NCU was More Rigorous than California State University

Whoa there, little camper.

1. You've made the statement on more than one occasion that if you had other options at the time you made your choice, you'd not have gone there either.

2. You're not the "smartest guy in the world" and neither am I. But I know based on where I come from and what I've done that I'm better than NCU to finish up.

If you take what I said as a personal affront, that's more about you seeing yourself as having self-worth equal to your conferred degree and not about my having an opinion.

You're welcome.
IT

 

The evidence I offer is the same as was in the original post here; personal experience. I am comparing it to my experiences at Cal State Long Beach. The course materials were as good, or better at NCU. This is subjective, I understand, but the thread was started on that premise.

 

Then we really don't disagree. I didn't think so. Remember, just because I defend the quality of the program does not mean that I like the school. I would not recommend that anyone go there, but I respect those who made it through.

 

I cannot disagree with this.

 

(bold is mine)

This is a rare and admirable feat with any degree earned online, not just NCU. I know you had prior experience teaching university classes, but still your NCU degree got you a B&M job. Awesome! Obviously administrators at the university you work at value your NCU degree.

 

Easy ITJD, let keep this polite. OK? :smile:

 

No, I take this approach because I strongly feel that anyone with a degree from NCU should be held in equal regard as anyone with a similar degree from another institution. NCU makes it harder to get a degree, not easier. Remember, I don't like NCU. I believe they make it extremely difficult because they want people to, or at least don't care if they do, drop out. They get their money either way.

suelaine landed a B&M teaching job with her NCU doctorate. Admittedly, this is surprising and speaks to the value and previous experience she offered the school, but it still supports the idea that a B&M institution honored a NCU doctorate.

Their service sucks, and I'm glad I dropped out, but the people that make it through that gauntlet are scholars deserving our respect.

 

I agree - for me the program was ~$25K and was one of the only online programs at the time (2004). If I had it to do over I might go with Nova due to reputation but the residencies would still be a challange for me. A change would be due to reputation, not quality. I would never pay $50K for NCU today when there are more options.

 

I earned a Master's Degree and NCU's dissertation process is FAR harder than anything I did for my Master's. I feel I must remind some that NCU is RA accredited and they would not be allowed to award RA doctorates that were about the same as a second Master's. The Regional accreditors really do monitor what goes on at the schools they accredit, and NCU is not an exception. You may be able to cite individuals who claim the coursework is easy and is a joke, but I'd like to see anybody find me five or so NCU graduates that went all the way to earn a doctorate that would say this was an easy piece of cake and a "Joke." I don't think you will be able to find these individuals, especially if they graduated in the past couple of years.

We certainly should not give more weight to those who say the coursework is a joke than those who say the course work is rigorous, however if you choose, you may give them equal weight. I don't think anybody who has not taken course work at NCU themselves should form any opinion at all, but I believe that happens a lot on this forum. I have no stats on this myself, but I highly suspect that those with more positive opinions have also taken more courses (or completed the entire program) and therefore, yes, their opinion would actually carry a bit more weight than someone who took only a few courses, decided it wasn't for them, and quit, or was told they could not continue by the school for whatever reason. Surfdoctor is objective about this because he chose not to continue with the school for certain reasons it was not a good fit for him, but he also sees this is not a valid reason to "bash" the academic rigor or quality of education of the school.

Interestingly, NCU gets bashed from every end. Some say there is no rigor to the courses, and others say it is too hard, and they want students to fail so they can take money and string them along, but ultimately they will not get what they came for. Of course, neither is really the case. The course work (especially dissertation phase) is difficult and I have communicated with several who either started or even completed doctoral programs at others schools (yes I really do know some people with two doctorates) and these people consistently say NCU was either as hard, or harder than even the traditional program they were in.

The NCU forums are not mostly negative posts. It goes in cycles, and there are a lot of vents about rising tuition, which usually ends up going off into the direction of the school not caring about anything but taking your money, etc.

But I would say a majority of the posts on the NCU forums are general questions or communication, neither positive nor negative about the school itself. Folks talk about course work, mentors, requirements, APA or grammatical questions, etc. We even have a virtual "Football Team." We are the Roadrunners for those who don't know.

There are a lot of positive posts as well, and people do graduate. Learners are invited to listen in to the defenses by phone conference. A lot of positive responses, encouragement, etc. come from this.

I follow the NCU learners forums and also a group outside NCU's site and I see that many get what they came for (including me) but I don't recall even one person getting through without any glitches, struggles, required re-dos, etc. If it was such an easy piece of cake then professsionals with Master's Degrees would not have to keep redoing their work in order to get approval from all the required committee members, etc. I, personally do not believe the "re-dos" are required just so the school can get more money, either. They are required because NCU has very high dissertation standards.


I have taken classes, yes even a graduate level class at a local B&M university (not the one that hired me) and it was the easiest A ever, and there was certainly no rigor. It was a week long "intensive" class that mostly involved reading children's books to children. I earned 3 graduate level credits and I believe everyone in the class got an A.

We didn't have to write any papers or take any tests. I think we just had to "perform" reading books to children. I'm not even saying I didn't learn something in that class. Actually, I did, but it was still extremely easy. I would not go around bad mouthing that school because of that one class. I just have the feeling there are members on this forum who feel it is some kind of important mission to make sure that people know "how bad" NCU is.

 

Thank you, suelaine, for stepping up to the plate with this. Many are talking here about suppositions, and I respect their opinions, but you are relating actual experiences. Those carry much more weight with me.

 

I just wanted to support suelaine and SurfDoctor on the difficulty of completing a PhD at NCU. I had been with the school quite a while and managed to survive all the changes as they racheted-up the difficulty of the process. I wish I would have been able to pursue the coursework more vigorously early on instead of taking the full 4 months to complete a course, which was allowed back then, and then on top of that often waiting as long as 130 days in between classes. Over time the the system changed and starting with my last couple classes of coursework, and then the dissertation process in particular, NCU became much more difficult. There was a big rush to complete degrees by many, before the new changes were instituted, but for me I simply was not far enough along to get in under very many of the wires. I was allowed to stay in the old program and I think I had more shots at the CP then they allow now. My DP took forever to get in shape but sailed through the process. In hindsight I think the changes to the rigor of the program will benefit those of us who manage to graduate. I had a much better rapport with the school management than many who deride with the school, and I can say I enjoyed a good working relationship compared to the horror stories I have heard from others. With me and NCU though, I think it was a two way street. As you look up NCU grads on say Linkedin you find folks who are generally quite successful by other means, and rather than starting out and trying to make it on the strength of the NCU brand. I think if NCU can continue to acquire a reputation as a difficult school to get a PhD from, then that will probably be good enough for me.

 

Welcome to Degree Info, Intlprof, and thank you for your post. I appreciate another graduate supporting what I have been saying about NCU.

Here is some info about why there is a delay in your posts showing up: http://www.degreeinfo.com/general-distance-learning-discussions/35100-new-users-ask-where-did-my-posts-go.html

 

There is always going to be a caste system in higher education. A Ph.D. from UMass-Boston isn't going to be regarded as highly as a Ph.D. from Harvard, even both schools are NEASC-RA and B&M. That's just the way things are, and will probably always be.

 

Of course.

 

Well this is true; however at least where I live, people generally take a more positive approach instead of putting down those who accomplish something viewed as "lesser." For example, I will talk about the Bachelor's level. My daughter has a BS from Princeton and my sister's kids both got BSNs in nursing from the local state university. While I might very well brag about my daughter going to Princeton, I am NOT going to put down what my sister's kids did in comparison. My sister also has a right to be proud.

 

Both your daughter and your nieces (as well as you) should be proud of their/your educational accomplishments, no question. My point was that there is definitely a hierarchy in higher education that isn't going away anytime soon.

My A.S. alma mater (Quincy College) has/had a *decent* reputation for a city-owned 2-year college, so my father didn't think much of it. When I told him I was going to Curry College for my B.A., he looked at me like I just told him (to borrow a phrase from George Costanza) that I wanted to be a ventriloquist, since Curry used to have a poor reputation locally, which has dramatically improved in recent years (ironically due to the cash infusion of continuing education students such as me). Curry worked for me, as it was affordable, convenient, satisfied the requirements of a very generous education incentive for my job, and was my ticket to graduate school.

When I got my M.A. from UMass-Lowell, I could tell that my dad was so proud, his chest was about to explode, because it was from a school he knew and recognized as "real".

Unfortunately he died before I graduated (even started) from MSPP, but his reactions are a perfect example of the bias that's inherent in higher education.

 

Bruce,
A lot of this comes from the context of our family's and friend's attitudes. My father was a high school drop out who would not know one college from another and actually discouraged any of us eight children from continuing past high school. Only my sister (who is a nurse and has the daughters that are nurses, and I went to college out of the eight).

My father did learn what "valedictorian" meant when some of his cronies mentioned to him how proud he must be that his two granddaughters were valedictorians. I never told him I got a Master's Degree. He understood a little about me getting a BS degree which allowed me to teach school, and in some weird kind of way, I do think he was proud of me for it. But anything beyond that was not something he would relate to or that I would have discussed with him. My mother died before I earned my BS degree. In fact she died the day before my orientation for my student teaching semester, and yet I still went to the orientation. Can you believe that? It was how determined I was to get my degree. My mother was a wonderful person and I miss her but she never saw any of this, neither my, nor my children's accomplishments. My father was alive when I earned my Master's degree but I never disgussed that with him and I doubt he knew. He died before I finished my Ph.D. and it would not have mattered. In his world (and in many people's world, quite frankly, a doctor is a medical doctor, or at least a dentist or veterinarian).

I grew up very poor in what some might consider a backward, redneck world. And yet I have a daughter who graduated from Princeton and one who has a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech who works at MIT and her husband works at Harvard. The Princeton daughter is engaged to another Princeton grad and they are both working on their Ph.D.s at the University of Washington. That is just a little glimpse of the irony in my life. But it gives me some perspectives others might not have.

 

My admiration level has clicked up a few more notches now knowing this.

 

Interesting thread from the past over at the Chronicle's forums

Shows just how prejudiced some folks can be about DL and for-profit schools, etc.:

NorthCentral University?

 

That's par for the course on Chronicle.

I lurk over there regularly, but I have never wanted to post because of the attitudes.

On Chronicle, if your degree is not from a Top tier school, it's generally not well received. Degrees by distance are almost universally panned, regardless of source.