Nosy Reporter

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Mead Gruver, Jan 21, 2005.

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  1. Mead Gruver

    Mead Gruver New Member

    Greetings,

    I'm an Associated Press reporter in Cheyenne, Wyo., working on a story about Wyoming's 10 distance-learning schools.

    They are licensed by the state but not accredited by the Distance Education Training Council or the North Central Association.

    I'm interested in hearing good, neutral or bad experiences from people who have enrolled at or who have worked for any of these schools:

    American Capital University
    American Central University
    American City University
    American Global University
    Columbia Commonwealth University
    Halifax University
    Paramount University of Technology
    Preston University
    Kennedy Western University
    Rutherford University

    I would appreciate responses from people who are willing to be quoted with their full names.

    Mead Gruver
    The Associated Press
    (307) 632-9351
    [email protected]
     
  2. Han

    Han New Member

    Make sure to provide the text once this is complete here, if you don't mind. It would be very interesting to read.
     
  3. Khan

    Khan New Member

    You might want to run a search here for those schools. It's usually helpful.
     
  4. salami89

    salami89 New Member

    Preston charges over US$6000 for its PhD program and has deputy politician(s) to vouch for them. The campus is located in a shoplot here in South East Asia and the management was picked from a team of non-academics who don't even have a degree to boot. It was more a husband and wife team. The husband being overly zealous to make money so as to afford paying for the materialistic ends of the wife primarily a house and a branded luxury car. The lecturers' salaries were depressed and they usually had a high turnover of staff so as to keep costs down. Then again this SE Asian country had a reputation of keeping salaries down to enable it to be competitive. However, it does not mean that productivity improves as a result.

    What bogs me is the fact that both hubby and wife aren't even graduates and they founded this so called campus of a university all for profit motives.
     
  5. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Hello Mead. Welcome to DegreeInfo.

    Many of the schools in question have been discussed at length on this forum. I recommend that you use Degreeinfo's search feature and enter each school's name. You will get an eyeful with some of them.

    Columbia Commonwealth is the successor to Columbia Pacific University, one of the larger (and fairly well regarded) California Approved schools. It operated in the Bay Area for many years and has, amongst its alumni, John Grey (author of the successful "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" books). Several years ago, Columbia Pacific lost its California approval and lost its subsequent appeal. The outfit moved to Wyoming (a state perceived as a weak regulator), changed its name to Columbia Commonwealth and has is currently operating there. This is the cliff notes version. A search on this site will find much more complete information.

    Kennedy Western has a small cadre who are quite adamant about defending the school against any criticism. Most of the comments about Kennedy Western (especially from those with degrees from accredited universities) tend to be highly critical of this institution.

    All of the other schools on your list have been written about somewhere in this forum.

    All the best.

    Anthony Pina
    Coordinator of Learning Technologies
    Northeastern Illinois University
     
  6. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Perhaps Mr. Gruver could read the threads on this board, select which persons he might wish to interview, then use the PM function to request his interview.
     
  7. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Mr. Gruver,

    Sorry to see that the dead sage grouse tested positive for the West Nile virus.

    The degreeinfo.com search function hasn't been much forthcoming so you may wish to Google the following:

    american capital university site:degreeinfo.com

    and so on down your list.

    Now excuse me while I see what else you've had to expose about Wyoming. :)
     
  8. avia93

    avia93 New Member

    Okay!

    Hmmm... Its nice to see news reports being done about universities that might be little shady. But I worry that not enough news reports or being done on the many good online colleges. I hope in your report you atleast include a school that is in good standing and not just another article on how bad another online college is;)
     
  9. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    That's the oddest metaphor for Kennedy-Western I've ever heard.
     
  10. salami89

    salami89 New Member

    Mead I foresee the rise of Chinese universities, an article on them would be worth reading on.
     
  11. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    The search function has been goofed-up on this site for quite a while, actually. It's not that it doesn't work at all, it's just that it doesn't work reliably... and sometimes not at all. I've keyed phrases that I know I've used in posts that I know I made in threads that I know are here... but they don't show-up. That said, other time (using other terms), they sometimes do. I guess whenever the database has been corrupted however many times it's happened here of late, the ability of search tools to get at whatever's in the corrupted part broke.

    So, sending Mr. Gruver to this site's search is probably not terribly helpful. However, Google routinely crawls this site... the parts of it that aren't broken to search engine spiders, that is. (If you don't believe it, set-up a google alert on your username and watch how relatively quickly after you post something you get notified that Google found it.)

    One can use Google to search this site by using Google's "site:" specifier following the search terms. And to get an accurate search, one must use quotation marks so that all words will not be treated as Google's default "either/or" and so that the name of the university will be searched as a phrase.

    For example, to most effectively search this site, using Google, for information on Kennedy Western University, including the two most common abbreviations people use around here, type into the Google search box the following text string, exactly as shown, including spacing and quotation marks:To search the entire web, just leave-off the site:degreeinfo.com part.

    To search for an exact university name, use:
    • "Suchandsuch University" site:degreeinfo.com
    It might also help to throw the word "wyoming" into the search, as in:
    • +"Suchandsuch University" +wyoming site:degreeinfo.com
    In fact, it might make sense use this site's search function to just search on the word wyoming, which produces these results... which clearly show that the search function, here, is broken. Only ten threads are shown (at least as of this writing), yet we all know that the word wyoming has been around here in more than only 10 threads. Still, those 10 might be helpful.

    A Google search of this site for the word wyoming, on the other hand, produces some 23 pages of results (some 232 hits, as of this writing) which can be viewed by clicking here.

    Sadly, the several times that this site has broken of late also seems to have broken even Google's ability to get at some of the data; hence, though I know for a fact that there are posts here regarding some of the other "institutions" (and I use that term lightly) that Mr. Gruver has inquired about, some of them are no longer showing-up in Google searches of this site, either -- and I know they used to. So I sure hope Chip finishes whatever re-working of this site he's promised, because at least the search capability is really goofed-up.

    Mr. Gruver should also know that once one gets off this site and begins to read postings in other distance education forums, some of these less-than-credible institutions that he's listed are suddenly touted in said forums as somewhat more credible than they really are; and he will encounter a decidedly different overall feeling from those other forums than one gets here. It's important for Mr. Gruver to realize that many of the other forums are partially-populated by diploma mill operators (or those sympathetic thereto) and a number of downright nutjobs -- many of them people who tried to espouse their wrong-headed diatribe here, but were booted out (and rightly so).

    Lastly, Mr. Gruver needs to be very careful whose opinions he solicits and how seriously he takes them. It's easy to become misled if you happen to stumble into one of the other forums that is populated with degree holders (or degree seekers) from diploma mills (or institutions that are darned close thereto). No one wants to admit that they screwed-up. Some of these degree holders/seekers will fight to the death in defense of their school, the degree they're seeking or have therefrom, and their rationale and decision to obtain same. Even though they have no financial stake in the institution at all, they'll argue its virtues as if it were theirs. Some of them will make-up the most outlandish rationalization, justifications and downright lies... and will fight with a level of intensity and aggression that could easily lead one inexperienced in these things to assume that if so many people could all be whistling the same tune so vigorously, then what they're saying must be true.

    So I reiterate my caution to Mr. Gruver: Please be careful. Stick with this forum as much as possible. Read enough threads to begin to realize who the credible experts are around here and then read what they have said around here -- and, perhaps, solicit opinions from them via Private Message (PM) or email.

    And I can't believe Mr. Gruver isn't soliciting the opinion of John Bear -- arguably the most expert and credible person on the planet when it comes to matters such as these. If he has not done so already, I strongly encourage him to make that contact.

    Hope that helps.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 22, 2005
  12. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    Slightly off topic: I was unaware that the search functionality was broken. We had a problem years ago when something got corrupted within UBB (the software we used prior to the current VBulletin) but was under the impression it was working fine now.

    I will run a maintenance utility that rebuilds the indexes. Hopefully that will solve the problems.

    Thanks

    Chip
     
  13. plcscott

    plcscott New Member

    Chip,

    There have been several discussions about the search function not working. It hasn't worked in about a month.
     
  14. DesElms

    DesElms New Member

    Or longer.

    And the forum, generally, has been dirt slow, again, for at least a day... or maybe two. When I can click on the "Submit Reply" button when making a reply, and then run down the street to the 7-11 for a cup of coffee and it's still "thinking about it" when I return, only to finally post a few minutes later, something's very wrong...

    ...again.

    Okay, okay... I exaggerated. It wasn't the 7-11 down the street. It was my own kitchen, downstairs. It only seems like it's long enough for me to go to the 7-11 down the street.

    But stop and think about it: By either measure it would be too slow, would it not?

    EDIT: Okay, now that I've submitted this reply, today, I can see that it's a little faster right now... actually, in fairness, quite a bit faster. But yesterday (Saturday 23 Jan 2005) it was so ridiculously slow that "quite a bit faster" than yesterday is still kinda' slow. Put another way: I've seen these forums faster... alot faster, actually. Hopefully, the new server Chip's planning will fix the problem. [color=gray[fingers crossed][/color]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 23, 2005
  15. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    The forum has been unusually slow for the last 16 hours because the reindexing maintenance utility was running, and it hogs most of the processor resources.

    It just finished, so hopefully the search function will work a bit better now. Whether this will also affect other speed issues, I don't know.

    And I will pester Nate again to finish the move over to the new server.
     
  16. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    The search problem goes back to the site problem you had roughly a month ago. I believe the extent of the search problem was that we couldn't search any threads older than the date of the resolution of the site problem.

    Just searched excelsior and the results went back to 2001 so it seems you have corrected the search problem.
     
  17. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    Quit whining.

    The AP guy wanted info on Dead Sage Grouse University and its kindred,
    and all you do is bitch about the search function.

    Sheesh.
     
  18. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Speaking of gamey birds...

    For a guy with a clerical collar...

    Ah, forget it.
     
  19. Fortunato

    Fortunato Member

    I sent this in an email to Mr. Gruver, but I think it's important to note that although there are several not-so-great schools found in Wyoming, the citizens of Wyoming have a great DL resource in their state university. The University of Wyoming Outreach School provides classes via internet, correspondence, and teleconference, and is very reasonably priced. I'm a bit of a cheerleader, since I graduated from their online BS in Business Administration program last year, but I've been very happy with the education I've received there.
     
  20. TCord1964

    TCord1964 New Member

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