UNIR - Internet University (Spanish)

That's because the school hides it - you have to ask for info, give your address. I got a chart for MBA prices in Spain and UNIR was on it. Cost was left BLANK. Thy're careful - but not careful enough!

Cheapest price for any school on the chart was 2500 euro. That was for a master universitario (a proper State approved degree) at Universidad Alcala de Henares - CEUPE That's just over $2500 US these days. That's pretty cheap for a "real" degree - not a propio.

Enough with the chart - I asked Google (in Spanish) how much a master universitario in management from UNIR was (I saw they had one) - it looks like their fully-approved master's degrees go for between 5,000 and 8,000 euros.

UNIR can't be a bargain-barrel, or there'd be billboards about the cost, on the Info Superhighway! Esta escuela no me interesa más.

 

I also got this from Google.

¿Cuánto cuesta estudiar un grado en UNIR?

" Esta universidad no facilita el precio de sus estudios, por lo que la información la ha facilitado una antigua alumna de UNIR que cursó un grado en 2016. Según esta fuente, en UNIR cada crédito tenía en 2016 un precio de 68 €. Dado que cada curso consta de 60 créditos, el precio rondaría los 4.080€.

How much does it cost to study a degree at UNIR?

That's $68 per credit (ECTS) so a 60 ECTS Master's (~ 30 US credits) costs 4,080 Euro, around $4,150. Those are 2016 prices, per the blurb. Info from an alumna, they say. That's for a fully-approved Master's - not a propio.

If Maniac says they're "Stupid Cheap on the Portals" I'm sure they are. I just don't know the portals.

@Maniac Craniac ¿Dónde están los portales?

 

It's OK Maniac. I just realized - you mean these:

• Bachelorsportal.com
• Mastersportal.com
• PhDportal.com
• Shortcoursesportal.com
• Distancelearningportal.com
• Scholarshipportal.com
• Admissiontestportal.com
• Englishtestportal.com

I'll look and report back. Why the school can't just publish their fees --- I just don't #*! know!

 

After our TECH adventures, I decided to look up the Mexican branch of UNIR as well.

UNIR very clearly lists their RVOE numbers and certificates on every program I looked at, and there are some other bonuses as well to their programs, assuming you speak Spanish.

For example, if you want to do the generic MBA through UNIR Mexico, you will receive a number of academic awards as you go. After each, term you complete, you will receive...

1. A (postgraduate?) Diploma in Business Administration
2. A (postgraduate?) Diploma in Business Management
3. A (postgraduate?) Diploma in Managerial Skills

In the anglophone world, I've only seen a similar model if you choose to exit before completing your Master's program. Yet, if I'm reading the Spanish correctly, UNIR Mexico is granting these automatically after the successful completion of each semester. But wait, it gets better!

After you complete the entire program, you receive TWO degrees:

1. You will receive the official Mexican degree, with full RVOE approval
2. AND you will receive a título propio MBA from their main university in Spain

Every other program I looked at, such as their Master in Psychopedagogy, followed the same formula with three (postgraduate?) diplomas followed by two degrees (one Mexican, the other Spanish).

Some of the programs, such as the aforementioned Psychopedagogy course, even list their prices. In case you're curious, said program runs from 52,250 to 95,000 Mexican peso (or 2,622.95 - 4,769.00 USD), depending on whether you pay full price or receive a beca (scholarship) from them. Not a bad deal for all of the awards you receive!

So if you've got decent Spanish, UNIR seems like a solid choice.

 

Indeed it does. This might indeed be the Mother Lode - the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as it were, for those with appropriate Spanish skills. And right, "we won't need no stinkin' badges."

The language skills are vital. My take: struggling along with an electronic translation aid - Google etc. is NOT a viable strategy with university-level work. And it DEFINITELY won't help AT ALL with lectures. I think people who say it is OK, don't have a sweet clue what they're talking about. By all means, let them try it. They'd be fun to watch.

$4769 full price - discounted to about half that - is in line with expectations (mine anyway.) It's within reasonable distance, allowing for the 6 year gap, with prices the alumna quoted for 2016. And for a "real" degree (plus all those extras) it sounds very reasonable.

Thanks for doing the work, Messdiener. I hung back, because I was reluctant to give them a bunch of info so I could get access to more than 2 programs a night. That was VERY silly of me and I apologize. This is SO good that now, I have to bite the bullet and do it anyway.

Excelente información, bien presentada. Su doctorado está en el correo. Excellent information, well-presented. Your Doctorate is in the mail.

 

DeepL is way better, but it still makes mistakes sometimes. It can be acceptable for some university-level Coursera-type things, but even that can require reading between the lines and other skills that many people just don't have.

Definitely not. If there is an audio component at all, you're kind of out of luck. There are some auto-translation things that can work for some types of content, but definitely not university lectures.

As said above, machine translation can work SOMETIMES and for SOME situations. But nowhere near perfect enough to be used for most everyday purposes.

Example: I was looking at reviews for a razor on Amazon Germany. I'm still working on my German, so I switch back and forth between the original German and English translations. The Amazon auto-translated review said something like "after only a few shaves, I eject the blades from the plane". As an English speaker, my first thought was obviously towards airplanes. But that sentence seemed both bizarre and entirely out of context. Then I switched to German to check what word was being used. Apparently, (some) razors use the same word for "razor" as for this tool:



It made a lot more sense after that! When you think about how many synonyms and homonyms there are in every language, it's amazing that we have any sort of machine translation at all. But it's still not very trustworthy. In scholastic contexts, you could wind up getting the entirely wrong idea about what's going on in a course and the concepts that you're supposed to be learning. Minor misunderstandings that are no big deal in Amazon reviews could be a much bigger issue for university work!

 

Time to polish my Spanish

 

That's exactly what I was thinking!

 

A few days ago, I decided to send UNIR (Spain) an inquiry about one of their postgraduate programs. They got back to me with two prices:

• One-time payment of 4.074 €
• Installment payments totaling 4.365 €

Their documentation also mentioned an 'official' price of 5.820 €, but it looks like nobody actually pays that.

Once again, by American standards, these are pretty reasonable prices for an MA or similar. As before though, Spanish language skills are required.

 

"Yeah, those airplane washrooms are terrible places to shave - turbulence cost me my left ear!" - Scarface.