I am currently a professor at Colorado Technical University Online. The online division is administered by the Career Education Corporation. I do not plan to continue on with the school and I am deeply sorry that I became involved with them. I have worked in traditional educational environments for years and I feel compelled to warn potential students about the dangers of online, for-profit educational institutions. The "assignments" given to students in this open-enrollment "university" are not even comparable to the assignments given to my son and niece in public junior high school. The quality of the majority of students that I have encountered in my tenure here is absolutely abyssmal. They are being taken advantage of by the for-profit machine. I am not saying this to be cruel, it is the God's honest truth. If you cannot meet the admission standards to enter a traditional institution of higher learning, there is no short cut to success. Please, please investigate your local community colleges and for God's sake, if you are going to take out a student loan, spend that money at a traditional on-ground institution of higher learning. Don't believe the TV commercials; a degree from a for-profit online university will sink you into a level of debt you never dreamed possible and your degree will not be viewed as equivalent to that of a traditional university or community college. Tuition at for-profit institutions is very high. (Hence the for-profit part folks.) They target individuals who do not qualify to enter traditional educational institutions and who may be vulnerable to slick advertising and high-pressure sales people. (Oh sorry, I meant to say, "admissions counselors".)
Now a word to potential employees of online, for-profit universities - don't fill out that application, I am begging you! I have been in higher learning since the 90's and have three degrees from traditional state universities. Do you want to feel like a cubicle hack at a corporation? If so, apply away. I am called "Professor" or "Doctor" at the traditional university for which I work. I am an "instructor" and a "team member" at Colorado Technical University Online. Myself, and many of my colleagues, took a position there part-time to supplement our incomes a bit. Most of us came from traditional backgrounds and in speaking with a number of my colleagues over the years, we underestimated the severity of the climate in which we found ourselves. Let me paint a picture. Over the years, the professors in my department have been supervised by a string of "Quality Assurance" corporate types that probably couldn't pull "C's" in our classes at traditional universities. Over the past years, I have seen a rise in the number of current and former CTUO graduates hired as employees and instructors. They treat us like cubicle workers and they are SO poorly educated, God only knows how they were hired, let alone why they are allowed to ride herd over professors. Here's a little sumpin' sumpin' for you to mull over, potential employees. My two most recent supervisors had a terrible command of the English language. My current supervisor says things like, "They had did..." and "What she had make..." in department meetings. This woman, oh my God, is also an English instructor at CTUO. My previous supervisors were just as poorly educated.
I hope this will serve as a warning to potential students and employees of these institutions. Just steer clear folks.
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