D'oh! Los Angeles Here I Come!

While we are on the subject of "know before you go" (see UNISA problems topic), I have just learned my USQ final examinations will be held in Los Angeles...400 miles and a plane ride away.

If I knew I would have to suffer the sight of hundreds of bikini-clad beauties whilst taking my exam I would have signed up earlier!

Seriously, advice given throughout this board to "know before you go" and digging into the details of a school and program before signing up are all wise. While my inconvenience doesn't bother me, someone with less of a budget may have been devastated by this development.

Regards,

Christian

 

In L.A.? Manhattan Beach, maybe. But in L.A. you'll have to determine the location of the testing center and ensure you don't wear the wrong colors! (Turf wars and all that.)

Rich Douglas

 

I spent 26 years of my life in Los Angeles and the only thing that worries me is getting a bad burrito.

But, you are right, Los Angeles is a big place, and I do not know where the testing center is as of this moment. However, my surfboard will be travelling with me.

Regards,

Christian

 

Kajidoro:

While you are in LA, please drive down to Santa Ana, 700 North Main Street, and tell us what the campus of California Coast University looks like, would you? And happy traveling.

Russell

 

In my case was the other way around, I found out that my examination center was in the same university where I work, what is worst it is in the same department, just two offices from mine. About 10 meters away, no need for place or a bus.

 

It is a drab, converted bank building. I remember it being dark blue when I drove by in 1983.

Rich Douglas

 

Now you may have something here, Rich! Was the main vault left in the building when the bank relocated? If so, this is an excellent scenario for CCU. Tuition fees are kept in the vault, from which all transactions take place.

Surely they have hired some mid-career professional painters to give the place a facelift over the past 18 years. Or perhaps a "Paint-for-Degree" situation.

Russell

 

Russell asks, re California Coast: Rich! Was the main vault left in the building when the bank relocated?

It certainly was, when I visited a few years after Rich. As it happened, I was there late on a Friday afternoon, and was quite impressed when owner Tom Neal excused himself to call his bank "to transfer money from our checking account to our savings account for the weekend."

Probably good money management, if there's enough to manage. At 4%, my current checking account would earn 44 cents over the weekend.

 

My visit a few years ago to pick up books...

White OLD building on the corner little in the way of parking and as a student I entered and talked to an employee through a window like you see in a doctors office, small waitng area not impressive at all. Looking through the window they did seem to have large piles of stuff either coming or going.

Dan

 

Why don't you ask me? I used to live on Main just down the street from them. Pretty standard office building as I recall. Nothing to write home about.


Tom Nixon

 

Santa Ana is an amazing hotbed of higher education. You could spend all day there checking out campuses (such as they are). Among the CA-approved universities with graduate programs in that city alone there are:

1. American Behavioral Sciences Institute (PhD, PsyD)
2. American Inst. of Hypnotherapy (D.Clinical Hypnotherapy)
3. Boyer Graduate School of Education (Ed.D)
4. British-American University (J.D.)
5. California Coast University (assorted PhDs, DBA, EdD, PsyD)
6. So. California International College (MBA, MS Mgmt)
7. Southern California University for Professional Studies (assorted PhDs, ScD, DBA, PsyD)
8. William Howard Taft University (EdD, J.D.)

There are just as many in next door Anaheim, if anyone wants more.

Eat your heart out University of California. Just nine campuses total, statewide. What a joke.

 

Tom:

Didn't know you used to live there. Thanks for the info.


Bill:

That many institutions of higher education in one city alone? Wow! Sounds like there are Ph.D. opportunities on every corner.

Russell,
Alamance County, North Carolina
Population: 115,000
Educational Institutions:
Elon University (BS, BA, MA, M.Ed.)
Alamance Community College (AA, AS, Certificate)
Jim Bob's Graduate School (Ph.D.)

 

You missed Lewchuk University International... my soon to be opening cyber-campus is going to be located there.

 

It's easier to find a doctoral program in Santa Ana than a Starbuck's latte or even a Big Mac!

Seriously though, I find all of this very cool in a perverse sort of way. I like California's grass-roots scholarly entrepeneurism. A lot of it is pretty flaky true, but it has also given us schools like Fielding, Pacifica, CIIS, the Wright Institute, ITP, Saybrook and a host of other CA-approved graduate institutes that went on to RA. There really are valuable things happening out there.

It adds to the wide-open intellectual ferment of the state, provides research opportunities, teaching jobs and institutional affiliations for out-of-work academics and pursues subjects out of favor in traditional departments. It's a democratization of scholarship I guess, bringing it from the dreaming spires of the academic cloister to a strip mall office building near you.

 

It isn't "democritization" as much as "capitalization" (i.e. producers of education/credentials differentiating the market and inventing an offering which serves a market and makes a buck).

Which I will do with Lewchuk University International... a RA(abd) virtual University coming to a computer/laptop/PDA near you...

 

Ken,

Isn't LUI's main campus located in Ontario?

Russell

 

Russell,

Would that be Ontario CALIFORNIA or CANADA?

Dan