First, I want to thank everyone for this great forum. I've done a lot of reading in the past couple of weeks and this place is chock full of great information. Should I finish my BA on time, I am thinking about getting a Masters in either Information Systems (Databases, Oracle, that sort of thing) or security. Unfortunately, I really hosed my first shot at college by not dropping out when I really had already dropped out. My GPA at graduation will be just shy of 2.9 because of it. (Yeah, I could take more courses than I need and go another year to get the GPA up, but what's the point? Some schools want to see *all* transcripts if you're a grad of a "compliation" school so they'll still see the awful stuff.) Living within my means and going with a school who will accept me rather than fighting to get into a better school seems to be the path of least resistence. I have 10+ years on-the-job (though I'm a stay-at-home mum temporarily) so I'm not too terribly concerned. That's long way getting round to my question : The For Profits, while expensive, seem to pack the most into a short period, and don't seem to have a lot of fluff. By the time I'd be done, I'd be ready to return to the work world as my daughter will be in school full-time. On the other hand, not-for-profits carry with them a higher degree of respect and there is no concern that they might not be providing the education they are supposed to be providing. (Just read an article about Allentown Business School, a for-profit, that is being sued for essentially, stealing aid money by keeping students on the books who have really dropped out, or for passing sub-par students, and worse, for accepting some people who were barely literate. They've also lied about job placement stats, but that seems par for the course. ) Other than what I've already mentioned, does anyone have any wisdom to share, for or against, For Profits? (I'm thinking Colorado Technical U. Online -- I didn't get a hard sell, and the guy was very cool about my not wanting to apply right then and there. He said he'll call me in a month or two. ) Thanks in advance. Sorry so long-winded. D.
Hi, I once had the same impression that you did: that for-profits would somehow get you the same degree but faster and scheduled more efficiently. I am really glad that I discovered otherwise. There is a huge range of not-for-profit options out there, especially for degrees like the MIS, that are cheaper than Devry and Strayer and will take applicants with as low as 2.5 GPAs. Also, after reading this board I became especially worried about for-profits like U of Phoenix that have a heavy group work component. Apparently, in some classes you are graded only on group projects. Since these programs are so easy to get into, you may be in a group with people who are much less qualified/experienced than you and drag your grade down! I decided I wanted to avoid a situation like this at all costs. Keep in mind that the for-profits charge higher tuition than non-profits for a variety of reasons. One of the most important ones is marketing. Your not-for-profit XYZ State University doesn't have to spend tons of money on TV ads extolling the successes of their programs. I would not discount a for-profit school automatically. It may be that for certain specialized programs they may be the best option. I just think you should do a very, very careful comparison between their program and the not-for-profit alternative.
One thing I don't particularly care for with the web sites of For Profits is that they tend to obscure information. They want you to contact them first, and then they'll share details. It makes it difficult to compare them to traditional schools if you don't really want to go through the entire sales routine. I need to sit down with a spreadsheet and do some comparisons. Do you in general, believe that For Profits will not deliver as good as an education as not-for-profits? (generally, I'm sure there are always exceptions in which case, exceptions are worth noting!!) Thanks! Donna
I do believe that for-profits will deliver education that is not as good. However, this is not a general rule. If the playing field were equal, and students had full information about for-proft educational results, this would not be the case. For example, if Devry published clearly on their website that X% of students admitted into a program failed out after a certain amount of time, and that it took X number of years on average to complete a program, and that graduating students, when given an assessment test, scored a certain average, thus proving what skills they had learned during their degree, and followed up all students a year later to see where they were working and at what salary... then a prospective student could compare that information to another for-profit or not-for-profit. Competition would result in schools getting better and better. As you have noted already this is not the case. For-profits tend to hide this kind of information. If they are not forced to disclose it, then they have no incentive to disclose it, and thus no incentive to improve themselves in this area. I can immediately think of an exception, but it's not in America. In Japan, the public school system is much more strict and rigorous than the American system. However, for some reason language education is a huge weak spot. All Japanese students study English for something like 8 years in their school. At the end of those 8 years they can speak English about as well as well as pigs can fly. The teachers who teach it to them don't understand English themselves and teach a weird version that has almost no relation to what native speakers speak. If a Japanese wants to learn English they are much better off going to a private, for-profit that specializes in English language education and fiercely competes with other such providers.
I think it is more a matter of the school. I've seen good and bad on both sides. It's important to find one that you feel comfortable best and that's right for you.
CTU's MSM-ISS, my opinion DeeEff, Welcome to the board, I'm currently enrolled in Colorado Technical University and finishing my seventh class of ten. The initial correspondence was not a pleasant experience due to the pushy staff, with that said things have gotten significantly better. Last year was their first year starting their online classes and I was caught in the initial push to sign up new students, I presume. If you'll search for my earlier post you'll find comments pertaining to CTU. The network security classes which comprised the first half of the degree for me were challenging but not impossible, due to the fact I do network security as part of my chief technical officer role. Currently I'm in a project management portion and will be so to the end of my 10 classes. Project management has proven to be very challenging and has peaked my interest for another direction instead of a CIO job. My undergraduate degree as you can see in my signature is from American Intercontinental University(AIU) it's in information technology. This was a for-profit institute with that said I did find the classes very challenging and was able to actually learn a new skill, which I used today. I opted not to go for their masters in information technology because it would be overkill as I progress into senior management. One thing I kind of regret is not taking their MBA because recently you can acquire a second MBA by taking two additional classes to change concentration. I know this is not an Ivy League school but it fits my situation perfectly. What I did find out about Colorado Tech University was if Iwere to take four additional classes I can receive a second masters of science in management with another concentration. My current concentration is in information systems security, I was considering doing the second in business management. Again, this fits my situation and I know some folks will not agree about my school choices. My advice to you is simply do thorough research and ask as many questions as necessary to find what school fits you academically, financially and careerwise. GoodLuck!! Vonnell
vonnell- Just finished my IT 662 final exam tonight at CTU, which is my final class for my MSM-IT! I'm on campus in Colorado Springs though, not doing it online. You're almost there, good luck! I considered taking the 5 additional business classes and picking up the MBA-PM as well, but I'm taking a break. I think my wife would have killed me if I told her I was doing another 8-9 months of school.
How do you find the other students at Colorado? Are they generally computer pros who want an advanced degree or are they people changing careers? I'm also curious as to what you see as the strength of their program over other options you explored. Thanks for all of the advice, guys!
From my experience at CTU, pretty much everyone in my program worked in I.T. in some form. My degree is M.S. Management-Info Technology. About half the folks were techies (like me) who want to transition into management, so the PM stuff was fairly new to us. The other half were managers who wanted to brush up on technical skills, but not necessarily change career path. Lots of Air Force/Army officers (military town) as well. I thought the PM courses (5 total) were very good. They're certified through PMI and cover the whole spectrum of project management (PM processes, risk, schedule/cost control, contracting/outsourcing, etc.). The IT courses (6 total in networking, database, and system analysis) were taught more from a management perspective, and didn't really get "nuts and bolts" technical. They were OK, but being a technician I learned more from the PM classes personally. On campus, we had probably 20-30 students per class. Lots of research/presentation topics. At least half the classes had a group (usually 3-5 folks per group) deliverable of some sort. Overall, was happy with the instructors and quality of material...only had 2 instructors I didn't care for. One had never taught a Masters course before, the other pretty much read from her PP slides word-for-word. I found the program challenging, but not impossible from a workload standpoint. As for comparing other schools, my criteria was probably a little different than yours will be because I knew I wanted to do on campus versus online. In Colorado Springs there is Regis (main campus is in Denver) who I did my undergrad with, I wanted a different school for grad. UCCS's program was at least 2, closer to 3 years...CTU's took me around 20 months. Didn't want to do U of Phoniex (who has an on campus facility here) because of rep. Also, several folks from my office either were in a program at CTU or had completed one recently, and I can't remember anyone having a negative experience. Good luck!
That sounds great. Now I have to figure out if I'm cut out for management. If I keep telling myself "it is just a game, it is just a game" I can probably handle it. <g> Some of me wants to go back and do more apps stuff with Oracle, because I really enjoyed it and there's a lot more of a chance to get a job that fits in with my children. However, it'd suck to go back and look at a huge pay cut so I'm thinking that if I'm going to be stuck at a job, I might as well make as much money as possible. Since I wouldn't be managing work and classes, I'd probably have much less an issue with coming up with time to do class work. I'm curious how the online program differs though. I'm not terribly keen on group work. Thanks again.
Funny you mention Oracle, I'm a DBA and was just out at the Open World conference in San Francisco last week. The huge push right now is the 10g database (a few folks are running it in production, but not alot), which is supposed to be much more "self managing". One of the conference sessions I attended focused on the new role for DBA's, and how they need to become much more business/management oriented to stay competitive in the market. I'd already decided I wanted to start to transition into that type of role before hearing that, but it made me feel better about my decision to go for a management rather than technical concentration for my Masters.
That's excellent information. Thank you! I had been staying close to Oracle for a while, but stopped paying attention until recently. Having been in a regulated industry, we didn't move to every new version just because it came out. Required too much validation. Interesting stuff about being self-managing. I suppose that also requires throwing tons of hardware at it so there's always enough resources for it to manage itself.
DoD I'm guessing? I've got buddies in that world that are still on some patchset of 7.3 because the mission is too critical to risk the upgrade. And from the impression I got, it's "self managing" to a point. It has automated alot of the monitoring, but it still needs to be setup correctly on install/creation and someone still needs to apply the recommendations made by the system. One of the big sells for 10g is the grid computing concept...basically allows multiple servers to share the same storage set, and with the clustering capability introduced in 9i you're supposed to have 24x7/365 availability. The storage sizes of some of these systems are getting unreal...I thought ours was big at 2-3 TB for several of our production db's, but I talked to folks out there who are at 15+ TB's now (and growing daily). The world's changing, and great improvements are made every 2-3 years with the introduction of a new version, but I'd guess we're still 5-10 years from having a truly self managing product.
Lurker, I would like to pursue the MBA but at this time there are far too many classes. I figure a business management degree would compensate for the MBA, I hope. My wife and family are also factors, can they deal with me for another four or five classes?? I do wish the online MBA was offered for IT management, currently its only offered in an executive MBA format. Whatever you do I wish you luck. Vonnell
