New Certificates from University of the People

University of the People now has several certificates in Business and in Healthcare. All are undergraduate level and most are 3 courses each. The cost is around 420 USD. Here is more info here: https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/certificate-programs/

The university is NA via DEAC. Also there is a Masters in a Computer related subject coming up in a few months as well from the university.

Disclaimer:
I am a volunteer with the university. I am not shilling, simply posting the information in case anyone is looking for a low cost undergraduate certificate.

 

Since you are a volunteer, can you tell us whether or not those certificates have credits associated with them and/or poke someone to clarify the message? The certificate pages say that they do NOT have credit/transferability but there is another page that says that they are worth 9 or 12 credits and can be transferred.

https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/ba/certificate/marketing/ - "The Certificate Program does not provide transferable academic credit and is excluded from the student recognition for GPA achievements (i.e., President’s List, Dean’s List, Honor’s List)."

https://www.uopeople.edu/faq-category/certificates/#site-content

 

I posted a question in Facebook ads, the University of the People will remain tuition-FREE even after WASC accreditation achievement. Which is good for an RA degree with low fees.

 

I would say contact the university but to add some clarification. They are saying that it is up to any university accept credits from University of the People. They cannot obviously guarantee that a receiving university will accept their credits, so you will need to speak with any receiving university where you wish to transfer credits to. This goes for any university really.

The certificates do not give any academic honors within the university because they are meant to be stand alone and for students who either simply want an academic qualification on their cvs/resumes and are not ready for full time university study or for students who already have a bachelors degree and want to add additional certificates to show and/or gain knowledge. Lastly they are for students who may want to investigate new careers and/or learn new subjects.

 

This is true but there is talk of fees going up or addition additional new fees internally to cover the cost of accreditation. But nothing is set in stone. One thing they are doing is expanding new programs such as the new certificates and the upcoming new Masters in a IT related subject. I think they are planning a Masters in a Healthcare subject, as well as a few more masters, bachelors, and associate degrees. This is all being implemented to generate new revenue to cover the admin costs of obtaining accreditation.

 

Properly! WASC might understand the University of the People's missions and goals. UoP does not want a fancy football team with a luxurious campus with amenities. Properly, most of its technology and could servers are donated by Amazon, Google, or Micrsoft.

 

I wish they had a math degree. I thought they had one at one point (because I was considering getting that degree) but I don't see it at Archive.org.

 

Are they definitely getting regional accreditation? How far along are they?

 

They are not listed as a candidate by WASC Senior College and University Commission.

 

I can say that they have definately applied, we received a few months ago surveys and an email stating that WASC officials may reach out to faculty and students as part of their information gathering. I havent heard anything else past that point, so I have no idea what the status is with the accreditation (whether they have withdrawn their app or are in the middle of still applying etc). Due to many leadership changes, we faculty are not getting as much information as we once did. The new administration appears to just want to provide information on an as need basis and only the "fluff" pieces.

 

It sounds like the certificates are the equivalent of executive education in other schools. So while most UofP credits are eligible for transfer (NA status notwithstanding), these certificates are outside the academic pipeline and will not.

 

They are working on the application. https://www.uopeople.edu/about/worldwide-recognition/press-releases/uopeople-receives-wasc-accreditation-eligibility/

 

Yeah. Too bad they have peer assessment. Get rid of that and they become a top viable option.

 

How does peer assessment work?

 

Other students grade your work, and you grade theirs. And the majority of them don't have a grasp of the English language.

So for example, when you go to grade their English paper, what do you expect to find?

A disaster.

If you score them down, they get angry and score someone else down improperly.

Or you'll have Student A whose girlfriend broke up with him and he'll just start scoring badly on purpose or people who just don't read the rubrics, etc., or people that don't score timely.

From what I'm told, these students do "wash out" for later classes. But you have to suffer through this for the first few classes.

 

Not THAT unusual, by the way. Some IIMBx-courses on edX work the same way.

 

I'm taking my 4th UoPeople course right now.

My final is 40% of my grade. Not at all peer-assessed.
My two quizzes make up 30% of my grade. Not at all peer-assessed.
My weekly journal makes up 20% of my grade. Not at all peer-assessed.
That's 90% graded only by the professor!

I have a weekly programming assignment, and that is peer-assessed. I grade the work of three other students, and three students are supposed to grade mine. We are supposed to follow a rubric and give significant feedback. The feedback I receive is usually not so significant.
There is a weekly discussion assignment. You respond to the topic, then give feedback on and rate at least 3 students' submissions.

The percentages have varied course to course. In others it has been more like 30% final, 25% quizzes, and 20% journal. So 75% of grade was prof-only reviewed. Written assignments + discussion posts the other 25%.

As far as the written assignments go, I usually get a grade not far off what I think I should get. So if I think I should get a 95, I'll maybe get an 85-100. A couple of times I had something like assessments of 100, 95, and 70. Within a week I saw the 70 get lopped by the prof, without my even saying anything. So my experience has been that profs do catch these things at least some of the time. If there were something that did go unnoticed, I am pretty sure I could contact the prof and they'd fix it.

As for discussion assignments, yeah, I can follow the rubric to a T, and somebody will screw up the rating. I might have a 10 (of 10) after a couple of ratings, but then later it's down to a 8, so somebody came in and gave a piss-poor grade.

My first term, unjustified low grading SERIOUSLY annoyed me. Then I started to look at a way to reframe it. 1st thing was I looked at the numbers. Say peer-grading makes up 25% of my grade (30% has been the highest, 10% the lowest). Say over the course of a term I do 4 written assignments and 8 discussion posts. Assume I'm great and I "deserve" a 95%. Well, there'll be some bad assessments in there, but I'll probably end up with somewhere around 85 to low 90's. Take 85%. So instead of 95% x 25% = 23.75 points, I get 85% x 25% = 21.25 points. A difference of 2.5 points on my final grade . Yes, it MIGHT make an A an A-, or a B+ a B, but so far it has not. And look at my current course. A 10% difference downward is only going to drop my grade 1 point out of 100.

Okay, that was the first reframe. Second reframe was this. If you have been out in the real world for very long, you've probably had your work misinterpreted and judged by people who really didn't know shit from Shinola. Or customers who were just flat out wrong. You deal with that stuff because that's just how it is and bitching doesn't work so well.

The worst part of the peer assessment, for me, is the time it takes to grade bad work. A good paper is one where the student CLEARLY hits the points in the rubric. No misspelling, proper format, good sentence structure, etc. It's when you have to freaking HUNT to find the "three examples of X" or whatever that you get bogged down. Eventually (6 weeks in?) I just decided I wasn't going to fight it. I'd leave comments like "I am insulted that you think so little of your fellow students' time that you would submit work like this. It is extremely difficult to read and the grammar is atrocious." Or worse.