UoP compared to Fordham University

I just spoke to a friend that is getting her BS in Business from Fordham University. She said she works with a woman that is getting her BS in Business / Accounting from UoP online.

My friend said they spend about the same amount of time on course work and they have looked at each others assignments and they are equal in difficulty and concept.

That is interesting for all the people that think UoP is a joke. That is a comparison between UoP and a very respected school.

 

True. It is also anecdotal and so not worth very much in judging the general qualities of the two schools.

marilynd

 

Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

You are right but most of the comments here are anecdotal aren't they?

 

Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

True. But then again, you can't judge an entire school based on the experience of one member of one class.

Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood.

marilynd

 

Also comparing coursework has nothing to do with comparing prestige.

UOP will never have the prestige Fordham has, but being that they are both regionally accredited institutions, the coursework may well be similar in rigor.

 

If I thought you could compare UoP and Fordham on prestige...well, I would be a idiot.

My point is that some people think you can enroll at UoP, pay your money, and get a degree. That is not the case and I think it is interesting that the level of effort required is comparable at both schools.

I do not take one persons word about one class at one school as the final word on everything...this is just what I was told.

 

I am at UoP right now about to finish up my BSB/M and the program is no joke. Actually it is very time consuming and rather difficult. Like any college you have your good teachers and your bad teachers but all in all I have learned a great deal, and am happy with the schooling I have received from UoP.

I do not know about the other college but I can say that UoP as of right now is requiring a lot of reading and course work in each 5 week course.

So in my personal experience this is no cake walk.

 

two schools

UOP will never be in the upper west side, which is an awsome place to be.........

 

If your friend is planning on working in the NY area then the choice seems clear. My own anecdotal experience is that people scoff at the University of Phoenix. This may not be justified but it happens. Reputation may not mean everything but it does mean something. Good luck to all.
Jack

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

Okay. Anecdotal evidence isn't the same as quantitative evidence. University of Phoenix probably isn't Harvard (or even Fordham). But are all these people who say negative things about UOP being any more scientific?

 

Hey Randell,

Sorry, I wasn't trying to say you were an idiot or even trying to do what I suggested, just trying to understand your point and now I do.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

Well, I don't know, do I? I was responding to this one post.

BTW, there was no intention on my part to slight UoP. I don't know much about UoP, other than a brief discussion I had a couple of years ago with a new history department chair they hired locally.

I have no basis for judging UoP one way or another. I was simply responding to the basis--and implications--of Randell's comparison.

marilynd

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

Oh, sorry, Marilynd! I didn't mean for my post to come off as a slam on you. It's just that my last Statistics class was 14 years ago and I scored a quite miserable C- and I was wondering if someone could advise me on what exactly constitutes a statistically significant sample. As to those who don't like UOP, it seems that many simply don't like Phoenix because they are for-profit and their tuition is high. As to the quality (or lack thereof) of the curriculum (if one can get in and find a way to pay their high tuition), I was wondering if there was a way to find a way to get at the real truth.

 

Re: two schools

UOP will also never be in Da Bronx either, which is the other main campus of Fordham (actually, Rose Hill is pretty nice). A friend of mine is a faculty member there...

Cheers,
Mark

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

The three main complaints I have heard concerning UofP are group work, reputation, and spamming. Some UofP students report classes that are mainly group work and that some of the students do none of the group work and yet pass class after class. While UofP is RA many may see it as easy or even think of it as millish. The perception may be wrong but it may difficult to battle. Finally UofP is known to spam people like AIU in a way that reinforces the negitive feelings people have about it.

 

Hi Dave,

Some of the perceptions are correct, there are plenty of people that do not pull their weight in the teams, but they generally do not due the individual portion either, and end up dropping. The courses are split 70/30 (individual/group), so there is much more work required of the individual than the teams.

I have also found (as I said before) the quality seems to vary depending on which campus you go to, and the quality of the faculty pool in the area. We have been blessed with an excellent faculty pool to choose from, aside from a few bad eggs.

I do agree the spamming hurts our rep, and is very annoying in general, but those pop up ads generate thousands of leads per day so they must be doing something right.

I do also agree that many people see us as millish/easy or whatever you want to call it, but many of them (not all) have not taken a class, talked to an instructor that works here, or really researched the school aside from passing a "hasty generalization" based on what they read on the internet, or heard from a friend or colleague.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: UoP compared to Fordham University

Ted,

The sample size will depend on
(a) how confident you want to be
(b) how big an error you can live with
(c) how much variance there is in the population
(d) how big your population is (unless it's "very big," say 20 times your sample size).

Assuming that the population--the number of UoP courses which are "Okay" vs "Not Okay" or, say, the number of HR people who think UoP is 'Okay' or 'Not Okay'"--is "very big":

Say you want 95% confidence in your answer, and you can live with an error of +/- 5%, then a sample size of 400 would be good enough.

i.e. you'd settle for a result like this: "There's a 95% probability that the true proportion of HR people who find UoP acceptable is between 48% and 58%."

In general, sample size for a proportion is estimated as:

n = p*q * [z-squared/E squared]

n is the sample size
p is the proportion of 'okay' results in the population
q is the proportion of 'not okay' results = 1-p
E is the +/- amount of error (.05 here)
z is the number of standard deviations above and below the mean that will give you your confidence level (= about 2 for 95%, 1.96 exactly)

Since we don't know what p or q are, we choose .5 for each. These are the values that will maximize variance, so we can be sure that our sample size is big enough. (If p or q is closer to 1 or 0, variance is smaller).

So we'd get n = 1/4 * 4/E squared = 1/E squared = 1/.0025 = 400.

So in general, if we want a 95% level of confidence, and we don't know the population proportion, we can just divide 1 by the square of the acceptable error.

If you have a not-very-big population, then multiply by (N-n)/(N-1), where N is the population size.

So suppose UoP offers 1000 courses. You'd multiply 400 times (600/999) or roughly .6, and you'd get a sample size of 240.

Forgetting the math for a moment, the big problem in opinion sampling would be getting an unbiased survey of HR people, since the population of responders may not represent the population in general (e.g. people who feel strongly one way or the other).

In sampling the UoP courses for evaluation, you'd have to make sure the sample was random, because otherwise their quality may not be independent (e.g. one department may be strong, another weak).

Bill

 

UoP can never compare

UoP can never compare to a real bricks and mortor school. First off it is not academic in nature meaning that it hires many, many adjuncts without a PhD credential. This alone will make it a less prestigious school. Secondly it's admissions standards are generally less than that of other schools. Therefore it will attract more than it's share of ding-a-lings as well qualified working professionals who find its' format convenient. Speaking of which I believe its very condensed term format is another negative for the school. How much can one really get out of a 6 or 8 week class. To each his own but from my perspective UoP does have a less than stellar reputation whether desrved or not. In addition it costs more than many other schools that are looked upon more favorably. That's my take.

 

Re: UoP can never compare

(1) UOP is a real bricks and mortar school. With multiple campuses.

(2) Some students value having a practitioner faculty (professors with real-world jobs actually doing what they teach) more so than a faculty that knows how to write esoteric journal articles that no-one ever reads anyway..

(3) Yes, UOP is open admissions (or nearly so). And some may (mistakenly) think DL is easy.

(4) Many people function better learning one course at a time in a five to eight week format rather than three to five courses full-time in a full ten-week quarter or fifteen-week semester.

(5) UOP is a private, for-profit school. Private, for-profit schools are expensive. State schools can give their in-staters a break because, unlike private schools, they've got tax monies coming in. And, by the way, make no mistake about it, private non-profit schools are making a profit off you.

 

Re: Re: UoP can never compare

"Open admissions" and "prestige" are mutually exclusive. Therefore, UoP is not "prestigious".



...which is NOT a bad thing. If all education institutions were "exclusive", that would greatly reduce opportunities, simply by definition. And the goal of DL is accesibility.