Your Online Education Experience? 428
pspahn writes "I am currently enrolled at a very well-known online school. I was hesitant when I enrolled; now more than a year has gone by, and I am regretting my decision. The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer and our online discussions are reminiscent of an AOL chat room. While it is possible simply to attend a local school in person, I would much prefer an online environment as it seems to be a more natural medium considering the content of my studies. I am interested specifically in Information Security programs. What online education programs have Slashdot readers been happy with and considered successful?"
well... (Score:5, Informative)
You will experience the same problems with other types of educations. You only study to get the paper, if you want to learn stuffs do it by yourself.
College (Score:2, Informative)
College isn't about learning, it's about how long you can put up with all the crap you have to do and deal with the people around you.
Online schools are a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Online schools operate on a loophole that allows them to collect a ton of money that is disproportionately applied to the students. The current administration is finally starting to close the loophole but prior to that these online schools have proliferated. They exist to collect this money; educating you is the fake front to this shady business.
DeVry, Unitek, Sequoia Institute, University of Phoenix, etc, are all scams. You learn nearly nothing, it costs a lot, there is NO JOB PLACEMENT no matter what they say and you have to bear the stigma/burden of going to an online school. We've had several online schools in California abruptly cancel all classes, fire everyone, and abandon the building(s) in question with no recourse for the students, even those about to 'graduate'.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Here's my educational boilerplate info:
- Go to community college. You can take all your GE, many of your lower division and some of your upper division courses there for cheap.
- Transfer to a university. You'll only have to take the courses you couldn't take in community college, and you won't be there very long.
- At both points try to take as many tests as you can to 'test-out' of lower classes you don't need.
- Sign up for all the grants and scholarships you can find. Most of that money is never disbursed.
Yeah, it's slow, but it's affordable even for the poorest of us.
Fort Hays State University (Score:3, Informative)
Naked Emperor vs. Pathfinder (Score:2, Informative)
In one respect, the Emperor has no clothes. College is a just a bunch of hoops to jump through to get a piece of paper that supposedly (but doesn't) mean that you have skills. What it actually means is that you spent a lot of money (and made the loan servicer and your college a lot of money) and you jumped through a bunch of hoops. The skills you could gain can be gained through checking books out from the library, camping at the bookstore, and googling everything. RTFM and JFGI (google the acronyms if you don't know what they stand for).
The upside to college is that there are some skills that are more difficult to learn on your own. Also, there are a lot of entrenched managers from older generations that won't look at your resume if you don't have that stupid piece of paper. So it can get you places and a modicum of respect, but you have to smile and say you learned a lot and deny that the emperor is buck naked.
On the other hand, you can just be self-taught. Web design can be learned through reading design blogs, reading web design books from the library, and a lot of experimentation and experience actually designing websites. Web design is a demonstrable skill that doesn't necessarily require a piece of paper on the wall. There will be some closed doors because of the lack of the piece of paper, though.
If you decide to go to college for web design, stay away from rip off online colleges that are just diploma mills. Four year colleges are expensive and unnecessary for a web design degree. Find a nice, cheap community college with a distance learning program and web design major available.
Build your resume with as much experience as possible and build an online portfolio of your designs. This will get you a lot farther than a piece of paper in many cases. A lot of clients are just looking for people who know how to design and they don't care where you picked it up. Show them what you can do.
Some are good (Score:3, Informative)
I had an excellent experience with Walden University [waldenu.edu]. I was able to attend virtual lectures from distinguished professors from Duke to Carnegie-Mellon. The work was at an appropriate level, and I feel like I learned a great deal. Your mileage may vary in different areas (I got my MA in Comp Sci).
Online courses at most colleges are very simple... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:well... (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, there is a difference between serious, accredited universities and paper mills. If he's enrolled in one of the schools profiled in the Frontline documentary below, then he may simply be getting ripped off.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist [pbs.org]
It's pretty sad since these folks really are trying to better themselves.
University of Phoenix (Score:5, Informative)
At the insistence of my employer, I enrolled in online classes at University of Phoenix about 8 years ago. I was aiming for their MBA program. At the time, the classes were 5 weeks long, with a decent amount of weekly work and plenty of reading. Everything was online, including the mandatory newsgroup-style discussions.
After about three classes, it became clear to me that I wasn't learning much at all. I was also able to get by barely doing any of the reading, and just turning in a few well-written essays and keeping my virtual attendance up. In other words, I wasn't forced to think to earn my grades. There were no tests in any of the classes I had. For all they know, I could have been paying someone to take the class for me.
The instructors were nothing more than babysitting facilitators. They'd answer a question if you had one, and they'd grade your paper, but they were not instructing. They doled out assignments from plans that other people had written. Not once did they engage in a discussion or challenge you to think.
It wasn't until my fourth class when I realized the mistake I had made. The instructor was on vacation. Yes, vacation. For the five week class, he was literally gone and unavailable for the middle three weeks with the exception of one day (in 21) when he checked his email (to tell us he was on vacation). Yet the class continued on.
When the class ended, I complained about the level of "instruction" I was being given. They ignored me for weeks, and it wasn't until I encouraged about a dozen of the other students in the same class to stand up and say something. Finally, they wrote back and told me that I would be refunded for the class if I was willing to lose the grade that I had been given. Gee, thanks. And, only those students who asked were given that choice.
That was my last class, and I'm glad. A few weeks later I spoke candidly to the HR director and he told me he was glad I stopped taking them. He told me that when people come in with degrees from University of Phoenix he just tosses them to the bottom of the pile. He recognizes them as a diploma mill, and a BA from there is less valuable than a GED.
I've spoken with others who have attended University of Phoenix online and they all have similar stories.
University of Phoenix has employees whose job is to recruit students, and they earn commission for enrolling you. Their focus appears to be to get students through financial aid so that they have no problem getting their money. Once you're enrolled, and paid for, you're just a student ID.
Sadly I paid that "school" about $6000 of my own cash before realizing any of this, but hopefully others can learn from my mistake.
Have they improved since my experience? I sure hope so.
Re:Those who can, do... (Score:1, Informative)
Everything you need to learn is already available (Score:5, Informative)
For pre-U education to brush up your knowledge, there's Khan Academy [khanacademy.org] to teach you everything from primary school to even college.
For formal university level education, you can get many of them free directly from university. MIT Open Courseware [mit.edu] is one of the well known examples. You can find a list of them at Open Culture [openculture.com]. Google Code University [google.com] is a less known but great site that helps you start and search on your online education journey.
There are also video lecture collection sites that contain lecture recordings from various universities, such as Academic Earth [academicearth.org] and Video Lectures [videolectures.net].
You may also interested in less formal technology videos such as BestTechVideos [bestechvideos.com] and Google Tech Talks [youtube.com].
You can download a lot of ebooks from the web. Here is an example list [delicious.com] you can found on Delicious.
In case if you are only interested in web design, IMHO the best way to learn design and multimedia is go to a real college. But anyway, there are tons of resources for web design too. Delicious [delicious.com] is a must have search tool for you to get started.
I'd love to provide more links that I have but I'm short of time. But as always, Google [google.com] is your best friend!
Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you make an important distinction. I attended two traditional brick-and-mortar undergraduate state universities in engineering and math/computer science. I wouldn't characterize the learning as "outstanding" at either, since I did learn a lot more on the job. However, the quality between these and the UofPhx where I got my masters was astounding.
I didn't learn anything. I learned a few things in an accounting class that helps me with budgeting for a non-profit I'm involved with. But most of the work was busy work - reading and posting messages to a Outlook-based message forum. We also had to do 4-5 page papers each week, but the grading was very lax. There was also a lot of group work. Now, I think that this is a good idea since it mimicks the real world where in IT there is a lot of team work required. However, it was very inconsistent with the people who were in my group, and there was no choice on our part of whom to be in groups with.
The biggest frustration was not any hands-on learning. It was all writing papers about databases, networks, operating systems, etc. There wasn't any actual logging into a database, a network switch, a server, or even writing a single line of code. Fortunately, I took it upon myself for my capstone project to do some actual coding and complete a project, rather than the usual writing again.
So now, I'm stuck with $56k of student loans I'm struggling to pay back.
I definitely would NOT recommend UofPhoenix.
Re:well... (Score:3, Informative)
I did U of Phoenix for 4 classes (see full rant above) and everything in that report is 100% true. They lie like a rug to get you in the door then charge you exorbitant amounts for sub-standard ridiculously paced classes that are next to worthless.
For Profit Colleges are terrible (Score:5, Informative)
Another story was about how they have gotten into the practice of buying up super small trade colleges so that they can get the accreditation. One of these for-profit schools bought an aviation school and "expanded" it into mainstream courses http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_11/b4170050344129.htm [businessweek.com]
A third story was about how these for-profit schools also target the military. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_02/b4162036095366.htm [businessweek.com]
Re:University of Phoenix (Score:5, Informative)
A great deal of this excellent documentary mirrors what you've said, and is pretty scathing to University of Phoenix. The worst part is, folks take out huge student loans to pay for these worthless degrees from for-profit schools, can never afford to pay them back, and can never get out from under the loans because you can't discharge them in bankruptcy (because said loans are backed by the federal government).
Re:well... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:University of Phoenix (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.google.com/search?q=for-profit+schools+class+action [google.com]
Re:well... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Online schools are a scam (Score:3, Informative)
Re:well... (Score:1, Informative)
The share has permissions and the filesystem has permissions. If you can access the share, you still need access to the filesystem objects being shared. If you have access to the filesystem, you still need permission to the share for remote access.
Open University (Score:1, Informative)
As a current student in Open University, Bahrain branch, I'm highly satisfied and will graduate within the next 6 months. Not worried about accreditation as it is backed by the British government, and the middle east branch is backed by royals, most notably al-Waleed bin Talal and the King of Bahrain. Total cost for a 4 year program is less than 8000$. The US can learn a thing or two from this system as its been successful for the past 40 years.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/07/open-universities-try-to-bring-college-to-masses201.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_University