The redesign reflects our new corporate identity

My wife is actually a student at Aspen so I shouldn't really be picking on them. She got an email last night about the new website and in it they said "The redesign reflects our new corporate identity"

Did any other students at Aspen get this email?

My concern is that the site looks generic, cold, and sales-slick. Plus they just doubled all of their tuition. And, I think it is weird for a school to say they have a corporate identity. Looks like all the trappings of revenue focused for-profit, pretty much everything I thought Aspen was against. Did they get sold? Does anyone know what is going on behind the scenes?

 

My opinion is their new web design represents the following:

1. Cheap
2. Done with Frontpage 95
3. Aimed at/exploitative of certain demographs.

My 9 year old has done better design work going to a community college summer camp over the last two weeks while learning to use Adobe tools than this site appears in release.

Not like they couldn't spend $20,000 to get a real design firm to do the work.

2cents.

 

I don't know. It does seem a little second rate. I would always like a school to at least pretend to be academic. Maybe a picture of a column, a squirrel climbing a tree...the Quad or the some Frat guy dousing a pledge with olive oil and a scared sheep standing by. Something to make me think of college. But I understand the business like look and feel of it. Their customers are adult learners who work full time and probably relate to the intranet/SharePoint feel of the site.

I guess I just like the hooker to pretend to like me before she takes my money.

From what everyone on here says Aspen gives a good quality education and the tuition rates are about in line with what others charge. I've seen worse.

 

$20K
Funny.
No IT project I have ever been a part of has come in at such a low cost. Most of the time we have a min of 5 people working on a project for 12 months at a cost of $100 per hour fully loaded which basically means $2 million.
Most of these projects are government compliance or are required to maintain certain high level customers.

We couldn't build a spreadsheet for $20k

 

No? These guys sure can.

H1-B Visa anyone?

 

I agree. She just started there to take advantage of the ending tuition special, I don't like where this is going so I think we'll find another school.

 

That's why we picked it, and unfortunately I bought into what I thought was a social stand the school had taken. I guess this was before their new 'corporate identity'. There was just something that seemed good about Aspen this time last year. But if they are going the sales slick route then I don't know that I want to be associated with them.

I guess this is the danger of these little for-profit schools. The future is never as secure as the present with what they might become.

My wife literally just needs any legitimate graduate degree for a promotion she already qualifies for except the grad degree. There are other choices.

 

There are so many DL MBA programs available that it's hard to understand why someone would compromise their needs.

DL MBA - U.S. Regionally Accredited - AggieTechie

 

I'm surprised I haven't seen Abner in here yet.

Truth is, the new website design doesn't bother me. The old designs looked too comfy and unprofessional-- like Aspen was being run out of someone's garage or something. Only problem I see with the new design is it does look way less personal, which is going to admittedly bother folks who looked to Aspen in the hopes of finding a more personal touch.

My suggestion to people currently in Aspen programs: wait it out a bit. If you see actual course content, course methodology or customer service being negatively affected after a few months it'll be time to look elsewhere. Otherwise, just think of it as Aspen putting up a new storefront, which many companies have done without negatively impacting service.

 

Then I won't be using your firm as overhead is obviously too high.

I'm presently bankrolling a online gaming website project with a top flight designer charging 65 an hour. Estimate is 200 hours or $13,000. CGI artist is billed out at slightly less for half the time.

IT

 

What you are talking about sounds a lot more like a high end, large scale enterprise application.

This is a completely static web site. This is standard fare for a web design firm. No way in the world should it cost what you are talking about. $10,000-$50,000 (with $50K being a VERY high markup) is about all that a project like this should cost.

 

I think that part of the issue why the aspen site looks a little "cheesy" (for lack of a better word) has to do with the fact that it is a 100% DL university. They just do not have many of the standard pictures that most other colleges adorn their websites with. No pictures of grand old buildings on campus. Heck, no pictures of a campus, period. No pictures of students wearing Aspen sweatshirts relaxing on the grass. No pictures of professors giving stimulating lectures in their classrooms. No pictures of athletic teams. No pictures of grand libraries.

What can they really show, beyond the stock footage of someone in a cap-and-gown? A picture of their server room? A photo of some housewife working on the laptop in her kitchen? Therein lies the problem. Most of the images we traditionally associate with universities just don't apply to 100% online schools. This goes beyond Aspen. I looked at photos of the big 3, and they suffer a similar fate.

 

Yes $100 dollars per hour is what I have to budget when sizing projects. Also, those projects have to have an aggressive ROI to be considered by the project committee.
I'm not saying its right but it is what it is. $65 per hour is a great price for a freelancer to be paid with 1099 with zero overhead.
Did you know that the US dollar amount the average Indian programmer makes is close to $50k or so per year? They are no longer as cheap as they used to be.
I do agree that static site design should be paid lower than enterprise software development but in the corporate IT world, very often the static html guys are paid about the same as 15 year veterans who can do OO programming.
You would be sick in your stomach to see the amount of IT spend we go through for the simplest of government regulations for web development, billing systems changes, operational changes, analysis, customer communications, legal analysis, senate hearings etc. Its nuts.

 

The new Aspen University website sure comes across as a slick corporate website. I have no experience with the school, so I can't say much, but many schools/universities along their same demographic seem to be following in this same trend. Things like this website redesign and throwing around terms like "corporate identity" to me send up a red flag. Looks like Aspen is following in the same foot steps as places like Devry and ITT Tech. (No bueno IMO)

 

Web Design =/= IT

 

I don't like the look. At all. I'm really souring on the school. I wrote to them about the Capstone project asking them if it has to be a written thesis or if a huge corporate IT project that I am one of two people leading could serve in some form as my Capstone.

I was told that I could ask my mentor about that when I enroll in the course. Of course, once I enroll, the clock starts ticking on the time limit to complete it so if they say no I'm in a deep pile.

As far as having to use stock photos, they have had two graduation ceremonies that I know about. Are any shots from there on the site? I haven't poked around. It looks corporate, diploma millish and absolutely impersonal and cold.

 

The site look fine to me. I'm glad they trashed the old design.