NCU graduation rates

If anyone wants to check out their school's graduation rate just visit the National Center for Education Statistics College Navigator:

College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics

 

Maybe those students are not the best candidates for DL. Instead of desolation I see independance, not loneliness but freedom, etc.

 

Yes, I tried to do a search on Walden and there was not a match.

 

Touche'

Nicely put

 

Thanks, and written before my afternoon coffee

 

While many of us disagree with Dr. Wagner's ideas, it is important that we give him the consideration and the respect that every member deserves.

 

It may be fallacy to argue that the high dropout rate in the for profit subprime schools in their doctoral programs are a result of students who are poorly prepared for the rigors of graduate studies. I doubt there is anyone who is reading this post will say that I drop out from a subprime school because it was too rigorous. It is like blaming the victims for the wrongs that have been committed again them. The students are the victim. The high drop out rate can be more attributable to the poor quality schools than poor quality students. Blaming student is purely spin to lend some semblance of creditability to these subprime schools. It is very similar in the comparing of for profit subprime schools to established highly recognized international non-u.s schools. Most students who entered doctoral programs at subprime for profits school have undergraduate and graduate degrees from respectable B&M schools. From personal experience, the convenient of attending a subprime school does not outweigh the quality of the education being received, thus a person who is self-financing have no inclination to hand over their hard-earned money. If you are borrowing to attend a subprime school, my sympathy to you and your family; you are messing with your retirement. It does not worth it.

 

Kudos to NCU for publishing this because it helps to inform potential students exactly what they're getting involved with. Getting a doctorate isn't something that can be bought at the mall, even if it's 100% online. It's not a game. It's real and the attrition rate is extraordinarily high.

When I went to a B&M university for a Masters, the professors gave us lectures on various research methodologies i.e. qualitative research, quantitative research and mixed methods. However, NCU's coursework didn't provide that kind of feedback, at the time I attended the university. They might now. However, for those who have never had training in these research methodologies: It would be nearly impossible to graduate from NCU's doctoral program! It's interesting to note that NCU now requires a candidate to possess a Masters degree before they are eligible to enroll in their doctoral program.

It's hard. It's very very hard, as is evidenced by a 15% graduation rate.

 

I don't agree - but we all have opinions. I see it as students thinking it would just be "easier". On the NCU discussion board there are many comments of "I submitted my Concept Paper 3times and it is still not approved". I think the perception is online=easy. I am not saying the rigor is over the top but is was much more difficult then I expected. If it was a poor quality school wouldn't everyone graduate? Or do you mean poor quality prep for admissions / support from mentors? That is a whole other story.

 

I have to say that your post is spot on Randall. I don't know many people who have entered a masters or doctorate programs (other than this board). But the people I do know that have entered Associates and Bachelors programs online have never finished them. As a matter of fact, of all the people I know that have entered a DL program no one other than myself have finished. My best friend did not last the first semester at Full Sail.

 

Respect is like sugar in your tea. Just a touch makes things pleasant but too much makes it undrinkable. In our quest for politeness sometimes we pour the most interesting aspects of human interaction down the sink.

 

Please let any personal attacks go down the sink. Thanks.

 

What I respect about NCU is that they tell you this up front when you enroll. I remember the adviser telling me that it's really difficult and not many people make it through. No matter what you say about NCU, you can't claim that they are not up front with their policies.

 

I don’t think I have ever argued that NCU is not rigorous. I have argued the opposite. Because as a student, every week I had to do a fair amount of reading; every week I had a report to submitt. But does the quantity indicative of quality? In the two courses I completed, I had an “A” and an “A”+; and the one course I did not completed I had 49/50 progress. Now this is not at opinion, at NCU I was an extremely brilliant student. In reality, I am average student. Phoenix has a higher dropout rate than NCU, then I will become a genius, if I attended Phoenix. I have completed 3 degrees online/distance and am doing a 4th in a totally different field. I completed my high school in the early 80s with courses/exams (GCEs) from the University of Cambridge/London by distance education when it was not cool to do distance. Teenagers and young adults from the Caribbean have been doing distance education before it was the in thing. So I know little bit about distance/online education. The success rates at these schools are higher than NCU so it your opinion the standard at NCU is higher. Only if you have a vested interest you can come to that conclusion. The conventional wisdom is that for profit schools are of subprime quality. The high dropout rate is proof of this and this is not just my opinion. There is growing consensus that this is the case. My opinion is not to knock distance/online education. Online education is a great thing. Online education has made a positive difference in my life. I have nothing at stake so I don’t need to defend on inferior product, because in reality there are some exceptional good quality programs out there whose prime mandates are the well being of their students, not just being enrollment factories.

 

You know, it would be interesting to compare the graduation rates for fulltime vs. parttime students. This can be done at all degree levels. I think it can be done in the same school and it could be very telling. Fulltime students have nothing else to focus on (in a sense) while part time stuidents have careers and families. Perhaps the parttime students are more apt to say - "screw this" then a fulltime student. Just a thought-

 

Since no personal attacks have been levied, you're in the fortunate position of being able to mill around elsewhere. Here's a candy cane, and have a Merry Christmas!

 

Please see my PM. Thanks.

 

The Council of Graduate Schools study referred to by Steve looked at 29 institutions in two cohorts over a 10 year period. The data that I saw was not broken down by institution. Part of the challenge when we compare the data for institutions like NCU to these data are:

--The institutions studied by CoGS were, by and large, classified as "very high research activity" universities by Carnegie. NCU and the University of California cater to different student populations. It would be helpful if we had data from some of the 84 doctoral granting universities classified by Carnegie as "Doctoral Research Universities" (where Capella, Walden and NCU reside). That would be more of an apples to apples comparison.

--The CoGS study found that doctoral completion rate varied widely by discipline (77.6% for civil engineers and 41.5% for computer and information sciences). Therefore, the discipline studied needs to be taken into consideration. One of the biggest challenges in comparing doctoral completion rates at the fully online universities is that the CoGS study did not look at completion rates for students pursuing doctorates in business/management and education, the fields in which the virtual universities award the bulk of their doctorates.

--The time to completion is also very important. The CoGS study looked at students who completed their doctorates within a decade of starting. Predictably, completion rates increased as the number of years increased. The average 7 year completion rates (which appears to be NCU's benchmark) was 45.5% average overall, but only 16.8% for anthropology majors and 24.7 for history majors). According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Ed. the National Science Foundation and four other government agencies, the MEDIAN time between entering graduate school and completing the doctorate for education majors is 12.7 years, so, subtracting 2-3 years for a master degree, that would leave the median completion rate at 9.7-10.7. Since the median means the middle score, it is safe to assume that there are a significant number of those with education degrees taking longer to receive their degrees. Business is included in the "other fields" category in this study, with a median completion of 9.3 years.

NCU appears to be making an honest attempt to provide some good information. It would be nice for all doctoral programs (non-profit and for-profit) to follow this example. If some standardized measures could be followed by each of the institutions, then we could really do an apples to apples comparison.