Bellevue University vs. St. Joseph's College of Maine Feedback Request

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by fritzy202, May 10, 2010.

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  1. fritzy202

    fritzy202 New Member

    Hi All!

    I have narrowed down my school choices for my MHA to St. Joseph's college of Maine or Bellevue University. I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience taking or teaching DL classes with either school? I have had some very frustrating experiences with Excelsior and their outdated, poorly maintained DL classes and some terrible instructors. I don't want to set myself up for 2 more years of frustration if I can avoid it. I would appreciate any feedback regarding their instructors, DL platform, course formats etc. Thanks in advance for your help!
     
  2. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    Former St. Joseph's College of Maine student and current Bellevue University student here. From a distance learning perspective alone Bellevue is hands down a clear winner. They've been doing distance education for a long, long time and have become very good at it. The courses are interactive and the coursework itself very relevant to the "real world".

    I likewise enjoyed St. Joe's and they were my first pick for an MBA but their policies and student support was lacking for adult students. They are well meaning but perhaps not ready for prime time. That being said it was probably about 3 years ago when I started at St. Joe's and I'm sure things have changed.

    One note about Bellevue, they've recently upgraded their student portal which is pretty menu intensive and difficult to navigate, but on the plus they are only a phone call away and very easy to deal with. As a comparison, St. Joe's was very, very spartan if I recall and not terribly complicated or useful.
     
  3. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    I had the opportunity to meet with one of the deans and another senior administration person at Bellevue some 7 years back and was very impressed with the dedication and focus they placed on innovation and quality. I don't have any personal experience with the school, but in that several hour conversation, it seemed clear that this wasn't just a profit center for the school, but a genuine interest in deliverling a great quality product to their students.
     
  4. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    I was looking at the syllabus for some of the MBA in Finance courses at Bellevue. It appears their 12 week courses are more intensive than many of the 7 and 8 week MBA courses from other schools. Then again, it appeared to have more homework assignments from the book and less case studies.

    Do you think it's possible to take two courses per semester? I think the only drawback for me was the fact that there is only 4 semesters per year, which is one of the reasons I was looking at Davenport, NCU (self-paced), and went to Chancellor. I was dealing with Brandon the end of last year, the enrollment was a pretty smooth process.
     
  5. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    Honestly you can do 2 courses at Bellevue at a time but it will be a challenge. Don't be fooled by looking at the syllabus too hard, it changes from professor to professor. I know in my last class we did a case study every week and we did no less than 2 group case studies. It was a lot of work, the textbook assignments were more or less around 10% of the overall grade, thus pretty low priority.

    Although Ashford University is a "for-profit" I highly recommend their MBA program, it is very comprehensive and touches on pretty much everything an MBA program is supposed to, it consists of 6 week semesters and courses start one after the next. If you consider their program I would not recommend attempting 2 courses at once, it'll be too much as they do not cut the scope of material covered or the workload, they just speed it up. The schools is a brick and mortar primarily but they have the slickest student interface I've seen and the program is really seamless, especially the online library. Just a thought.
     
  6. Dave Wagner

    Dave Wagner Active Member

    I seem to recall you getting caught by some bizarre financial aid policies that cost you extra dough... Glad you were able to finish at Ashford.
     
  7. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    I remember contacting them around 2007/2008 for my undergraduate degree and ended up going to Excelsior College. One of the advisors was very pushy on financial aid loans. She was almost hyperventilating with excitement about how I can get money. I kept asking why she was so excited about this, because I didn't want any loans, I was looking at Pell Grants. She kept pushing down the pell grants and saying I could get more money with loans. At that time, my needs were to get the undergraduate degree with little expense and get loans for MBA. That's why I sent to Excelsior, so I can get my courses done at American River College for free tuition because of the BOG waiver.
     
  8. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    I did look at their MBA program, but after talking with a few professors at my local school, I kind of narrowed it down to Bellevue University (10 classes), Upper Iowa University (11-12 classes), and Davenport University (13 classes). I know I have flip flopped so much lately that would make Brett Favre proud, but I do have a better sense of direction now.
     
  9. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    As much respect as a professor may be due I'm not sure I'd always take their advice for an MBA at face value, especially when looking at for profit schools as they encroach on their territory. That being said none of the schools you've mentioned are bad.

    And Dave, yes, I did get caught between some weird school policy and a hard place. Their policies were written to keep students from taking loans if the school felt they were not needed...the trouble is they didn't really take into account the opinion or individual needs of the student. They essentially told me I could either get tuition reimbursement from my employer or financial aid but that by their policy I could not use both. In retrospect I could have probably finished the program, taken both the tuition reimbursement and financial aid and not mentioned anything but theirs is an MBA built on leadership, values and integrity...so lying about what I was doing would kind of undermine the whole point.

    Either way I never for one second regretted choosing Ashford. It was a challenging and terrific experience. In fact they have solidly colored my opinion on how any for profit or even non-profit school should be run from a student services perspective. I only have 2 exceptions to their practices, first I do not like the idea of their customized text books but I understand why they do it. Their courses are so fast paced that their custom texts are actually condensed from multiple other textbooks. So it keeps the student from having to purchase multiple books per course. Still it can be annoying in that finding used books is difficult to impossible. Second I've heard that their admissions process on the back end is all about getting a student enrolled as fast as possible. Personally I felt no pressure from my enrollment advisor but I've heard others say that they did, I don't doubt them. Maybe mine was slicker than most but I never felt a rush or anything but of course I had done my homework by the time I contacted them with any interest in the school. If they do use high pressure tactics it would behoove them to stop. Either way I think it kind of makes sense to get a business education from a school that is actually a "business". Like learning how to hunt from the lion instead of the water buffalo.

    Bellevue has a way laid back process to enrollment, though I have yet to successfully enroll in a class using their "BRUIN" student portal, it's a mess. I just call them and get it done with, the only problem is I never get a notification that I'm enrolled and the "BRUIN" student portal will not reflect a pending enrollment until about 10 days before the class, so if there's a problem it will likely be too late to do much about it. That is highly annoying. Likewise their student records, financial information, etc. is buried under a mountain of menus...usability just doesn't appear to be a concern with this software which is ironic because they have one of the better IT and MIS programs I've ever seen.

    Upper Iowa concerns me in that I've not had a good experience with a state school in distance learning yet. I will admit though that my experience has been very limited and though I did like LSU's program, they used texts that were way outdated and difficult to obtain. Western New Mexico was just a cock-up from the word "go" and my local community college is a bad joke with a tax paid punch line. So I try to look for schools that have made a heavy investment into online learning, Bellevue, Ashford and Southwestern College are all great examples of that. (by the way have you looked at Southwestern College Southwestern College in Winfield, KS ?)
     
  10. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    Send a pm to Bruboy, he completed his MBA in Finance and provided me with a lot of good info about the school. He posted feedback under "My Bellevue Experience," I was working with Brandon Raddish in late 2009 when I was considering an MBA with them.
     
  11. joel66

    joel66 New Member

    I agree from the reviews that Ashford is a very good school. I think it's the financial aid issues people are complaining is overshadowing other good qualities that the school has. Some of the professors/deans I have spoken with are actually the people I would end up interviewing with, if there is any part-time positions. Again, that is only a small factor on looking at schools. The other reason why I was looking at Bellevue and UIU is the curriculum has a good variety of finance and even statistics.
     
  12. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    Well you've got to go with what works for you. Yeah the financial aid thing at Ashford is from what I understand due to the rapid starts and pace of the classes. Funds don't disburse as quickly as the student may start the class thus money for books may not be available as quickly as some students may require. Personally I pay for books out of pocket so it was not an issue for me but still, it would be nice if they told those enrolling upfront about this potential issue or at least provide books on credit until disbursement, which wouldn't be a super big issue I wouldn't think.

    Don't get me wrong, I put Bellevue and Ashford on equal footing, I think they are both about the same in quality...both have their warts, neither is perfect but then both are excellent and way, way above average for an online school in terms of catering to online learners.

    Good luck on your choice and let us know which way you eventually go.
     

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