Ashford University Lays off 450 people

And it just amazes me how people can ignore all of that and stick up for this debacle. They've been doing these things for years now. Do they need to start exterminating employees and students before the apologists say "enough is enough"? I'd bet that even if they did that, people would still say "Well, I've never been killed by Ashford University, so this school is top-notch in my book!"

 

Ok, I'm not a fan of Ashford by ANY means whatsoever, but how on earth did it start getting compared to Hitler, Stalin, and extermination????? @.@

 

It appears that students from Ashford are quickly dropping out and transferring to different colleges. I went to several forums and it appears that a lot of them are frustrated with the shadiness of Ashford operations. I doubt they will be recruiting any more students beyond this point since most of their ex-employees are finally telling Ashford's prospective students to stay away from this school. Hopefully the media will not put all for-profit schools in the same picture.

 

I work for Ashford as a TA. They have been fair with me and treated me well. They have given me steady work which I greatly need at this time. I find the coursework to be sufficiently rigorous. My main criticism is that they accept illiterate students. Some of these students have said that they want to go for a master's degree, and yet they don't even have 5th grade reading or writing skills. College should not be a place to offer remedial reading and writing.

Other than that, I am very happy with the job atmosphere at Ashford. I hope they can solve their accreditation issues and continue as a college.

 

I'm not really sure why you took it in that way. It was just a tongue-in-cheek extreme used to show that if humans will go far to defend something as heinous as brutal totalitarianism (and humans have and still do), then it's no surprise that humans would defend something of far lesser magnitude. And the extermination part is the same type of extreme usage, but unrelated to the Stalin-Hitler extreme...

 

Ashford's advertising has ratcheted up to an all-time high. At this point, I find it nearly impossible to go anywhere on the internet without seeing their ads. It's sickening, and the unfortunate part is that many new students will be suckered into that trainwreck.

Also, unfortunately, Ashford's operations are being used by the media as an example of for-profit quality (or in Assford's case, a lack thereof). You seldom see an article about the program that fails to mention its for-profit status.

 

Would you be so kind as to detail what you feel makes the work rigorous, and at what degree levels you're referencing?

I hate to defend Ashford, but this is a big problem for all colleges with open admission, not just Ashford. The problem that I found is that Ashford placed a great deal of importance on math skills but none on reading and writing outside of the English course were it was necessary. I say that because there was a placement exam for math at that time I was there, but no such exam for reading and writing skills. God knows there should be one there, and nobody should be admitted to a Master's program if they can't even command basic English but that hasn't seemed to stop Ashford.

I'm not saying that students should be able to write like a 65 year old veteran editor of a reading digest. But when the professor actually praises a poorly written paper, gives it an 'A' and posts it on the front page of the class as an example of what a good paper should be (this happened in one of my classes), then that's just one more indication of the program being lax on such an important area of education. Honestly, the paper the woman wrote was so laughable that I couldn't have seen her getting by with it in my old junior high English class; to see iher get praised for it in a college classroom is one of the most horrifying experiences I've ever had academically.

Ashworth College is open admission as well, and it has many of the same types of illiterates running through, but at least Ashworth will actually fail you for writing a bad paper like the one I described above and will explain what's wrong with it and how to fix it for the next paper. I never wrote a bad one myself, but I've talked to students who've complained about having their papers sent back for corrections.

 

Didn't intend to be specifically supporting them so much as noting that I haven't found their practices (from my adjunct perspective) to be that different from several others - including at least one program that is often praised on this forum.

 

Caldog and all - I've calculated similar ratios over the years for over for profits. It isn't unusual to see 50% of the organization's revenues go to marketing and profit.

When talking about "profit" versus "non-profit", I believe that one of the most telling signs is "where the money goes". Although the amount of money spent on instruction doesn't necessarily correlate to outcomes, it is hard to believe that organizations that spend so little on education and so much on profit can possibly do the job that non-profits do.

R Andy

 

I once had an employer leave a message on my answering machine informing me I was fired. I thought that was rather cold and impersonal, but then again, I worked in broadcasting, which is known for its high ratio of douche bag owners and managers.

 

I agree that the Hitler comments seem to be popping up in all kinds of conversations these days including political conversations. We need to be careful about this because the evil that was Hitler and the Nazis is unprecedented and it should not be used in casual conversations. Just a recommendation.

 

Eh, I don't know about that one. That's being a little overly sensitive. At the end of the day, it was still a part of history so it should be fair game for reference. If we follow that lead, then references to Mao (who was far more ruthless than Hitler), Genghis Khan, and every other historical figure of that type would have to be excluded.

 

But why would we even want to compare a crappy school to those horrible people? Seems a bit of an over reach to try and say "this is a terrible school, just like Hitler and Genghis Khan were terrible!" Um, no. Not the same at all actually.

 

He never said it was "just like Hitler" or even imply it for that matter. All he did was make a quantitative reference of two extremes of human behavior, not a direct comparison.

You're really overreacting.