Im watching a story on The News Hour about how the VA is investigating a number of for-profit schools to see if theyre adhering to requirements for receiving funds based in the G.I. Bill. Headlining the story is the University of Phoenix, probably the best known for-profit university, commonly reviled as providing a sub-par education. I started my collegiate career in 1985 at Oregon Institute of Technology, a state-funded tech college. Just out of high school, I failed miserably, mostly due to my lack of discipline and preparedness for what I was encountering. After a year, with mounting student loans and no appreciable benefit, I left school and joined the military. Three years later, I came home with a fresh G.I. Bill and a desire to succeed, as well as military-developed discipline for doing things. I started school at the local community college and took all the classes that made sense for me, as well as several that didnt. From there I went on to a couple of four-year state universities (Western Oregon and Portland State) before deciding that going to school was getting in the way of making money. Somewhere along the way, I had exhausted my G.I. Bill and was racking up debt quickly. So I quit school and went to work. Fast forward three years: Id gotten married, bought a house, and had hit a glass ceiling in my career. Moving up required a degree, and I still didnt have one. I checked out my options, and a new player in town, University of Phoenix, seemed like a good bet. It was 1997. The program offered by UoP was maddening in some ways, mostly that they required me to take (and pay for) classes that I felt like were a waste of time given what I did for a living. Some of the classes I could have taught, and more than once I found that I knew more about the subject than the instructor. But, no matter how much I knew, I didnt have the appropriate college credits banked (primarily due to my early failures at OIT), and so didnt have much of a leg to stand on with my new university. Additionally, the per-credit price was outstandingly high, higher even than what I thought were over-priced Oregon state universities. But the program fit what I needed, and I stuck it out. Two and a half years later, fourteen thousand dollars in student loans, I completed all the classes. No matter how I felt about having to take the classes, I thought much of the instruction was good and often applicable to what I was doing in my career, then a Business Systems Analyst at a utility company. Note that I said Id completed the classes, not that Id graduated. Turns out that I was two Humanities credits short of the requirements. What about all those History classes Id taken at PSU? Journalism? Writing? I named multitudinous categories of classes Id taken. No, sorry, we applied all we could, and two more Humanities credits are needed. Worn out and broke, I gave up. Over a year later, my wife prodded me and said, You know, youre ridiculously close. You really need to finish that degree. Shes the smart one, you see. So I called UoP and signed up to take a CLEP test, a way to get credits without taking classes. Two of my friends in the same situation had failed the test miserably. Jen quizzed me the night before, and I passed with flying colors, getting six credits in Humanities. Not bad for 45 minutes of effort and $60 (I highly recommend CLEP and DANTES tests, BTW; theyre real money savers). So, requirements fulfilled, I officially graduated college in 2001, sixteen years after starting. Feeling accomplished, I enrolled in my companys new M.B.A. program (grad school, FTW!), hosted at headquarters where I worked and taught by Eastern Oregon University, another state school. The classes were an identical format to what Id had at UoP, and of similar (good) quality. A year into the program, my company switched the programs education provider to Marylhurst University, a well-known local private university. A few classes after the switch, for a number of reasons, including what I felt was a reduction in class quality, I quit the program. Now, more then ten years later, I have mixed feelings over my choice. One thing I maintain, though, is that the quality of classes I took at the University of Phoenix matched or exceeded anything Id taken at either EOU or Marylhurst in their graduate programs, and, given the different format, provided at least as much learning as any traditional class I took at the community college and four-year universities of my youth. At UoP, you get out what you put in. So, as the VA investigates for-profit universities, with particular focus on The University of Phoenix, Id like to provide them with a success story. Yes I paid a lot of money, probably more than I should have. But I got something very valuable out of the experience: a degree I can leverage to further my career. And, in a world where having that box checked can make or break someones decision to hire you, Im glad to have succeeded, even after all that time.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 06:38:11 +0000
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