California Southern University

I'm fine with any sort of payment plan as long as the terms are clearly disclosed and a person knows what they are getting into.

From there, I become a huge advocate of personal accountability. I don't want to hear whining when you spend $100k on a BFA in Illustration, refuse to leave your small town and can't find a job that allows you to make your loan payments, let alone live. Do your research before hand, solicit advice (outside the admissions staff) and make a real adult decision. Then deal with the consequences.

What I like about California Southern is that their tuition costs are pretty transparent (at least from where I sit, perhaps current and former students have a different experience). There are schools out there that hide tuition costs in the depths of their website and then use some pretty clever terms to mislead you. This isn't just an online school thing. It isn't just a for-profit school thing. I've seen many B&M schools make me go on a scavenger hunt for their tuition rates which appear all-inclusive only to later discover that there are a mountain of fees (usually listed in the catalog but not on the website) which drives up the cost per credit.

So, if California Southern's cost calculator is accurate and I would be in the hole for $26,070 for the PsyD (no transfer credits) then I think that's an excellently transparent disclosure. How you pay for that is going to depend on your financial situation which, presumably at least, you know better than anyone else.

I doubt the average student has $26k lying around. But the idea of self-funding an MBA ($12k) isn't unreasonable for many professionals. Neither would it be unreasonable to have that MBA covered by an employer tuition plan.

If you're self-funding that MBA then the loss of forbearance, deferment, income-based repayment plans and loan forgiveness aren't really a major loss but not having to pay interest (subsidized loans are not available to graduate students so they are irrelevant to the MBA, PsyD and DBA programs) may be a significant advantage to you.

Employer tuition plans typically pay school balances. They don't help you repay student loans. I've seen a few different models. At my present employer, tuition is paid at the beginning of the semester (and you repay it if you don't earn a passing grade). At my previous employer payments were only made once you showed satisfactory completion of the course. Most schools (in my experience) require either upfront payment or a signed payment plan agreement before you can take courses.

Student loans make a lot of sense for a lot of people. But for others a payment plan isn't going to just be preferable it might be the only way they can fully utilize an employer tuition assistance plan without having to come out of pocket (i.e. put the semester on your credit card and then receive reimbursement at the end of the semester).

 

I know that graduate students cannot receive subsidized loans. That part was meant to be applicable to undergraduate students at CSU. Another thing that is applicable to undergraduate students is the Pell Grant, if they qualify. If your state offers grants to graduate students attending in-state schools (mine does), then that's another thing to consider.

 

My sense was that you were referring to undergraduate studies and my post wasn't intended to "correct" what you had said. I apologize if that is how it came across.

My intention was merely to point out that there are a number of situations where the payment plan would be preferable to educational loans.

That doesn't mean all payment plans are good or that all loans are bad. But different people are funding their education through different means and, accordingly, have different needs.

I had an employee once who actually had to withdraw from his program because his school of choice didn't allow payment plans. You had to pay upfront in order to take the class if you were using anything other than the GI Bill for Federal Financial Aid to pay your tuition bill. It happened enough times that we ultimately changed our policy to make our payment on the front-end. But I know many other companies that would rather not run the risk of having to get into the collections business (for course drops and unsatisfactory completions).

 

I can see how CSU can work for some people. Another option would be to use the tuition reimbursement to pay off whatever loans were taken out.

 

Please do not refer to California Southern University as "CSU". In California, CSU is a well-established acronym for the California State University and misuse of the acronym will lead to confusion.

 

Colorado State University also uses CSU. Angelo State University and Arizona State University use ASU. The thread is about California Southern University. If someone gets confused, then it is possible that the person can't read very well.

 

Please do not assume that you have the authority to police acronym use.

Binghamton University and Boston University are both BU.

And while we frequently refer to the University of Phoenix as UofP, it is probably more broadly used as an acronym for the University of Pennsylvania.

And though saying you went to "Cornell" generally implies the ivy league institution it could just as easily mean you attended Cornell College. Columbia has a similar issue with a number of universities bearing their name as well as does Notre Dame.

So, considering a few well respected institutions can't even guarantee that they are the only ones using their actual name I think trying to prevent a university from using the acronym of their legal name is really a weird position to take. I mean, I get that you're being all altruistic and trying to avoid "confusion" but I think that within a thread on California Southern University, during the course of a discussion on California Southern University any reasonable person would see that CSU is meant to refer, in fact, to California Southern University.

 

I'm not a California kid but I've been under the impression that in order to avoid confusion people tend to refer to the specific branches of the CSU system such as CSU-Fullerton or CSU-Dominguez Hills or CSU-Chico. The inclusion of the specific location serves to distinguish the school from not only other possible CSUs (like California Southern) but from the other branches of the CSU system. Could that be true?

 

Ya know what bugs me? I don't like it that Northcentral University is referred to as NCU. Northcentral is one word and shouldn't be split up just because they don't want to be confused with Northeastern or whatever.:zx11pissed::wink:

 

That's reasonable.

Personally, the Indiana University of Pennsylvania always irritated me.

And the first dozen or so times I saw references to DePauw University I thought someone had simply misspelled "DePaul."

 

To confuse the issue even more, here are their website links (to two completely different schools with almost identical names):

ncu.edu (Northcentral University)

northcentral.edu (North Central University)

 

me again: "To confuse the issue even more, here are their website links (to two completely different schools with almost identical names)"

John: And to further confuse the matter, the original name of Northcentral University was . . . North Central University.

Oh, and the fact of their location in the southwestern state of Arizona.

 

SCUPS.

Problem solved.

 

It's all kind of relative, isn't it?

If my university is located in the North Eastern portion of Tijuana....

But seriously, I can't start a deli with the same name as another deli in my state.

And I can't start a deli with the same name as another deli in another state only if they have a U.S. (as opposed to a state) trademark. Brand dilution and such.

Wouldn't you think that, at this point in our society, someone would step in and prevent a university from pulling the same thing?

 

Hi Dr. Bear.

NCU had to change their name from North Central University to Northcentral University when they discovered that there was already a school named "North Central University."

 

Now, that's funny.

As long as we're on this, two more come to mind . . .

"TUI" meant The Union Institute (right down to their website, tui.edu) until Touro University International copped it. Union, in the meantime, became UI&U, but couldn't get uiu.edu as their website because it belonged to Upper Iowa University. Union ultimately had to settle for myunion.edu. But if you enter tui.edu, it will still take you to myunion.edu automatically.

Then there's the famous bastion of Fundamentalism, Bob Jones University at bju.edu. For years, the unknowing called it BJU, but those associated withy the school simply called it BJ. In fact, their admissions phone number was 1-800-BJ-AND-ME. But that seems to have disappeared, perhaps because even wazoos there began to realize that “BJ” had another meaning to much of society. (Use your imagination, kids.) Their admissions phone number is now simply listed on their website as (800) 252-6363, without the corresponding letters.

 

Nope, UPenn is "more broadly used as an acronym for the University of Pennsylvania"

 

Actually for common reference (not official name) they generally use the location name with state such as Fresno State, Fullerton State, Chico State....

Mind you this is not true for all locations but those with reasonable sports teams definitely do this.

 

Not to take sides (even though I end up doing so in this case), when you're from Pennsylvania (which I am), the University of Pennsylvania is, indeedm known as "U. of P." or simply "Penn" (to differentiate it from Penn State). Very few people in PA would say "UPenn."

Penn State is obviously The Pennsylvania State University in State College, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania (which is, in fact, in the town of Indiana, PA) is known as "I.U.P." By the way, there's also a California University of Pennsylvania (yes, in the town of California, PA), which is locally called "Cal-U" and which has also developed several well-known distance programs. Why not "CUP?" Because that one is reserved for Clarion University of Pennsylvania.