I’m Done With University of Phoenix

So… by your “original, brick-and-mortar” university, do you mean GSW?

I’m so alone here. Everyone has moved on to other places now. Am I a freak because I prefer to live in a small town because I’ve got a comfortable job and a nice house?

i wish i had done the same thing with strayer university, which doesnt seem quite as bad as UoP. the whole thing feels like a big sales pitch. most of the classes are a joke. i took a networking class there and had to have the professor correct 10 percent of the questions on the final exam. i did have a class or two that was worth a damn but the rest of them were complete shit.

however, one thing can be said – it sure is convenient. the whole online/in person thing is great. hard to beat that with most brick and mortars. and they’ll pretty much accept anyone, which is technically good for upward mobility.

i must say though, its pretty funny that you’re inadvertently advertising for them on your site. the adsense ads are for uop. hah.

that’s similar to my feelings on my situation. i’m beginning my career in CS at a technical college (SGTC) instead of university (GSW). my reason deals more so with my desire to leave this area all together than the school or anything. my hope is to pull a couple certifications (A at least) out of SGTC. the “trashy” feel isn’t mutual, however I do know that this is only a starting point. any professionals out there with advice on degrees vs. certifications, IT vs CS, or anything useful…please contact me; stbrenner at gmail dot com

Tyler,

I have extensive opinions on what you need to succeed in the IT field — especially in IT security. Check out this primer on information security certifications I did a while back:

http://dmiessler.com/writing/infoseccerts/

Feel free to email me directly if you want to discuss it. As I said, I have plenty of opinions on topics such as degrees vs. certs, what employers are looking for, etc. And just to let you know that I’m not talking out of my ass, I’m a full-time information security consultant with a number of certifications, including MCSE, CISSP, CISA, GCIA, A , L , S , and a few more.

To make a long story short regarding going back to school, for me it’s about completing a goal, not about needing the credential to do anything in my field. The short version of the secret is that degrees and certs don’t matter, but you need to hear the long version before you’ll get the context.

Hit me up on email. I’d be happy to try and help you out. http://dmiessler.com/contact/

Cheers,

-Daniel

So, after your very long write up on why it doesn’t matter where you get the degree, your ego forced you to go to brick-n-mortar.

I think you care too much of what others think, than your own thought — and to put UoP on your resume is too much for you to bear … in your prior notes on why UoP was a good place to go, you mention..

“If you are in the professional world already and trying to get a bachelors or masters, UoP is probably going to be just as good as a small to medium-sized state or private university. The odds of your company not accepting what’s embraced by tons of Fortune 500 companies are slim.”

But your ego couldn’t handle putting such the UoP joke that was before pragmatic and really had nothing to do with your pragmatic fortune 500 post than with your all-consuming ego (your blog is a manifestation of it.)

You need to write a few blog posts on your ego and how it affects your talking about your car, your toys, your schools and how to re-re-redesign the looks of your website…

I’m sure there will be plenty of “holes” in my post, that you can logic your way to a witty reply, but then again, isn’t that ego looking to refluff itself…?

Anyway good luck in your lifelong wrestle with your inner voice and your fear of what will think of you.

What follows are some major points from a most interesting comment in response to my post on why I left the University of Phoenix.

So, after your very long write up on why it doesn’t matter where you get the degree, your ego forced you to go to brick-n-mortar. I think you care too much of what others think, than your own thought — and to put UoP on your resume is too much for you to bear … in your prior notes on why UoP was a good place to go, you mention..

“If you are in the professional world already and trying to get a bachelors or masters, UoP is probably going to be just as good as a small to medium-sized state or private university. The odds of your company not accepting what’s embraced by tons of Fortune 500 companies are slim.”

But your ego couldn’t handle putting such the UoP joke that was before pragmatic and really had nothing to do with your pragmatic fortune 500 post than with your all-consuming ego (your blog is a manifestation of it.)

I think you’ve utterly mis-characterized my decision to not attend UoP. If you’ll notice, it wasn’t until I actually interacted with them and saw their glaring flaws that I made the decision not to attend the institution. I didn’t go into the details in the post itself, but since you’ve made it an issue I’ll offer some examples.

1. The experiences with my handlers at the school were reminiscent of being conned into something. I am quite tuned to such things and it was utterly palpable. Their answers to me questions were defensive in nature, as well as evasive. It felt as if they were running an operation that was under investigation and about to be shut down. And this was while I was a proponent of the place.

2. On the day I was supposed to sign up, nothing worked. I had my advisor and a tech support guy on the line for close to two hours, trying to show me how to get into my classes. I’ve actually done the technology implementations on online classes before myself, and have a bit of web design and web development knowledge. This was a total hack. A kludge of a hack.The site was a collection of heterogeneous crap thrown together through hyperlinks, many of which didn’t even work. The guys on the other end of the phone were freaking out trying to convince me that this was atypical, but it was clearly not. The bottom line is that I got an extreme feeling of low quality from the entire institution — a feeling of pretending to be something it was not.The reason I wrote such a positive post before about the UoP is because I asssumed it had 90% of the quality of a decent, small state university. My theory was that the quality was basically the same, and that it just had a stigma that it did not deserve. As such, I defended UoP based on the reasons I mentioned. I was simply wrong about the place. It is in fact far lower quality than I previously imagined — so much so that I would fear for my degree’s future worth if I were to graduate from there.

   So no, I didn’t change my mind about my post; I simply received more information that showed me my initial assumptions were incorrect.

   You need to write a few blog posts on your ego and how it affects your talking about your car, your toys, your schools and how to re-re-redesign the looks of your website… I’m sure there will be plenty of “holes” in my post, that you can logic your way to a witty reply, but then again, isn’t that ego looking to refluff itself…? Anyway good luck in your lifelong wrestle with your inner voice and your fear of what will think of you.

Actually, I’m working on an ego post now that you’ll probably enjoy. Of course, I’ve already discussed this a number of times, including here: http://dmiessler.com/archives/1152. The short response to your comment is that I acknowledge your observation and agree with it.

But since you seem to cast the whole thing in a rather negative light I feel inclined to defend myself to some degree. I don’t think having an ego is something to apologize for any more than having sexual desire toward attractive women. It’s natural. I’m aware of it and I enjoy writing about it, as I do all my various flaws.

I would ask you to consider, however, that there is arguably a negative trade-off to having no ego. That downside is the reluctance to voice your opinions and ask for input on them. You won’t encounter many interesting people who don’t have an ego. Why? Because your odds of running into an interesting person by chance who doesn’t make their opinions known aren’t good.

The odds are that if you find someone interesting, it’s because they’re saying something in public, which requires confidence, courage, and therefore some form of ego. Think of 100 people that have contributed most to the world and the majority of them probably like to be heard, seen, interacted with, or otherwise experienced.

Anyway, I have much to say on the matter, but I’ll save that for another day.

Cheers,

-Daniel

Daniel,

Trust me–you made the right choice. I work at UoP and take classes there, and it’s worse than you know…

I am a PROUD student of The University of Phoenix. I do not consider them to be a joke at all, actually it is a great instutition. I did not find my counselor to be anything like a salees man either, as a matter of fact he was very helpful. WE hosted Super Bowl XLII at our stadium in Glendale. Thanks and have a great day.


Proud UOP student

I have been unemployed for a little over a year. I had decided to take on online program with UoP and after two weeks discovered that I was teaching myself. I explained to the counselor (aka sales rep) that I was having problems with the pace early on but was told to keep on. After week 4 I decided to withdraw from the course. The representative called and: in so many words, told me I was a loser. I got repeated phone calls from other representatives and finally, the financial counselor. Before the class actually began, this person never returned my calls to answer questions about the status of my loan. But after withdrawing, she called me and emailed me everyday. Plus stated that my account now goes into collections after 10 days from withdrawal.

Long story short, I now have an employment opportunity that requests my official transcripts from the Master’s program I completed at UoP, but I still have not paid the $1600+ (overpriced for teaching myself and downloadable books that I have to print off) for the class I was not satisfied with from day two. I explained that they can get payment once I secured this job – but they did not care. I would not recommend this school to no one, unless you prefer being treated like a “closed sale” and not the student seeking to improve.