Colorado Technical University

What is your opinion of Colorado Technical University?

I am researching a B.S. in Information Technology - Network Management.

 

Over priced comes to mind.

 

If I were starting from scratch I personally would be looking at Western Governers University's programs. You obtain certs to demonstrate competencies on your way to completing your BS, and both types of credentials are important in obtaining employment in today's IT employment environment.

 

Agreed. I also don't like the lack of transparency on their website. Sure, if you request more info, you get all the details, but you shouldn't have to request the info to find out the details.

 

Any college that doesn't publish At Least their tuition rates on their website - I'd simply skip it.
I will not BEG for information that should be public.

 

You can find that info with CTU by using the search tool, but yeah, having to hunt for tution info drives me nuts, too. When I get done with my IACBE-school shopping, I'll have more to say about that.

 

I agree, if it is a "contact us for tuition" I don't bother going any further. I just see it as they are to embarrassed to publish it.

 

I've started to eval them recently because of their joint MCS/DCS program.

Overall, I've been impressed with the response of their admissions reps and the readiness with which they provide information without being asked for it. I think that's an important thing to say considering the commentary you've received to date.

I do not agree that it's a school's job to be 100% transparent to their potential customer base. It's a student's job to do the due diligence to make a good decision regarding the programs they apply to.

As to WGU, I would not go there again were I to do it over. I already had the certs and could have done better in terms of name value. I'm not digging at WGU as they were good to me and I am proud of the degree. I just wouldn't bother with them now considering all the other options out there with better name value.

Back to CTU, their program outcomes, graduation rates within planned program length and graduate employment data is all on their site. Tuition rates are gotten the moment you chat with the online admissions rep, who happens to pop up on your browser within a minute 30 of your showing up on their site to browse.

If you say "No, I don't want to chat." then it's on you. Why not chat?

This said, I've not spent enough time in eval that I feel comfortable endorsing them, but I know enough not to listen to the stuff above this post much.

IT

ITJD

 

If you would rather get information from a credible third party than from an online sales rep -- excuse me, admissions rep -- then you can readily look up the tuition and fees for any accredited university in the US Dept. of Education's public "College Navigator" database. For example, full info regarding the Colorado Springs, Greenwood Village, Kansas City, Sioux Falls, and Online campuses of CTU can be found here.

 

First select a campus, and then click on the tab marked "Tuition, Fees, and Estimated Student Expenses". Numbers are current through 2010-2011.

 

Their programs look OK, nothing unique. I didn't check prices. They've been advertising more in my neighborhood and sometimes that seems to be a negative in my mind.

 

.. and all of that information is also on their site in terms of the median debt outcomes. Most of their students take out loans and there's a high correlation between median debt and actual tuition price if someone takes the time to look.

So:

1. Thank you for the resource, it's appreciated.
2. There's no difference between admissions and sales these days. Sad to say, but true. Which is why students doing their own research is important.

 

I agree with this statement regarding advertising. This said, what kind? TV is a pretty large turn off. Print ads put them in the category of Harvard Extension and BU MET.

If it appears that I'm defending CTU, I'm not. I'm attempting to find a way to disqualify them from my own evaluation aside from the usual suspects simply because every school I've been to is now online and has some of the same features as what yourself and CalDog have mentioned.

 

Have to disagree. There is no difference between admissions and sales at some schools -- particularly for-profit schools like CTU.

But do you really believe that this is the case at other schools that you have attended, like Northeastern or UMass ? For example, Northeastern currently rejects the majority (62%) of undergraduate applicants. If a school refuses to do business with most potential paying customers, then admissions and sales are obviously different issues.

 

I believe that there is no difference between admissions and sales regardless of the school being discussed and regardless of the admissions rate.

The difference is what kind of sales approach you need to use to attract the students you want to matriculate. Harvard goes to lengths to attract their preferred demograph, as does Northeastern. Mostly this is accomplished through the judicious use of financial aid with the top candidates at Harvard (especially true from lower income families) often getting free rides.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that higher standards for admission automatically means the school is better. It means that the students are more talented and the school has generally been around longer than 50-75 years and has the resources to be selective. It speaks to a higher mean of talent on graduation, but it doesn't mean that by association, you're going to be a better student or have a better learning experience.

So when the Capellas and CTUs of the world have open admissions to masters and doctoral programs those open admissions usually require a certain undergrad GPA or a masters with a certain GPA. They can't afford to be selective as they've not been around long enough OR haven't made the right financial decisions OR have the wrong business plan OR a chosen business plan not to be cash fluid as it pertains to students.

Harvard was also open admissions at its inception. This is something I often state on this forum and people seem to ignore for their own purposes but I believe what you're seeing with all of these new schools is the only way new schools can operate in this market to get enough income to operate effectively.

I also believe that once I was enrolled at Northeastern that they cared enough about me to let me continue to go to school there for 8 years, the bursars office cared enough to charge me for classes, the program advisors cared enough to extend my program into eternity if I so desired and the career services department cared enough to put me in a stream of dead end internships that went against what my program was about.

The only person that truly cared was my academic mentor who showed me her own checkbook as a tenured professor of history and pushed me away from her field, regardless of my talent. I'm eternally grateful.

I have similar stories of UMass and WGU. The only people that matter at any of these schools are the professors that care. You can find those at any school, provided you apply yourself and build relationships. No school has a choke hold on caring professionals.

So it's very important to take a good hard look at any school's programs and the people teaching them as part of any evaluation process. At the end of the day, no matter where you go, you're getting financially ripped off.

.. and I mean that with a happy demeanor because there's a lot of value in education, the prices are just not in line with the return.

 

Your description of what Harvard and Northeastern do is accurate. But it doesn't jibe with your previous assertion that:

Why not? Because what Harvard and Northeastern do is neither "new these days", nor "sad to say".

First, such practices have nothing to do with "these days". Traditional non-profit universities have been granting scholarships and other forms of financial aid to talented but needy students for generations. More than 300 years in the case of Harvard, and longer than that in the case of Oxford or Cambridge.

Second, most people wouldn't regard this practice as something "sad to say". On the contrary, most people would regard it as good that talented but needy students get financial assistance to attend top universities.

*****

What's "new these days" and "sad to say" is the aggressive hard sell that is all too often associated with admissions inquiries at for-profit schools. Can't speak to CTU's current practices, but there have been historic Degreeinfo threads about their "extremely pushy" and "high pressure" sales tactics.

 

That may be true. But if a school has a reputation for attracting "more talented" students, and "a higher mean of talent on graduation", then a degree from that school is going to be worth more in the job market than a degree from a school with a reputation for admitting everyone in sight, regardless of talent. More selectivity may or may not mean that the school is better -- but it probably does mean that the degree is perceived as better.

This may be true of some new, struggling, for-profit schools. But for-profits seem to maintain their open admissions policies even after they become profitable. For example, the University of Phoenix made over one billion dollars of profit in 2009 alone. They have plenty of cash to establish more selective programs, but they would rather maximize revenue and profits by maintaining open admissions.

Caring and knowledgeable faculty, who go the extra mile for their students, can make a huge difference. But you may find that full-time career professionals are more likely to go the extra mile than part-time temporary hires (this is true in many fields, of course, not just higher education). Unfortunately, there is growing use of temporary adjunct faculty in all sectors of education, but this practice is particularly prevalent among for-profits like CTU. Simply put, faculty are more likely to go the extra mile for students when they feel that the school is going the extra mile for them.

 

For that to matter you have to make the logical leap that anything I say in one context has anything to do with what you're on about once you reply to it and change the context.

Unfortunately I don't roll that way, so prepare for a rather annoying time of it if you choose to make this thread a debate to serve your purposes, whatever they may be. To be frank, I'm not here for your amusement, and if I have to be here for my amusement, I'll just type responses to annoy you.

Your responses, quoted above are rubbish because they take my "sad to say" about the differences between admissions and sales being nil and apply it to the act of granting financial aid, which I inserted to the discussion as being an example of the differences in business model between established schools that have been around for a hundred years and for-profits that at most have been around for 40 years.

In fact, your assertion about Harvard and Oxbridge further my original point, rather than support yours. Well done.

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Anyone who has been to a car dealership or has been involved in any sort of sales position knows these approaches. Anyone working in business or having any experience in business know of these approaches. You can't sell someone something they don't want with methods they've seen before.

I, personally, have chatted with Capella, UoP, CTU, Walden, Harvard, Northeastern, BU, WGU, and BC admissions reps over the years. The university that fills my inbox with the most spam, and this is by far the leader, not just by some small measure is Harvard Business School.

UoP did call me every six months, and Capella was interested in me for about 90 days, but at the point where I told them to stop, they did. I still get invited to Doctoral open houses at HBS and I've hit the unsubscribe options several times.

Digressing a bit though, you can't be burnt by that which you don't sign. Students are not victims and being stupid doesn't make you a martyr. That's another story I'd rather not crack open though.

 

I'm a consultant with 15 years of experience in service delivery and infosec. I have had plenty of jobs offered me in this economy. I tell employers that all of my degrees are from online schools. I don't put Northeastern on my resume. I get hired. The selectivity of the elite degree from the exclusive schools matters for 10% of the job market and for people with no experience. None of the people on this forum going to online schools save for perhaps a small minority have no experience and perhaps even fewer are in that 10% of the job market.

In short, the degree is better to a small enough segment of the market, that if you're relying on it alone, you're screwed anyway. Of course this is my opinion. You're entitled to yours.

Those profitable programs have been open for less than 50 years. So in order for my statement to be true it needs to be taken as wholly true. As you'd see I made the provision for business model choices in my argument which made it bulletproof. If you must make your point, that's fine. It's made.

I expect that the public will continue to fund these schools until they become the next Harvards. It wasn't long ago that I had an admissions rep from Capella tell me they wanted to be known as the Harvard of the online space. How do you think Harvard built that endowment? It certainly didn't start with donations.

Full-time teaching faculty will be a dead profession inside 50 years. Research faculty will still exist and be funded by tuition and private business research grants. What you are seeing is the now, not the future and I find that people care about people that care back. Average people (in terms of attention to social skills) will always get minimum treatment.

 

Ah, but it did:

And Harvard alumni continue to donate -- at the rate of $600 million per year in 2010.

Out of curiosity, let me return the exact same question that you just posed: how do you think Harvard built that endowment, if not by donations? Tuition? The tuition at top universities doesn't cover costs, even at full rate. And (as you have pointed out), non-profit universities commonly discount tuition to get desirable students, so many students don't even pay the full rate.