Why do people rip on NCU?

My reasons for leaving as well.

 

How many dissertation credits does NCU expect a student to take per semester?

 

LOL!!! Now that's a good one!

 

Exactly how does that happen?

As far as the dissertation quality, I know there have been some pretty piss-poor dissertations that made it through NCU. When they were reviewed by the accrediting agency they were told they needed to improve the quality of their dissertations. They added another level of review and place a 40 page minimum on all literature reviews. They will not be reviewed for 5 more years so I would hardly say this is a huge red flag. If it were a more serious concern, I would assume they would be sanctioned. Capella and Walden have a 7 year review and ASU has a 10 year review. Should it be assumed Capella and Walden are on a tight leash?
Capella
Year of Last Reaffirmation of Accreditation: 2007 - 2008
Year of Next Reaffirmation of Accreditation: 2014 - 2015

Walden
Year of Last PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2005 - 2006
Year of Next PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2012 - 2013

NCU
Year of Last PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2007 - 2008
Year of Next PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2012 - 2013

ASU
Year of Last PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2002 - 2003
Year of Next PEAQ Comprehensive Evaluation: 2012 – 2013

As far as residencies, I selected NCU because they do not have residencies. I travel 40-50% of time with coverage over the past six years ranging from the SE (FL, GA, NC, SC, AL, LA) to covering the country. If I had a clock-in / clock-out / 9-5 job maybe a residency would be exciting but I would see it as an strain on my marriage to elect to go someplace for a week or two during my vacation. How could one or two weeks out of the year make that much of an impact?

I understand there are not many TT NCU degree holders when compared to Walden and Capella but there are a lot more Capella graduates then NCU graduates, although less Walden graduates then NCU graduates. I do not see a TT position as being the ultimate mark of quality. If I were going for a TT position, I would like to think I would pick a school that has a history of earning TT positions. If your goal is a TT position and you select an "online school", I would think you are pretty foolish to begin with.

By the way, I am not beating on my chest and yelling, "NCU is the best" and I know there are better choices for a PhD (such as Nova) but I would not say Capella, Walden, or any other for-profit DL school is better or worst.

 

One class at a time (3 credits). Here is the time line I kept:

First RSH course - 06/02/2008 to 09/12/2008
Second RSH course - 10/01/2008 to 12/31/2008
Third RSH course - 02/01/2009 to 05/01/2009
Fourth RSH course - 06/01/2009 to 09/01/2009 (Concept Paper completed and approved)

First DIS course - 10/01/2009 to 1/22/2010 - (Dissertation Proposal approved)
Second DIS course - 02/01/2010 to 05/17/2010 - (data collected, chapters 4 and 5 written, Manuscript approved by chair, feedback obtained from committee, and rewrite complete)
Third DIS course - 07/01/2010 to 10/18/2010 - DM has been submitted for University Review - final course

 

"I know there are better choices for a PhD (such as Nova) but I would not say Capella, Walden, or any other for-profit DL school is better or worst."

I would completely agree with the above comment.

I think my biggest problem with NCU is that students just work so... dang... hard to get that PhD, and it almost seems like the school does everything in its power to destroy its own credibility. In my opinion, that is a direct insult to the students. Nobody wants to bust their tail on a PhD only to have the school systematically degrade the value of it. It aint like ya'll are working any less hard than any other doctoral students. In fact, I would argue that you are working harder. I just don't think NCU realizes that it is reducing the value of ya'lls degrees with some of their decisions. They are making decisions based on short term profit when they should be making them based off building long term credibility.

 

This is an interesting view. What do you think they are doing to devalue their credibility? What decision reduce the value and how?

I think they have taken a few steps in the right direction like-
Not awarding an MBA on the way to a PhD (I heard they used to do this but it might have been pre-accreditation)
Becoming more selective on the credit they accept
Raising the bar for quaility dissertations

Additional steps they could/should take (in my opinion)
Require 2 or 3 articles to be published in a trade mag or professional journal for graduation from the doctoral program
Add an optional residency
Set a maximum number of days for the turn around time on feedback from the mentor and really enforce it
Start building the dissertation earlier in the RSH course process. Such as RSH6001 builds Chapter 1, RSH60002 builds Chapter 2, and so on.

Since you made it so far in the process and transfered to Northeastern University, did they accept any/many of the credits?

 

I am in agreement somewhat. In my case NCU devalues itself by how it takes care of its students. I got the impression of an uncaring organization. It customers service is like baseball, more misses than hits. In favour of NCU, be prepare to work very hard.

 

I found only six here out of the thousands of students and they have an A+ rating. That is far less the the 75 against Capella, which also has an A+ rating or the 33 against Walden and they have an A- rating.

As far as reports on "various websites", that is like saying Wikipedia is a good source of information.

You had better watch out, Bellevue University has 4 complaints which is just two less then NCU.

Would (or did) Bellevue University give out phone numbers of alumni or would they call alumni for you and ask them to call you? I would be curious how that is handled as I am sure that it would be a privacy issue.

Can you provide some links/information on this?

 

Randell,

"This is an interesting view. What do you think they are doing to devalue their credibility? What decision reduce the value and how?"

For me (and I'm only speaking for myself here), it was a few things.

-I was "taught" by quite a few mentors who went to NCU themselves. That looks bad, and a lot of schools make it a policy to avoid that.

-I mentioned before that one of my mentors was two courses ahead of me.. in the same program.

-Every bulletin they put out and quarterly newsletter they created just looked like a 3rd grader designed it. Horrible.

-The website for learners was horrible, and just looked shoddy.

-They posted an announcement on the main web site when one of the learners writes a book that was published. Normally, I would be all for this, but the book was published by a vanity press type publisher. Like, no peer review. Most legit schools reward peer reviewed publications, not that type of publication.

-They created an emphasis on business security for the PhD, and it was obvious that they took a bunch of CJ courses and changed the titles. No, literally. I now have an MBA emphasis in Business, Corportate, and Campus Security. The interesting part is this: I never even took a campus security course because they didn't offer it. Also, business and corporate security are the same thing! They titled it this way because they just slapped the concentration together and hoped nobody would be the wiser.

For me, the bottom line was that every single thing they did was like an advertisement. They saved every penny in every way possible, and they soaked every penny out of students in every way possible. It was very obvious that the school was FOR PROFIT, and that to me takes away credibility.

 

Thanks for your honest (and knowledgable) view. I have to agree on every point except the business security / CJ point. I will assume you are right since I never looked at it.

 

You've really touched on the main reasons why most internet-only schools are not, and will continue to not be taken very seriously. As minute as these details are, often, they just miss the points. During my IT Management master degree program at TUI, I confronted a professor in a few of my courses because the course content were very elementary-like, and worst, their content were very far from addressing the CBK in those areas.

For example, two courses named "Management of Information Technology in Organizations" and "Foundations of Information Technology Management" only addressed very basic or elementary management knowledge/issues whereas, one would have easily done that, and the other (Foundations of Information Technology Management) should be used to address the overall enterprise IT systems, concepts, tools and/or infrastructure etc. Why?

To provide a more balanced knowledge appropriate for or expected of an IT management degree holder. Surprisingly, after informing the professor regarding my concerns for the course, he said he intends to make the two courses (which he teaches exclusively) even more of management topics (and poorly, very basic or elementary management issues appropriate first year college prep courses). What really got to me in his responds was the fact that he kept on saying " after all its an IT management degree," which sounded very stupid.

The bottom line is that he was not qualified (his PhD was in Organizational Management with no coursework in IT) to teach both courses, so instead of him letting go of one course, he systematically changed the contents to what suits him so he can make money from teaching both instead of one (and ofcourse, at the detriment of students who naively, and in some cases, stupidly pay for them and feel they are learning relevant content).

It did not end there. When I was done with the program, this same professor pestered me to enroll in their PhD in business administration/ IT management specialization. After looking at the course work that make up the program, I told him it would not serve my career goals. Instead of him asking me why, he kept on telling me that he's sure I can write a dissertation. I told him, dissertation is one thing, i'm more concerned about learning "relevant content" so that I have the necessary common body knowledge of the course/field, instead of teaching me communication skills, workplace politics etc. in a course that should teach systems development process such as life cycle models and project phases, for instance. I end up not enrolling because it would be hard to teach specific IT courses (such as information security, project management, Networking/Telecommunications, Systems Analysis and Development, Database systems etc.) because of wrongly named or vaguely name courses that reflect CBK content found in comparable courses across other institutions. I specifically asked the professor what course I would be qualified to teach with a supposedly IT related PhD with courses such as: Foundations of Information Systems, Seminar in Information Systems, Special Topics in Information Systems, and Seminar in Operations Management, without unclear idea of what those course contents were. Clearly, these issues and others show that internet colleges are really only interested in getting money from their students instead of providing the type of quality education that is typical of traditional face-to-face institutions. In fact, considering they fact that they basically dump all the work for students without interest in participating in any form of teaching them or their learning, they have all the time to polish and perfect alot of the same set of complains most DL students have, yet, they continue to ignore and only focus in collecting tuition and fees, with blatant disregard for academic quality and integrity.

Let me ask: would you attend a PhD program that one of their professors say they do not know the steps required to publish? Or Would you take another course after finishing one and the professor sends you an email saying she doesn't like the course she just finished "teaching you," instead, that you should enroll in another one that she really likes? ...because like she said " I promise, you will learn alot"?

When internet schools continue to hire adjuncts that only care about money, the value, perception, and degree utility will continue to go down and this " free fall" will continue to deliver worthless pieces of paper and hope for students who invest so much to "pay them."

Enough with internet-only universities!!!!

 

Is Charter OaK internet only Steve? I had no idea, I guess the name makes it sound like like a B&M.

 

The good news is this: There are lots of people out there who, although we will always have problems with NCU, we know how much work and hoop jumping it takes to get a PhD from there. So, I guess in a way, that helps NCU graduates retain quite a bit of credibility even if the school itself doesn't retain that credibility.

 

I am enrolled in NCU, and while I applaud thier quest for higher standards, NCU is making the changes in a hamhanded, haphazard fashion. Changes appear to be at the whim of the provost and senior management. Programs are not honored, they are changed late in the process. Degree Programs that are paid in advance are suddenly subject to junk technology fees and dissertation fees. Faculty are asked to leave suddenly, or they depart hastily for other reasons. I feel that the school is in a self induced tumult. They need to introduce changes gradually.

 

I applied to NCU and registered for classes, but decided that I really wanted more interaction, not just a list of assignments. I dropped them during the first week, but lost my $125 technology fee and got an email a couple of weeks later asking a question about financial aid, even though I was told that it would all be cancelled. I just don't think that they're a very well-organized school.