Northcentral University??

I earned my PhD from NCU in 2010. There were two 100% online RA PhD programs at the time (2004 is when I started): NCU and Touro International. Touro was not accepting students because they did not have the staff to handle the demand. I picked NCU and it served me well. The program was about $25K at the time and it cost me about $3,500 since I used tuition assistance money from my employer. I have never had an issue with adjunct work and never really tried to get a full time teaching position. The course work was really good, no discussions at the time, but the admin side of the school was less then wonderful.

Of course, a lot could have changed since 2010 but I never had an issue in the past 6 years. My friend is completing a PhD at another well known school that is in the same group and he is having a hell of a hard time and they are making him jump through hoops of non-sense.

 

I just want to add that the name of the school is just part of the equation, I know Randell long enough to know that he would have succeeded with Touro, NCU or any other degree. Sometimes people worry too much about the name of the school but the reality is that if you add value to your organization, people would care less about the name of the school but hire you because you have a history of success.

I have worked as adjunct and full time faculty for many years, I have come across many NCU graduates as full time faculty, faculty administrators and adjunct faculty at few schools.

I would put NCU in the same rank as many other part time online programs such as Capella, Walden, TUI, CTU, UoP, etc. I don't think there is much difference in perception about these schools but they all have different programs that might suit different needs.

 

Concur.

Concur some more. Possible exception: CTU. My PhD research indicated favoritism towards schools that evoke geography, even when there are no material differences (or the difference points in the opposite direction). Why not UoP, too? Because UoP is way, way famous in DL. I wonder if people even realize that it actually is in Phoenix.

 

I can't speak to the research but I know, for my own purposes, geographically named schools tend to sound more legit. Right up there with schools that are named after a person (famous or otherwise).

But some schools take it too far. Phoenix branded itself right out of its own geography and plopped a campus in nearly every town at their height. The geographical draw of the school being in Phoenix loses something when you physically attend all of your classes on their campus in Dover.

I was pretty on board with American InterContinental University when I was in the Navy. I liked their LMS and the pacing of the courses. I hated their name. I would have been more comfortable if they had named it "National Fake Sounding University." As I've stated, the responses to CTU I get are often from people who lived in/are from Colorado wanting to see if I know of the same places they enjoyed hanging out. When I once responded to "the college question" with "Colorado Tech" the other person said "Oh, cool, I went to Virginia Tech!"

I also think the geographies have to make some apparent sense to someone unfamiliar with the school. It's not surprising that the University of Chicago is in Chicago. But it is surprising for people, from outside of Pennsylvania, to wrap their heads around the Indiana University of Pennsylvania or the California University of Pennsylvania, two public institutions located in the cities of Indiana and California in the state of Pennsylvania, respectively. In fact, just last week, my mother begged me to admit that I was, in fact, joking about the California University of Pennsylvania being "legit." She couldn't believe someone would give a school such a confusing name (and allow their kids to proudly proclaim their academic fidelity to "C.U.P.")

But, considering I went to high school at a time when an admissions person from Beaver College set up a table in our high school gym with a straight face, I'm sort of a bit more open about college names than my parents were. I felt sad when BC changed its name to Arcadia University. Then again, it must have been even more fun when they were still "Beaver Female Seminary."

 

I agree, ideally you would want to get it from a place that offers the same program on campus. There are always those that diminish your work because it was earned distance, if the same program is offered on campus then there is no issue about difference between on campus vs distance as it is the same degree. If you go this route, also select a school that does not use the label "distance" in their transcript, some schools refer to their online programs as "virtual", "non residential", etc and they label their transcripts with these identifiers that seem to reduce the value of your degree.

I believe CTU offers the DM on campus and distance. The problem with CTU is that is non ranked unknown school. Again, if someone is looking for prestige at a reasonable price, the options are UK, Australia and SA but you should be willing to work a lot more for it.

If someone is able to handle French or Spanish, I would recommend French or Spanish schools, these programs are also very reasonable in terms of cost and Spanish and French education are considered of good quality although the UK seems to have better performance when it comes to rankings.

 

That's the way I felt when Regents College changed to Excelsior College. "Excelsior College" sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I have always thought the new name sounds very diploma mill-ish. I can't help but wonder how much thought actually went into it. Were other options considered? Was Excelsior really the best of the lot? Was the selection committee smoking something?

 

I don't know if this was meant on purpose but many people confuse Northcentral University with the ranked and traditional North Central University. When I got accepted at NCU, few people told me, "I know this school, it is a well known christian university".

I agree, the name of the school matters. Luckily, Excelsior does not grant PhDs so you don't have to display the name of the school as your last terminal degree.
My wife has an Excelsior College degree and it was evaluated as equivalent to a Canadian BS degree. In her resume she puts "Excelsior College, member of the University of the state of New York". This avoids comments such as "Is this school accredited?", "How did you earn this degree?", "Where is this school?", etc. After she added the label, no one has asked her any question about it. She in fact wrote most of the Excelsior College exams at SUNY New York as it was our closest examination center.

I also completed one recently but as a second BS degree but nobody has bother to asked me about it.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Excelsior, either. I very much like the sound of "Regents College" but, I suppose, when it stopped being a public university (and thus, no longer the Regents' College) a name change was in order.

I feel like they could have done better. But, I also feel compelled to just point out that within the state (and particularly, the city) of New York, "Excelsior" is a much more common word. It's our state motto. So we have all sorts of stuff bearing the name "Excelsior." So, here in New York, it isn't a great name but it isn't so bad. My biggest issue is that it is somewhat unoriginal.

It's kind of like how Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, uses "keystone" in everything. It is used in the name of a crappy beer, a junior college, some bumbling silent film era cops and pretty much everything else in the state that needed a name but they didn't seem to have a corrupt politician to name it after.

Aside from being unoriginal, Excelsior College also offers programs well beyond the borders of NYS. So the reference is lost on many of its students. And since it isn't particularly inspired or meaningful to the college itself I would have hoped they could have done better. Hell, name it after a dead governor or some obscure legislator who managed to eek through life without being indicted.

That said, Excelsior grads are very common in NYS and, as far as non-traditional programs go, I've found many of them to be especially proud of their school and its mission. So it isn't uncommon to see folks wearing their Excelsior gear with pride around these parts. Then again, New York has been moving ever upward for a really long time.

 

In my neighborhood, George Mason University (named after a second-tier Founding Father) re-named its law school the Antonin Scalia School Of Law. Then people took note of the resulting unfortunate acronym. There's some re-branding going on now.

 

I know I'm swimming upstream here--you're hardly alone in your assessment--but I didn't think it was all that bad. I preferred "Regents." "Excelsior" is the New York state motto, and I don't think it sounds all that bad. But then again, I don't use the name--ever. I didn't graduate from "Excelsior." I graduated from The University of the State of New York--it says so right across the top of my diplomas. The diplomas don't even say "Regents External Degree Program," what the school was called when I took my undergraduate degrees there. I just use USNY. I stopped correcting people who assumed "SUNY" since it doesn't matter to me at this point--a distinction without a difference.

 

IIRC, technically true of all universities in New York, or just the public ones?

 

They negotiated to continue as "Regents College" for 3 years after going private. So they had a long time to come up with a new name.

Of course, they have a huge proportion of students from outside New York. I'd guess more people are aware that "Excelsior" is the ship that went after the Enterprise in the Star Trek movies than know Excelsior college (again, outside New York).

Better than PBR University, I suppose.

Not only were they on the cutting edge of credit-banking-for-a-degree, they were the first DL program in nursing to get accredited by the NLN. Their AS program led to getting one's RN, and the BSN was introduced at a time when most nurses didn't have bachelor's degrees.

I'd suggest "Yeah-We-Did-That College," but they should probably stick with Excelsior.

 

Where I work, no one cares about where one attended school. There are so many foreign grads, national grads(nationally accredited), regionally accredited, etc. The only places that draw any awe are Harvard, Hope College, or Stanford. The rest, they don't care about. This includes the UCLAs, Yales, or Chicagos.

I work at a Fortune 500 company with many brilliant people. Many are former professors at schools such as Chicago, Purdue, Illinois, Penn, or Arizona. Here, doctorates mean little except to possibly advance one pay level rung on a promotion ladder. We have folks with only a BS, from places like Prairie State, managing people with Harvard doctorates. I guess in academia they may care more. Academia jobs are few and far between.

We recently hired a kid, from MIT, on our team. This person has a master's from another Ivy League and works for me, a person with a USNY degree and a few non-Ivy League masters degrees. You will find anything and everything out there. My boss only has a BS from a state school yet leads teams with PhD's from Harvard. At some point, it's not about the degree, or name of school, but the ability and talent of the person. From the sounds of it, academia cares more about name recognition.

Tip: Don't order college rings. They are massive and useless. Instead, order some gold or silver coins.

 

This seems unremarkable to me. I would not expect higher education to correlate strictly with organizational placement. Generally, yes, but I think that it breaks down considerably when considering the doctorate, which is used much more as a technical qualification rather than a hierarchal one.

In academia, the question is moot since almost everyone (sans some administrators) have one as an entry qualification.

 

I agree with Rich.

Many people have this notion in their head that certain degrees equate to a higher station. And, to an extent, they can but it isn't absolute.

When I was a recruiter, I had a task of hiring around 25 Physician Assistants. Now, PAs, at least in Pennsylvania, were in a period of flux at this time. The top programs were all 5 year M.S./B.S. programs. But there were still a smattering of B.S. (but still licensure qualifying) programs and even one or two A.S. (but still licensure qualifying) programs. The most notable of the latter was, at the time, offered by my favorite silly named school, Beaver College (which, itself, was going through its transition to become Arcadia).

Much like a biblical parable, they were all paid the same (more or less) much to the chagrin of the higher educated ones. The thing is that they weren't being hired for their degrees. They were all recently licensed so they had no clinical experience. We were hiring active licenses, not adjunct instructors.

At my own company, only one PhD has thus far made it to senior management. The rest tend to hover as mid-level engineering managers. That's not a bad thing, mind you, because things get decidedly less technical as you climb the ladder. Any higher and they would be managing budgets more than designing anything. But those PhDs also came to us with PhDs so they had to work under non-PhDs for years before they worked their way up the chain. One, for example, worked for a few years in the beginning of his career for a senior Engineer who didn't have a degree at all.

But without going too far down this rabbit hole, I also agree with the spirit of bing's post, what you deliver often matters much more than what you have on your wall. There are MBAs at many hospitals who make more than multiple MDs put together and whose faces are on the dartboards of nursing unions.

 

I think Bing makes good points. A friend of mine was really disappointed that his DL PhD from an unknown European school did nothing for him career wise other than getting him a part time teaching job. He learned his lesson and decided to enroll in a full time MBA program at MIT that has gotten him very good job offers.

In few words, we must be realistic about our expectations. A part time PhD from an unknown school is not going to provide a huge career boost. It might open adjunct teaching doors, possible differentiation for promotions, etc but it is not going to make you stand out from the crowd by the doctorate itself.

Some people jut need the Dr title for personal satisfaction. Maybe for these individuals, a Doctorate from a school like Aspen (DEAC accredited) would do the job. Others just top op their education with a religious PhD so they can use the "Dr" title without any fear of being accused as fakes. We have seen people in this forum that buy a $40 bucks Hon Doctor of Divinity and then display it on a resume with the purpose of calling themselves "Dr".

No matter what, one must evaluate the limitations of their options and be realistic about the expectations of the prospect degree investment.

In IT, a PhD does not have much value other than dressing on a resume. Most companies would go for technical skills and experience and not by degree level.

In other professions, a PhD means something, for a professional counselor a PhD in Psychology might not be required for licensing but would help to attract customers that might perceive the counselor as better prepared to provide a service.

For business careers, a CPA with a PhD or a CPA alone might not be so different as people would look for a CPA based on results and experience and not by level of education. I rather a CFO with CPA that has a proven record of financial success than a PhD in Finance that just got his degree over the internet with no experience.

 

Exactly. It is UN-remarkable...in the business world.