DegreeInfo Success Stories

Congratulations!

 

Hi Randell,

My name, and have currently been working in the Healthcare feild for ovee 10 years as a Sterile Processing Technician. I am looking to obtain a degree online, something that can somewhat related to what i am doing Just so i wont have wasted time, but also something that has a good earning potential . i already have a heavy work load but i am willing to but in the work needed to complete a degree. What schoools would you recommend that has a good program but is not to difficult to maintain. Would you consider GCU to be a good enough school to earn a degree? Is the name strong enough to stand on its on when its time to transfer credits or get good pay job? Is there any school you would recommend? Did you like your experience with your program and your school?

 

I'm headed to Holy Apostles in CT for the first time on Saturday for graduation. I finished a distance MA in Theology. In the time I was there they added ATS accreditation to their regional accreditation.

 

I've worked for 20 years as a system developer without a degree. People are getting promoted except me. One day I decided to enroll in a DETC AAS degree course.

Fast forward, I completed my AAS degree in Software Engineering in Cleveland Institute of Electronics (CIE). Since then I was promoted to a senior developer role.

At present I am working on my capstone project and hoping to get my bachelors degree in 2 months. Also, my past senior developer role helped me get my current project manager job.

Thank you very much Degreeinfo and CIE!

 

Its been a long time since I logged into the forum! I just wanted to thank the owner of the forum and the members for the wonderful resources for people seeking to further their education.

Here is my story. 3 1/2 years ago (Sep/Oct 2016), I started thinking of getting a 2nd bachelor's degree and googled "online bachelors" and ended up on this forum (you can see my very first post haha). I asked for advice and was convinced by members here to go for masters degree instead. I had never ever thought of myself as a "Masters" type. On reading further, it seemed that a WGU masters would be ideal and affordable. I was between jobs and I utilized the time between Thanksgiving and New Years to study and get a Masters degree in IT Management in just 2 months!! This gave me a little more confidence and I came back to the forums seeking advice for an MBA degree. Based on the advice and research, I picked UT - Permian. I finished my MBA in Dec last year (2019)!

So, long story short, a regular jack like me who was somehow looking for a 2nd bachelor's degree ended up getting two masters degrees instead in a little over 3 years!!. My friends are shocked. The other day my mom told her friend that her son is "highly educated with two advanced degrees". It's such a strange thing to hear, especially since I never looked at myself that way.

Thanks once again Degreeinfo! Adios until I feel that I need a PhD LOL

 

I credit DegreeInfo for alot. I've had alot of spirited conservations and received good infomation at the same time. People might not always have agreed with what I also had to say, especially when it comes to for-profit schools, but hey to each their own. I owe alot to the people here on DegreeInfo, and I couldn't have completed my degrees without them.

 

Long time lurker, first time poster. Thanks to degreeinfo, I discovered WGU, where I earned my B.S in software development and directly after, my MBA in IT management.

Because of my distance learning education, partially informed by DI, my professional career has really gone forward. When I started at WGU, I was working a miserable tech support job in a dead-end call center making 30k a year. After finishing WGU and working hard and diligently to land my first job as a software engineer, I accepted a junior position making 45k. Finally, after three years of strategic lateral moves to different organizations and increasing my responsibility as an engineer, I now earn a six figure salary and highly enjoy my work.

At the end of the month, I start my PhD in management at Walden. The sticker price there does give me some shock, but I did not have any student loans as I paid for WGU out of pocket. My ultimate goal would be to supplement my career with teaching opportunities as it is something that I love. I also wanted the personal satisfaction of having earned a PhD. It would be cool if I could teach full time, but I am realistic that I could probably not make as much as I currently make. This is also the reason I chose a distance learning PhD. Even with stipends and tuition discounts found in traditional programs, the opportunity cost of pursing a B&M PhD when I am already an established professional was too great.

I don't know how much Walden will help me to stand out when I finish. If I never make considerable income teaching, at least I will always have my primary career and the personal satisfaction of having earned the doctorate. I plan to possibly blog my Walden experience, if anyone would be interested.

 

Sure, Steve!

No offense taken. In fact, I do have a lot of trepidation about it as well and have been on the fence and apprehensive for a while.

The TLDR version of it was the following:

I was severely hampered by the programs I could apply to for two reasons.

One, In my youth, I started at college, was young and stupid, and didn't really take it seriously. My scholarship was rescinded and I was left with an outstanding balance that I have never been able to get cleared up and cannot get a transcript from them. For many of the programs, not submitting transcripts from all institutions attended was a non-starter.

The second thing that hampered the number of programs that I could apply to is lack of references. My B&M experience was ages ago -- as I alluded to earlier, my performance was less-than-stellar. This means that my best academic experience came from WGU. My B.S student mentor at WGU left and was not reachable. I accelerate my MBA at WGU and finished in about six months, since it is competency based. My mentor was new and reluctant to write a recommendation. WGU has this weird policy whereby advisors cannot give recommendations in their official capacity as an employee of the university and she did not feel comfortable navigating how to give a reference while remaining adherent to the university's policy. Because WGU is competency based and I accelerated both of my programs and didn't utilize the course instructors, I really didn't have anyone who could vouch for me from an academic standpoint. Furthermore, as I made a lot of lateral moves to different organizations in my professional career in order to hit my target salary, my number of professional references was also limited, mostly to my current company. When I bombed out of college at 20, I moved to France for five years where I worked as an English-language assistant in the French school system. When I came back to the States, I started immediately in the call center environment and then to WGU. As such, my career only really 'started' at the age of 28 when I began work as an engineer.

The combination of both of those made it REALLY difficult for me to find a program. Most of them required the transcript from the missing school as it comes up when they run a clearing house check The lack of references only exacerbated the issue.

Walden won out by simply being the most palatable option on a very short list, I'm sorry to say.

 

@lingauaphile89 - So, your company hiring? Great job! I pretty much did the same thing you have but at a much slower rate. You rose up at a much faster pace than I, I stalled after hitting 75k and now still stuck at the mid 90's. I started in sales/services of a mom/pop computer shop and went to a wholesaler, then on the helpdesk and now stalled at being a Senior Technical Analyst. Thinking I should get the MBA myself...

 

Congrats to you as well! Unfortunately, we are on a COVID hiring freeze. Definitely enjoyed my MBA experience. I can’t be sure if it’s played any role in my success. I work as a developer for the organization’s ERP system, which basically forms the backbone of finance and operations. Because of that, my role is very technical, but also requires in depth knowledge of financial and operational processes. If nothing else, the MBA gave me the knowledge to speak more authoritatively on those things, since I spend a lot of time in design sessions with key stakeholders. Luckily, that makes me pretty visible in the organization.

 

This is likely a late response, but I completed my undergrad online from Waldorf University awhile back; it's regionally accredited, admission is easy and they have a generous transfer policy. They accepted all of my previous college credit and I finished fairly quickly. Most importantly, completing my degree allowed me to pursue other educational goals, and my degree from Waldorf did grant me admission to graduate programs from schools like Indiana University Bloomington, Eastern University, and the University of Southern Indiana. The curriculum was fair; it's all discussion boards and essays/critical writing.

I hope this helps!

 

I'm going to Eastern now! I'd love to hear the things that went into your decision to pursue the University of Southern Indiana program.

 

Absolutely! Here's my DegreeInfo Success Story! I had been out of school for awhile, so I made no plans to pursue anything after undergrad. Initially, I was all set to go to Columbia Southern, not knowing (at the time) the difference between NA and RA, yada yada yada. In any case, I did a google search of Columbia Southern (this was some time in 2014), when I came across DI and found a post on the difference between National vs Regional accreditation. Suffice to say, the whole thing stressed and freaked me out and I pulled out of Columbia Southern before I started. Shortly thereafter, I read on here (I can't find the original post) that Columbia Southern had a "sister" university that was B&M and RA (Waldorf College at the time, it became Waldorf University in 2016). By the time I graduated, I finished my BA in Health Care Management with a 4.0(!) My high GPA and honors distinction on my diploma gave me the confidence to continue on with Grad School.

Because of my undergrad efforts, I was accepted into the MS Data Science program at Indiana University Bloomington. This was quite a feat for me at the time; I was the college dropout who got a second chance, and scored a ticket to the big leagues with acceptance into a Graduate program at one of the biggest research universities in the country. Alas, my celebration was a bit premature; Data Science was THE big ticket when I applied to grad school in 2017 so IU decided to take in its biggest incoming class of Data Science grad students yet. What ended up happening was the program grew too fast, the administration worked like mad to address and assess the skillset of the incoming class, and all of a sudden I was unhappy in my grad program and plunged into a deep depression.

Eventually, I ended up leaving the Data Science program at IU, but still had aspirations to complete a graduate degree. Prior to Data Science, my big educational goal in life was to earn an MBA. After lurking on this board for a number of years, I also learned about the different business school accreditations. USI had just rolled out their online MBA program, and it was quite impressive! 30 units, AACSB accreditation, 6 transfer credits allowed, Data Analytics concentration available, all for $12.9k?! SIGN ME UP!

The decision to pursue my MBA was very lucrative. The position I'm currently in requires at least an MBA, so there's that. Also, the leadership/management courses were helpful since I'm so used to being a worker bee; it took a second to adjust to my role in management. Suffice to say, the coursework did help a lot in that respect, and I was able to apply many of the things I learned in the program directly to the projects and situations I'd face at work.

Lastly, and this is mainly ego... I never got over the fact that I left the Data Science program at IU; I loved the subject matter but HATED how IU structured their program (since it's a leading research university, it's a big go-to for Microsoft, IBM and other industry-leading candidates). Consequently, the department catered more to their skillsets than to beginners like me. Their ramp-up/introductory courses weren't much help to me either, I ended up using outside sources like edX and Coursera to learn the basics. This KILLED me; IU's program is NOT cheap, and despite having a fellowship/tuition break due to my undergrad GPA, I was still paying so much in tuition. Then, to rely on OTHER sources to learn their material... I didn't think any of it (the stress, grief, depression, etc.) was worth it. So I left.

I say all this because I am now restarting that program at Eastern! (I recognized your name from the FB Group; I made a post there as well!) Looking at the structure of the program and the content (along with the helpful feedback you've given), I think their program will be a better fit for me.

I also have my eye on the DHA at VA University of Lynchburg in the near future; another great find from DI. I don't need an RA doctorate for work, nor do I have any immediate plans to teach. Admittedly, I'd only be pursuing this for the vanity of having a doctorate; but then again... who isn't? ;-)

 

Indiana University-Bloomington is a great university albeit, a lot of these universities that offer online programs can overwhelm their system if they allow the program to grow at a quicker rate than they can realistically accommodate. My program has a cohort size of 38 students and they intend to admit no more than 40-60 per cohort. When you have a program that has 500+ students, you run the chance of failing the students unless you have a very robust distance learning team that is solely there to help operate the programs efficiently and effectively.

 

Indeed. Eastern had some growing pains in the first 3 semesters. They're now enrolling 300+ students per term which is going to require them to add several more staff and Professors to accommodate lest they run into issues as those students get into the more demanding (on the professors) upper courses.