Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As an employer if I see UoP or the like on an application it goes in the garbage. Sometimes I like to call the applicant to tell them they're an idiot but most of the time I'm nice about it.
I think community colleges are way better, period. I graduated from a community college, and I've never even stepped in a for-profit college, so I'm completely biased. However, going to community college was dirt cheap and a lot of my professors really went above and beyond to try to make sure they taught us what we needed to know to make it in the professional world. I'm absolutely glad I went to community college and I'll probably even go back at some point to take more classes.
You do realize that this is not a big deal and occurs all the time to even the oldest traditional universities, right?
I've sat on boards that have put colonial colleges on notice. 99.99999% of the time, the colleges fix their shortcomings and it's never escalates.
But the majority of accreditation sanctions have to do with monetary problems, correct? These are more like fundamental academic issues.
Even if they will be fixed future, they should cause anyone who is right now considering spending tens of thousands of dollars more than they would at a CC (like the OP) to reconsider.
So they were put on notice and are still on notice. Being put on notice is not as severe as being placed on probation. Considering that UoP has been regionally accredited since 1978 and has so much money to fix any problems, I doubt they'll lose accreditation or let it go anytime soon.
You're missing the point...
A good school should not be operating on the brink of losing accreditation at all times. They should be trying to exceed the minimums and offer the best quality education possible. University of Phoenix, unlike non-profits, must balance its educational quality with marketing costs and profit margins. In doing so, it must operating as efficiently as possible. That means if the educational quality is toogood, the university is spending too much money on resources, staff costs, etc., and if the quality is too poor, the university loses its accreditation. Therefore, they have a very small window to operate in, in order to maximize profits without losing accreditation. It's a game of "how much can we get away with without losing accreditation?".
This is precisely why for-profit schools, like UoP, have such a bad rap, and rightfully so.
A good school should not be operating on the brink of losing accreditation at all times. They should be trying to exceed the minimums and offer the best quality education possible. University of Phoenix, unlike non-profits, must balance its educational quality with marketing costs and profit margins. In doing so, it must operating as efficiently as possible. That means if the educational quality is toogood, the university is spending too much money on resources, staff costs, etc., and if the quality is too poor, the university loses its accreditation. Therefore, they have a very small window to operate in, in order to maximize profits without losing accreditation. It's a game of "how much can we get away with without losing accreditation?".
This is precisely why for-profit schools, like UoP, have such a bad rap, and rightfully so.
But it hasn't operated on the brink of losing accreditation at all times. The quality is relatively poor, but UoP hasn't been operating while on notice or on probation most of the time since 1978. Being put on notice is really not a big deal. If things were really bad, the school would have been put on probation. Like NJBest said, these problems are usually corrected. To be honest, UoP is in a better position to correct problems than many traditional colleges that end up in the same situation (several of them have been bought out by for-profit companies because of their money issues). Take Ashford University (a for-profit), for example. They were told by the HLC that their accreditation would not be renewed because most of their operations were outside of its jurisdiction. When Ashford tried to become accredited by WASC, they were rejected. Very quickly, Ashford was able to make drastic changes and was accredited by WASC. Small, traditional colleges on the brink of going broke don't have the resources to make quick, drastic changes like these. Mountain State University, a non-profit, lost accreditation and shut down not too long ago because of financial issues. As a matter of fact, Ashford University used to be a non-profit that went broke and was bought by Bridgepoint.
If you read my other posts, you will see that I do not like UoP. I don't like for-profits in general, but I doubt UoP is going to lose its accreditation anytime soon.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
