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> Not saying this is a scam, but it feels like a scam. Not directly related to your specific concern, but every attempt to make a open / democratized degree ha

> Not saying this is a scam, but it feels like a scam. Not directly related to your specific concern, but every attempt to make a open / democratized degree has felt like that to me, unfortunately. Example: There was an online degree program I saw that awarded a real, regionally accredited degree from a state university. The degree and course work were exactly the same, but the online program was basically open. No admission requirements except to pay for and pass some pre-requisites that would then grant you access to the rest of the degree. The equivalent brick and motar program went through the typical admissions process. My first thought: "this sounds very close to for-profit school".

uopeoplestudent 6y ago
I've attended several schools online at both the undergrad and graduate level including a for-profit school. I don't find much different between them because they've all followed an asynchronous approach. However, UoPeople is different in that it's much, much less instructor led. They use a "peer learning" pedagogical approach. It's something I quite dislike about the school. I consider it to be poorly implemented and leads to problems like "revenge grading." However, I tolerate it because it allows me to study in a structured environment for less than I'd pay at my local community college. It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree.
- misterhtmlcss 6y ago
  I'm there not because I need it either. I graduated from a software bootcamp and I've already been working for 2 yeast, so I'm good. However I found out UoPeople and researched them a bit e.g. called a local college 's HR department to find out if they'd recognize someone with a degree from there to teach and they said yes. My next thought was to review the Visa process for a couple countries; this is my primary interest and motivation. None of them specified where the Degree came from only that it was a sanctioned/Accredited institution. So I don't really care about the details. I learn more, great, but otherwise I'm happy because I just want to be able to apply to get into Europe or Asia as a software developer in the future and not worry about whether I have enough points, etc to pass the rigor. All of that being said, the first course was a gong show with lots of academic violations, but like all things in life it's what you put into it and I plan on graduating with Honors, so even if it's a weak degree I'll still be able to respect my work and effort.
  - uopeoplestudent 6y ago
    I assume by "first course" you mean UNIV 1001. For those unaware, that's the "study skills, introduction to college, college success" course. Yeah, that was pretty awful. I don't mind the material. It was nothing new to me, but the quality of discourse, grades, assessments, and so on--ugh. With each step through the CS prerequisites, things have improved. So it seems the less prepared students either washout or get stuck doing general education courses. (Thankfully, I've got all that covered in transfer.)
- dmix 6y ago
  Can you give some examples of 'peer learning'? I noticed OP said that about plagiarism and I was curious how that works. The problem with all forced group work and not being able to choose the group is you get a very mixed quality of effort and talent. I'd stay away from any program that pushed that heavily.
  - uopeoplestudent 6y ago
    "Peer learning" is implement primarily in two ways at UoPeople. The first is through discussion forums. We are required to post a response to a discussion prompt each week. We return to write a minimum of three responses to our peers, and we also assess their response on a scale of 0-10. The idea is that peers will touch on different aspects, extend one another's learning, and engage in further discussion. In reality, we end up getting "great post" responses most of the time and minimal effort put in by our peers. That's not always the case, but it happens enough that I don't think it's actually helpful or a meaningful approach. The other means is through peer assessment of regular assignments (e.g., 'papers,' programming assignments, etc.). We submit these one week, and then our peers read/study and assess our assignments based on established criteria. Peers are supposed to provide feedback on each aspect and then an overall response. Again, the idea is that we learn through studying and responding to our peers. In reality, most students make minimal effort. So most of the time my assessment responses are limited to "good job." So, not really beneficial. (I've had a few really good responses, but it's rare.) As for group work, I'm not aware of any instances of that at the school. (I've had it in graduate courses in the past, and I don't like it.) I really do not like the "peer learning" system at UoPeople. I think it can work, but I don't think you've done a good job of implementing it. And instructors that I've had to date only have minimal interaction with students. (Though, I don't really need it, so it doesn't concern me much.) I've considered transferring several times, but the idea of paying $1-2k per course at a state school vs. $100 per course at UoPeople doesn't appeal to me. (As I've noted elsewhere, I'm not doing this primarily for the degree. Instead, it's about learning for me.)
    - skinnymuch 6y ago
      Local community college online classes has that same mandatory writing something and responding 3 times. I really disliked it. Forcing that sort of thing with such specific requirements made it so the majority were talking without much care at all. I was the same as I don’t like the forced interaction. At least the way it was set up.
- phaus 6y ago
  >It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree. I should hope not given the fact that they are not regionally accredited and now that they have finally applied they likely won't be for another 2-3 years. Assuming they pass.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
This sounds really interesting. Would you specify which state university?
- non-entity 6y ago
  Sure, It's the University of Colorado Boulder Masters programs hosted through Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/msee-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/msee-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-science-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie... The fact that they're masters programs with performance based admissions make them even more suspicious to me, but if you're looking for bachelors programs like this I think the ASU bachelors hosted Coursera also has such an admission path.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    How far do they go on the performance based admission? Must you have a Bachelor’s to be admitted? I’m currently on my last year of my Master’s and did not fulfill the usual entrance requirements but CEFIMS will let you into their Master’s programmes sans Bachelor’s though there is a bit of hoop jumping and it’s difficult to do it in the two year minimum for students who start with a Bachelor’s.
    - non-entity 6y ago
      Nope, there's no bachelors degree required. I was actually pretty surprised by this when I first heard about it and I emailed them. In part of their response I quote: Our program aims to make admission less bureaucratic (no degree, no GRE, nor recommendation letters, nor statement of purpose required), but we still are appealing to students who have the near-equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree, whether through academic study, years’ of industry experience, or, being self-taught to a high level. This is a rather rigorous program at the Masters level, equivalent to the content taught for many decades in our on-campus courses, but presented in slightly smaller pieces and in 8-week sessions, rather than 16-week semesters. I have heard of people getting entrance to a Masters program without an bachelors degree, but not in technical disciplines and definitely not in a manner this open.
hatmatrix 6y ago
In principle, this could work if the school maintained high standards and allowed everyone to attempt to pass their courses + eventually attain the degree. Having an online platform without limitations (or with less limitations) in instructor resources allows legitimate programs to pursue this model. To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. If the for-profit institution actually had a good reputation, I can imagine they could also implement more restrictive policies. But the way academia works, a large part of prestige comes with history - and this makes it nearly impossible for new schools to break into this echelon of elites. I suspect it's also for the same reason that for-profit schools are not able to consistently attract talent in terms of instruction, since the ones who can would prefer to be employed by more prestigious institutions.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. A large majority of students who start at the University of Phoenix fail to graduate. The guarantee you speak of does not exist, not because the standards are high, but because the average student admitted to these universities is incapable of the work, or too disorganized to do so. There are plenty of not for profit universities who admit similar students and they don’t graduate either.
RNCTX 6y ago
I won't name names since I've buried the hatchet but here's a story along those lines. During a hotly contested political debate in my city a person who called himself a doctor (psych therapist, to be precise) showed up at a council meeting and threatened a city council member from my district. Being the data-fluent person I am I offered to help, so I pulled all of the person in question's educational, legal, and accrediting history to see what would turn up. It turned out that the person was a state employee before moving to my state but was fired after burning a car for insurance fraud during a divorce. In fairness to him he admitted to that crime and paid his fines, restitution, and community service and what not, but he could no longer work for the government in his previous role (police) after being convicted. So he managed to get himself into an online psych program like the one you're describing (from a state university, but awfully scam-looking), which got him an Education degree, not a medical degree. In short, he could have been a high school guidance counselor and that's about it. But what his online undergrad and master's degrees in psych education did get him was the ability to make his entry into a PhD program look legitimate. But wait, you say, what would make any PhD program accept such a person who had a sketchy online undergrad and master's degree? Presumably it's a lot easier to stomach such a PhD candiate if the university in question is in the African nation of Malawi, and is affiliated with the evangelical church that the person in question attends in the US. The Malawi university was one of the African universities that was churning out PhDs in suspect STEM disciplines back in the early 2000s to go around publishing papers about "intelligent design" if you remember those days. If you don't, it was the latest in a long line of hare brained evangelical attempts to end-around Charles Darwin in textbooks in the early 2000s. To this day, the person in question advertises himself as a "Christian hypnotherapist" providing all of the usual counseling services, and has an ID in the government medical provider database so he can accept Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance payments. The state I live in has since tightened up applications for medical licenses for people moving in from out of state. Previously, they had what seemed to be a fast-track process for people licensed in other states that did not involve re-checking educational credentials (that was in the late 90s/early 00s). So I could discern from looking at all of this that there was likely some sort of coach, seminar, consultant, or similar that was training people on how to do all of this back then. If not, this guy planned the whole thing as his escape from the car burning bit and new career as a psychiatrist with shady credentials. First he got the state university degree, then the state university online masters which was fairly worthless, then the shady online PhD from Africa, then as soon as the ink was dry on his conditional (based on criminal background) therapist license in the state he lived in he moved to my state, and applied for a new license based on his existing license in his previous state, all in an attempt to get out from under the criminal record and reinvent himself as a shady psych therapist. And it worked! As far as I know, his "medical" practice is open today. In the process of digging all of this dirt I found other professors at other religious affiliated universities in the city I live in that had very sketchy African university credentials, including one listed as a neurosurgeon. I also found quite a few high school teachers who were making regular trips to African countries, including Malawi, from this area that they surely could not afford to make on high school teacher salaries. Those teachers per their social media profiles were all associated with the two evangelical sects in question that the car burning cop therapist and the shady neurosurgeon came from. The likely erosion of educational legitimacy from of all of this (job markets, US university professorships, professional licenses, etc) are fairly obvious, I'd say.

uopeoplestudent 6y ago

I've attended several schools online at both the undergrad and graduate level including a for-profit school. I don't find much different between them because they've all followed an asynchronous approach. However, UoPeople is different in that it's much, much less instructor led. They use a "peer learning" pedagogical approach. It's something I quite dislike about the school. I consider it to be poorly implemented and leads to problems like "revenge grading." However, I tolerate it because it allows me to study in a structured environment for less than I'd pay at my local community college. It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree.

misterhtmlcss 6y ago
I'm there not because I need it either. I graduated from a software bootcamp and I've already been working for 2 yeast, so I'm good. However I found out UoPeople and researched them a bit e.g. called a local college 's HR department to find out if they'd recognize someone with a degree from there to teach and they said yes. My next thought was to review the Visa process for a couple countries; this is my primary interest and motivation. None of them specified where the Degree came from only that it was a sanctioned/Accredited institution. So I don't really care about the details. I learn more, great, but otherwise I'm happy because I just want to be able to apply to get into Europe or Asia as a software developer in the future and not worry about whether I have enough points, etc to pass the rigor. All of that being said, the first course was a gong show with lots of academic violations, but like all things in life it's what you put into it and I plan on graduating with Honors, so even if it's a weak degree I'll still be able to respect my work and effort.
- uopeoplestudent 6y ago
  I assume by "first course" you mean UNIV 1001. For those unaware, that's the "study skills, introduction to college, college success" course. Yeah, that was pretty awful. I don't mind the material. It was nothing new to me, but the quality of discourse, grades, assessments, and so on--ugh. With each step through the CS prerequisites, things have improved. So it seems the less prepared students either washout or get stuck doing general education courses. (Thankfully, I've got all that covered in transfer.)
dmix 6y ago
Can you give some examples of 'peer learning'? I noticed OP said that about plagiarism and I was curious how that works. The problem with all forced group work and not being able to choose the group is you get a very mixed quality of effort and talent. I'd stay away from any program that pushed that heavily.
- uopeoplestudent 6y ago
  "Peer learning" is implement primarily in two ways at UoPeople. The first is through discussion forums. We are required to post a response to a discussion prompt each week. We return to write a minimum of three responses to our peers, and we also assess their response on a scale of 0-10. The idea is that peers will touch on different aspects, extend one another's learning, and engage in further discussion. In reality, we end up getting "great post" responses most of the time and minimal effort put in by our peers. That's not always the case, but it happens enough that I don't think it's actually helpful or a meaningful approach. The other means is through peer assessment of regular assignments (e.g., 'papers,' programming assignments, etc.). We submit these one week, and then our peers read/study and assess our assignments based on established criteria. Peers are supposed to provide feedback on each aspect and then an overall response. Again, the idea is that we learn through studying and responding to our peers. In reality, most students make minimal effort. So most of the time my assessment responses are limited to "good job." So, not really beneficial. (I've had a few really good responses, but it's rare.) As for group work, I'm not aware of any instances of that at the school. (I've had it in graduate courses in the past, and I don't like it.) I really do not like the "peer learning" system at UoPeople. I think it can work, but I don't think you've done a good job of implementing it. And instructors that I've had to date only have minimal interaction with students. (Though, I don't really need it, so it doesn't concern me much.) I've considered transferring several times, but the idea of paying $1-2k per course at a state school vs. $100 per course at UoPeople doesn't appeal to me. (As I've noted elsewhere, I'm not doing this primarily for the degree. Instead, it's about learning for me.)
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Local community college online classes has that same mandatory writing something and responding 3 times. I really disliked it. Forcing that sort of thing with such specific requirements made it so the majority were talking without much care at all. I was the same as I don’t like the forced interaction. At least the way it was set up.
phaus 6y ago
>It's not something I would recommend for weak learners and/or for many who need a regionally accredited degree. I should hope not given the fact that they are not regionally accredited and now that they have finally applied they likely won't be for another 2-3 years. Assuming they pass.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

This sounds really interesting. Would you specify which state university?

non-entity 6y ago
Sure, It's the University of Colorado Boulder Masters programs hosted through Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/msee-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/msee-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-science-boulder https://www.coursera.org/degrees/master-of-science-data-scie... The fact that they're masters programs with performance based admissions make them even more suspicious to me, but if you're looking for bachelors programs like this I think the ASU bachelors hosted Coursera also has such an admission path.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  How far do they go on the performance based admission? Must you have a Bachelor’s to be admitted? I’m currently on my last year of my Master’s and did not fulfill the usual entrance requirements but CEFIMS will let you into their Master’s programmes sans Bachelor’s though there is a bit of hoop jumping and it’s difficult to do it in the two year minimum for students who start with a Bachelor’s.
  - non-entity 6y ago
    Nope, there's no bachelors degree required. I was actually pretty surprised by this when I first heard about it and I emailed them. In part of their response I quote: Our program aims to make admission less bureaucratic (no degree, no GRE, nor recommendation letters, nor statement of purpose required), but we still are appealing to students who have the near-equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree, whether through academic study, years’ of industry experience, or, being self-taught to a high level. This is a rather rigorous program at the Masters level, equivalent to the content taught for many decades in our on-campus courses, but presented in slightly smaller pieces and in 8-week sessions, rather than 16-week semesters. I have heard of people getting entrance to a Masters program without an bachelors degree, but not in technical disciplines and definitely not in a manner this open.

hatmatrix 6y ago

In principle, this could work if the school maintained high standards and allowed everyone to attempt to pass their courses + eventually attain the degree. Having an online platform without limitations (or with less limitations) in instructor resources allows legitimate programs to pursue this model. To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. If the for-profit institution actually had a good reputation, I can imagine they could also implement more restrictive policies. But the way academia works, a large part of prestige comes with history - and this makes it nearly impossible for new schools to break into this echelon of elites. I suspect it's also for the same reason that for-profit schools are not able to consistently attract talent in terms of instruction, since the ones who can would prefer to be employed by more prestigious institutions.

barry-cotter 6y ago
> To my knowledge, the difference with for-profit schools is that you are essentially guaranteed a degree by enrolling and paying the tuition and fees. A large majority of students who start at the University of Phoenix fail to graduate. The guarantee you speak of does not exist, not because the standards are high, but because the average student admitted to these universities is incapable of the work, or too disorganized to do so. There are plenty of not for profit universities who admit similar students and they don’t graduate either.

RNCTX 6y ago

I won't name names since I've buried the hatchet but here's a story along those lines. During a hotly contested political debate in my city a person who called himself a doctor (psych therapist, to be precise) showed up at a council meeting and threatened a city council member from my district. Being the data-fluent person I am I offered to help, so I pulled all of the person in question's educational, legal, and accrediting history to see what would turn up. It turned out that the person was a state employee before moving to my state but was fired after burning a car for insurance fraud during a divorce. In fairness to him he admitted to that crime and paid his fines, restitution, and community service and what not, but he could no longer work for the government in his previous role (police) after being convicted. So he managed to get himself into an online psych program like the one you're describing (from a state university, but awfully scam-looking), which got him an Education degree, not a medical degree. In short, he could have been a high school guidance counselor and that's about it. But what his online undergrad and master's degrees in psych education did get him was the ability to make his entry into a PhD program look legitimate. But wait, you say, what would make any PhD program accept such a person who had a sketchy online undergrad and master's degree? Presumably it's a lot easier to stomach such a PhD candiate if the university in question is in the African nation of Malawi, and is affiliated with the evangelical church that the person in question attends in the US. The Malawi university was one of the African universities that was churning out PhDs in suspect STEM disciplines back in the early 2000s to go around publishing papers about "intelligent design" if you remember those days. If you don't, it was the latest in a long line of hare brained evangelical attempts to end-around Charles Darwin in textbooks in the early 2000s. To this day, the person in question advertises himself as a "Christian hypnotherapist" providing all of the usual counseling services, and has an ID in the government medical provider database so he can accept Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance payments. The state I live in has since tightened up applications for medical licenses for people moving in from out of state. Previously, they had what seemed to be a fast-track process for people licensed in other states that did not involve re-checking educational credentials (that was in the late 90s/early 00s). So I could discern from looking at all of this that there was likely some sort of coach, seminar, consultant, or similar that was training people on how to do all of this back then. If not, this guy planned the whole thing as his escape from the car burning bit and new career as a psychiatrist with shady credentials. First he got the state university degree, then the state university online masters which was fairly worthless, then the shady online PhD from Africa, then as soon as the ink was dry on his conditional (based on criminal background) therapist license in the state he lived in he moved to my state, and applied for a new license based on his existing license in his previous state, all in an attempt to get out from under the criminal record and reinvent himself as a shady psych therapist. And it worked! As far as I know, his "medical" practice is open today. In the process of digging all of this dirt I found other professors at other religious affiliated universities in the city I live in that had very sketchy African university credentials, including one listed as a neurosurgeon. I also found quite a few high school teachers who were making regular trips to African countries, including Malawi, from this area that they surely could not afford to make on high school teacher salaries. Those teachers per their social media profiles were all associated with the two evangelical sects in question that the car burning cop therapist and the shady neurosurgeon came from. The likely erosion of educational legitimacy from of all of this (job markets, US university professorships, professional licenses, etc) are fairly obvious, I'd say.