This point was made in another thread. Why DOESN'T NCU participate in federal student financial aid? Accreditation isn't the issue; NCU is R/A. It just seems odd to me.
It has to do with set semester lengths. In order for a university to participate in the Title IV financial aid program, the university must have semesters with definite start and end dates. NCU participated in the Title IV program for a while by having a definite start date (i.e. the 1st of every month) and a definite end date (i.e. 16 weeks later). NCU’s participation in the Title IV program ended one of the main selling points of the university: mainly the possibility of finishing a class early and starting another class.
Yep, that's what I understood. So if you signed up for a 16 week class and if you finished it in 6 weeks, you had to wait 10 more weeks before you could sign up for another class, which slows down: 1. Incoming revenue for NCU 2. and the speed with which a student can graduate. On the one hand, the Title IV financial aid allows some students to enroll who would otherwise not be able to enroll. On the other hand, it impedes the incoming flow of revenue of students who must wait the full 16 weeks to sign up for another class. Which method generated more revenue? The answer is clear.
Simon, I don't see anything wrong with generating more revenue. As a capitalist, raising revenue is what our nation is all about. Let the market bear what it will. Regarding the online chat rooms as a part of the Federal requirement -- the abolishion of online chat rooms is no great loss to academia. IMO online chat rooms aren't very educational.
As an aside FWIW, Law Tutors On Line used chat rooms for their tutorial sessions. I found these sessions to be both valuable and interesting for Sentencing and Criminal Process. Unfortunately, LTO wasn't able to offer the service for jurisprudence and the subject ended up being just to large to absorb on my own in the time I had. I did not, therefore, write the exams and cannot say whether LTO's system actually works. BTW, the size of the subjects is what finally caused me to shift to the new program; rather than examining in two subjects, I will write two 45 minute exams for half a subject (modern jurisprudence) in May. Much more doable.
