Comments on Quick Takes: Race Classification Plan Questioned, Online Video of Berkeley Courses, Ignorance of History, U. of Phoenix Buys Stadium Naming Rights, $280M for Medical Research at Duke, Challenge of Title IX Lives (Faintly)

• U of Phoenix
• Posted by dunya macbean on September 27, 2006 at 8:15am EDT

• Gotta hand it to U of Phoenix marketing people. Is it a university or a virtual outfit that tries to sell degrees at Wal-Mart prices, or is it a new way using the tools of the Internet and computers to give some that step needed for that next more professional job? How to establish credentialling without peer review or as an earlier article points out, without your graduates knowing much more than...
  You finish the sentence. How about a good ole college football game in our stadium? U of Phoenix will next get football players on a team yet to be designed and built.
  Are they a college? Do you have to have students on a campus to constitute college?
  Hard to say today. While U of Phoenix is all over the US, continue to battle legal problems, let's give the old alma mater a cheer! Who's our team? Doesn't matter; the game will be at the U of Phoenix stadium? Where's that? Where the Arizona Cardinals play.

• U of Phoenix
• Posted by JMG on September 27, 2006 at 8:55am EDT

• I taught several courses for UOP a number of years ago and remain astounded at the vitriol the program engenders.

  Having been an instructor in the military before that, I found much in the UOP model similar: I had a standardized lesson plan, the text is already selected, etc.--all things that seemingly drive IHE readers up a wall.

  Yet, despite these factors, and despite not having a football team, and despite having courses in a bland corporate office park convenient to where they all worked (most were getting tuition reimbursement from their employers), they had a good experience, at least my classes (statistics and operations management).

  I now live in a Big 10 town and the comparison isn't flattering--to the Big 10 school. I think it's safe to say that, while UOP students are unlikely to populate the ranks of the most creative, brilliant scholars of tomorrow, and few will ever teach anything at a Big 10 school, neither did any drink themselves to death during rush week, set furniture on fire or overturn cars after a big game, or blow off classes and expect to pass.

  And if they apply themselves, they will have a solid foundation for either additional education or work in their field. What exactly is so terrible about it? It's definitely a weird merger of McDonalds-like standardization and academia, but in the post-peak oil world that we are now entering, I bet UOP is far better equipped to survive.

• Posted by Steve Foerster , Executive Director at Free Curricula Center on September 27, 2006 at 9:05am EDT

• Dunya,

  Actually, it offers a Wal-Mart education at Neiman Marcus prices.

  -=Steve=-

• U of Phoenix
• Posted by mythbuster on September 27, 2006 at 9:10am EDT

• I have nothing against the way U of P delivers education. More power to them. But, I think they're students are eligible for federal aid, yes? If so, how can you reconcile that with pouring millions into naming rights?

• Posted by Hoosier Prof on September 27, 2006 at 9:46am EDT

• Mythbuster, you reconcile it the same way my school reconciles paying the basketball coach more than the president. *They're* happy with *their* choice; it's *their* call.

• Posted by K.T. on September 27, 2006 at 11:00am EDT

• And, the difference between stadium rights and the endless marketing in which "traditional" colleges engage is...?

  Sure, one is more expensive but my institution has a stadium deal also... it's called where our football team plays and boy did it cost a pretty penny...

• UOP & Marketing, For-Profit Eduaction
• Posted by Greg Harris , Alumni at AIU on September 27, 2006 at 3:35pm EDT

• As a graduate of two for-profit colleges and former attendee of at least eight non for profit colleges the comparison of a traditional College or University vs. a Proprietary based University seems a little like comparing a melon to a plate of fruit, both are good for you except one has more of the goodness you need. People who receive degrees from proprietary schools do so most times after their efforts to get one the traditional way has fail. The key word in the last sentence is tradition and tradition has gone to the wayside with online education (both my degrees are online based). It seems there is a social moral or group think from traditional schools that online is reserved only for the gifted or highly intellectual individual and people who want an education this way are suspect to possibly being lackadaisical in motivation or ability. Furthermore the idea of not being able to see touch and feel the student’s non-educational actions are very controversial to the traditional professor who is traditionally known as the 'sage on the stage' where as in online they are the 'guide on the side'. Education is a far encompassing ever developing world that should be perpetually open to newer and better ways of addressing the needs of learners and focused on competition academically to ensure results are the final product. For-Profits are more suited to change where as non for profits maintaining the status quo; familiarity breeds content and since more money is always available from some big universities alumni network’s endowment heck why not spend it towards better salaries or faculties. Education as always found controversy with synchronous vs. asynchronous delivery and it’s as old as traditional colleges and universities. Many people who maintain professional licenses such as Real Estate, Insurance and Securities do so via asynchronous learning and strictly deal with company based schools or for-profit based educational concepts that yield excellent results....shown in passing state based exams. Moreover these same people have many an industry based designation behind their name such as CFP, LUTCF and CRS that adds further legitimacies to their ability to be productive members of the American dream economically. Online has changed the world and those ‘real learners’ who are only trying earned a honest living relate to this; but then again more and more younger learners, handicapped learner and socially disadvantaged learner will continue to benefit from asynchronous delivery in spite of the big box theory of bigger is better and one must see, feel and touch your response in order to maintain that social superiority that coming from these non for profit institutions produce from it graduates so often;...not all however... mine you...but a lot. Change and earning a profit is not bad and if it helps someone develop a better self image about life....so what's the problem with these big traditional universities then??maybe its money or showing a profit also.