
University of Phoenix Enrollment Down by 42% - audreyw
http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/01/14/university-of-phoenix-enrollment-down-by-42/
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brudgers
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.

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angstrom
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.

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ataggart
>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.

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TomOfTTB
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.

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bane
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.

~~~
brudgers
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.

~~~
_delirium
It would be nice to see some statistics, but I suspect that an english major
from a small liberal arts college is actually significantly more valuable. Of
course it isn't going to get you a job _using_ the English major, but it
qualifies you for the generic HR screen of "4-year college degree from a
respectable institution", which opens up a tier of jobs not available with
just a high-school diploma. The unemployment rates and average incomes of
people with 4-year liberal-arts degrees are certainly _much_ better than those
with just high-school diplomas. Is the same true of UoP degree holders? I'm
not sure, but my guess is that UoP degrees don't pass as many HR screens,
especially at large companies, at least for now.

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brudgers
To the extent to which a degree is used to signify socio-economic status
(which I believe to be substantial and to which the higher earning potential
correlates), then it would be surprising if Phoenix graduates are seen as less
desirable than those from less accessible schools. Phoenix tuition, is not the
$37,000 a year that the Rollins Colleges of the world charge, and that is what
a significant part of what those degrees signify.
[[http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-
colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-
colleges/winter-park-fl/rollins-college-1515)]

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michaelbuckbee
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.

~~~
angstrom
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.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
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?

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timurlenk
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?

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haploid
"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?

~~~
timurlenk
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.

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nodogbite
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.

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

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MichaelSalib
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/>

~~~
aonic
Thanks! I found this as well, not CS, but close enough:
[http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/BachelorinIST_CourseList.shtm...](http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/BachelorinIST_CourseList.shtml)

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

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InclinedPlane
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.

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phamilton
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.

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rokhayakebe
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.

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booduh
Good.

