, financial gain is the reason Phoenix admits such students.

Like any school, a student's education is dependent on a number of factors. One thing Phoenix deserves credit for is the size of the classes and the emphasis on discussion. Even within mandatory freshman classes, class size is typically twenty students or less and meaningful participation in these discussions is 25-30% of the grade by university policy. Unlike many prestigious public universities, Phoenix doesn't create 200+ student classrooms and does not allow faculty to structure courses in a way which discourages open discussion. In terms of class structure, Phoenix is akin to a small liberal arts college, and that has real educational value.

Technologically, classroom communication uses is entirely disconnected - basically NNTP style newsgroups with a web front end available and most of Phoenix's classrooms are relatively low tech and emphasize reading and writing rather than streaming live video and chat. Importantly, this offers the financial advantage of reduced overhead for the University, and improves access for students with limited bandwidth.

As a publicly traded company, there is no doubt that Phoenix is in the business of selling degrees - but then again, the marketplace also plays a meaningful role in establishing the price of a Harvard degree, and the recent movement into online education by public universities is no less motivated by the bottom line.

While reduction in costs is one reason public universities are moving into online education, the real driver in many cases is increased fees. Online education offers public universities the opportunity to attract more student's from out of state which translates directly into higher tuition. But more tellingly, it is not uncommon for public universities to charge out of state rates to all online students regardless - including those who would qualify for in-state tuition rates on the bricks and mortar campus.

Because Phoenix's online faculty is largely adjunct, they can handle declines in enrollment more readily than their public university based competition, and because they don't try to compete based on cutting edge high bandwidth classrooms, their technology costs are relatively low. That's why they have been able to maintain revenues.

bane6• 16 years ago

Couldn't one say that poor performing students at UoP is a sign that the school's grading and student evaluation is fair (i.e. the system is working) as opposed to rampant grade inflation seen elsewhere?

brudgers7• 16 years ago

My spouse teaches there, I don't really know what the grade distribution is. However, my understanding is that poor academic performance by Phoenix students is often a function of background and immediate circumstances.

simplify• 16 years ago

I think this viewpoint can't be stressed enough. Evaluating schools based on what percentage of their students do well is a very slippery slope to encouraging schools to lower their standards to the lowest common denominator.

danielford• 16 years ago

Open admissions and small courses can be found at a community college for a fraction of the price for-profits charge. My main concern about for-profits are reports from their adjuncts that they've been pressured to pass students who perform poorly. A lot of their students also lack basic reading and math skills because for-profits don't have the remediation requirements you would see at a community college.

I'm all for seeing what market forces can do to improve education. But I'm worried that a lot of these students are going into massive debt to get a degree that won't be valued in the marketplace, due to lack of academic standards.

brudgers7• 16 years ago

>"My main concern about for-profits are reports from their adjuncts that they've been pressured to pass students who perform poorly."

That is not the experience related by my spouse, and I would suspect that there is less pressure at Phoenix than at some large and well known institutions. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/sports/ncaafootball/14aubu...

angstrom2• 16 years ago

Has your spouse seen this video? If not please watch it. I would be curious if you could debunk/shed more light on some of the issues it raises: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/

My concern about for-profit education is that its interest is focused more on the investor and less on the student outcomes. Students are admitted fairly easily and loans from for-profit banks in addition to any federal funding create what looks like a ponzi scheme taking advantage of people's aspirations. Once the pool of gullible students are dried up the scheme busts and the tax payers are the ones holding the bag.

ataggart• 16 years ago

>My concern about for-profit [services] is that its interest is focused more on the investor and less on the [customer].

Funny how elsewhere the profit motive aligns suppliers' actions to the demands of their extant and would-be customers, since to do otherwise would be to go out of business. Perhaps the issue here is that multiple levels of taxpayer subsidies yields a system of perverse incentives.

forensic2• 16 years ago

Why would a for-profit business not serve its customers?

Your criticism applies to public schools far more strongly than it does to private schools.

Public schools focus on pleasing their investor - the government - at the expense of their "customer" the student.

nodogbite• 16 years ago

There are three categories of college degrees, when it comes to helping you advance your career:

1. A small set of elite schools: Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech. Having Harvard on your resume will always stand out. "Harvard, huh? Certainly worth a look at what else he/she has done."

2. A school that happens to match with the hiring person -- you happened to attend whatever state school or private college that the hiring person went to or knows well. This is basically nepotism.

3. Everything else. UoP is most likely to end in this bucket.

rokhayakebe• 16 years ago

A source told me there is a law that has been passed preventing sales people to earn a commission from consumers they enroll them into schools. That maybe another reason.

University of Phoenix Enrollment Down by 42%

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