University of Southern Queensland?

As I continue to investigate foreign universities for a graduate degree, I came across another program that I found interesting...the Master of Public Relations at Southern Queensland University.

It looks similar to the University of Leicester program I was looking at, plus it's a *little* bit cheaper, since the U.S. Dollar to the Australian Dollar conversion is more favorable than the U.S. Dollar to the British Pound. Like the UoL program, USQ will consider admitting a student to a graduate program who has no undergrad degree, but lots of work experience in the field. USQ is also DETC accredited.

Does anyone have any experience/feedback on the University of Southern Queensland?

 

I did my DBA there, the University is set for distance learning so you get good service in terms of books delivery, registrations and graduation. However, they tend to run the courses with 90 to 100 students so instructor attention is not that great. DBA courses run with few students but I took some M.Sc courses that were running with 70 to 90 students.

Exams are proctored so you need to go the closest examination centre to write your final exams.

I don't know if your program requires a thesis or dissertation, but this could be a challenge. My supervisor took long leaves of absence and feedback just to took months to arrive. I think some of the for profits are much better for this since they push supervisors to give feedback in short periods of time while schools like USQ are government based so professors don't have the same pressure to serve you.

The DETC accreditation is meaningless since USQ is an Australian government University so this accreditation has almost no value. Any credential evaluator like WES would give USQ US RA equivalent status. The academic transcript makes no mention of DETC accreditation so I really don't understand the point for this.

 

I emailed the University of Southern Queensland a few days ago for more information. They sent me a form email in reply, with links to their web site. They didn't answer any of the specific questions I had for them. So far, I am not impressed.

University of Leicester, on the other hand, had a real person reply to each of my emails in a timely manner. Score one for UoL.

I'm still waiting to hear from the University of Johannesburg and another African school I emailed.

 

As for USQ, did You email [email protected] ?

 

I filled out a form on their web site. I'll try that email address and see if I get a more personalized response.