The Scourge Of Education
The other day I was watching TV and I saw a commercial for some new college called Columbia College. From the commercial it looks just like all the other money-grubbing "colleges" that have been cropping up, seemingly weekly, to compete with the "traditional" universities. They claim to be better than "traditional" institutions because they can get you through the course quicker and they are more affordable. Really? They may get you through quicker but what price are you really paying?
According to Columbia College, they are an affordable alternative to the traditional university. On the Columbia College website they list tuition for full-time (12-18 credits) as $8,266 per semester. Each semester is 8 weeks long and there are 5 semesters each year. In just your first year at this college you would be paying $41,330! Let's say you take the 120-credit Bachelor of Business Administration course. That's 120 credit hours divided by a 12-credit-semester leaving you with 10 semesters, or 2 years to finish. In just 2 years you have spent a whopping $82,660!!! By comparison, the 12-credit-semester tuition at Utah State University (for a resident) is only $2,414.22. The USU Bachelor of Business Administration also has a 120 total-credit requirement. At 12 credits a semester you will complete in 10 semesters, or 5 years (if you're not taking summer courses), but you will only pay $24,142.20 for the whole thing! The Columbia College tuition for 1 year is over 1 1/2 times higher than the USU tuition for an entire degree!! Oh, yeah, they're affordable all right...
Another example of these bank-account-raping colleges, Stevens-Henager College, doesn't even list their tuition on their website because, "of the varying costs of tuition for each degree program." Whatever. They just want to get you in the door and then seduce you with a new laptop. I admit, I fell for it. And now I'm $35,000 in student debt Hell because of it! I took their Graphic Arts Associate program, and that was 2 years of my life I will never get back. To be honest, when I first began I was quite excited, and for the first 3 modules or so I was still happy about it. Then they changed their format...after the change they had poor instructors who seemed to feel it a chore to teach. We were essentially given the course book and told to learn it ourselves. All the instructors did was critique and grade. Look, if I'd wanted to teach myself then I would've bought the $34 book myself and skipped the years of student loan interest!
At Stevens-Henager the courses are 4 weeks long and you can pass the class with a D. That means you can turn in the work for just 1 week and still pass the class! Are you kidding me? Because I didn't feel that I was getting my money's worth I got into an email war with the Ass. Dean (pun totally intended) of Online Graphic Arts. I told him of my concerns and how I didn't feel that I was getting the instruction I was paying for with their new format, and he not only didn't actually address my issues, but he also told me that if I felt like I wasn't getting what I'd paid for then he would teach me himself!! I was blown away by the lack of genuine concern. I talked to my local Dean of Students about it and he told me that they would look into it. I kept him abreast of the situation with the Ass. Dean and he kept me abreast of the changes the local school was soon to enact. Too late for me, but luckily for the the students who came after me, my local faculty was concerned enough about their students that they had hired an on-site teacher in order to bring the GA program back on campus and, hopefully, make it worth the money.
"You get what you pay for." Yeah, right.
The University of Phoenix also offers a Bachelor in Business Admin. They don't list the total credit load for the the course but if you count up all the courses listed under the degree and assume that they mean it when they say most of their courses are 3 credits, then you are taking 255 credits(!) for this degree. Their per-credit cost is $550. At 255 credits you will ultimately pay $140,250 for this degree (bear in mind that I'm talking strictly tuition costs here, not figuring in books/supplies and any other requisite fees, and this is also assuming tuition rates do not appreciably rise during the course of your studies). Even if it were only a 120-credit degree you sould still pay $66,000.
As further proof that these colleges are not in it for the education, the University of Utah tuition for a full-time student (12 credits) is $2,256.01. Even the additional $84.46 per credit for business students still doesn't push the cost of a UofU education anywhere near that of the for-profit colleges! At 122 credits for completion you will only pay $33,240.22 for the entire degree. Let's change things up a little and add books to this. Let's say you have to pay around $800 per semester for your books. You will then be paying $4,069.53 per semester (still far below Columbia Colleges' per-semester rate).
Have I convinced you yet? No, what about private universities? Okay, let's look at BYU.
In order to attend BYU as a full-time student (again, 12 credits per semester) you will pay $2,210 per semester. At 120 credits for completion you will pay $22,100 in total tuition.
Seriously? Think about it. If you ever, and I mean ever, get the wild idea to go to one of these super-commercial, for-huge-profit, stick-you-where-it's-seriously-gonna-hurt schools, think again. And again, and again, until you realize that it ain't worth it!
If you are considering going back to school in the state of Utah then be sure to do the math. You can find all the information you need to make an informed decision (as opposed to jumping in head first, like me) on the education page of the Utah.gov website. For those of you outside of Utah, I'm sure your state has something similar.
Another example of these bank-account-raping colleges, Stevens-Henager College, doesn't even list their tuition on their website because, "of the varying costs of tuition for each degree program." Whatever. They just want to get you in the door and then seduce you with a new laptop. I admit, I fell for it. And now I'm $35,000 in student debt Hell because of it! I took their Graphic Arts Associate program, and that was 2 years of my life I will never get back. To be honest, when I first began I was quite excited, and for the first 3 modules or so I was still happy about it. Then they changed their format...after the change they had poor instructors who seemed to feel it a chore to teach. We were essentially given the course book and told to learn it ourselves. All the instructors did was critique and grade. Look, if I'd wanted to teach myself then I would've bought the $34 book myself and skipped the years of student loan interest!
At Stevens-Henager the courses are 4 weeks long and you can pass the class with a D. That means you can turn in the work for just 1 week and still pass the class! Are you kidding me? Because I didn't feel that I was getting my money's worth I got into an email war with the Ass. Dean (pun totally intended) of Online Graphic Arts. I told him of my concerns and how I didn't feel that I was getting the instruction I was paying for with their new format, and he not only didn't actually address my issues, but he also told me that if I felt like I wasn't getting what I'd paid for then he would teach me himself!! I was blown away by the lack of genuine concern. I talked to my local Dean of Students about it and he told me that they would look into it. I kept him abreast of the situation with the Ass. Dean and he kept me abreast of the changes the local school was soon to enact. Too late for me, but luckily for the the students who came after me, my local faculty was concerned enough about their students that they had hired an on-site teacher in order to bring the GA program back on campus and, hopefully, make it worth the money.
"You get what you pay for." Yeah, right.
The University of Phoenix also offers a Bachelor in Business Admin. They don't list the total credit load for the the course but if you count up all the courses listed under the degree and assume that they mean it when they say most of their courses are 3 credits, then you are taking 255 credits(!) for this degree. Their per-credit cost is $550. At 255 credits you will ultimately pay $140,250 for this degree (bear in mind that I'm talking strictly tuition costs here, not figuring in books/supplies and any other requisite fees, and this is also assuming tuition rates do not appreciably rise during the course of your studies). Even if it were only a 120-credit degree you sould still pay $66,000.
As further proof that these colleges are not in it for the education, the University of Utah tuition for a full-time student (12 credits) is $2,256.01. Even the additional $84.46 per credit for business students still doesn't push the cost of a UofU education anywhere near that of the for-profit colleges! At 122 credits for completion you will only pay $33,240.22 for the entire degree. Let's change things up a little and add books to this. Let's say you have to pay around $800 per semester for your books. You will then be paying $4,069.53 per semester (still far below Columbia Colleges' per-semester rate).
Have I convinced you yet? No, what about private universities? Okay, let's look at BYU.
In order to attend BYU as a full-time student (again, 12 credits per semester) you will pay $2,210 per semester. At 120 credits for completion you will pay $22,100 in total tuition.
Seriously? Think about it. If you ever, and I mean ever, get the wild idea to go to one of these super-commercial, for-huge-profit, stick-you-where-it's-seriously-gonna-hurt schools, think again. And again, and again, until you realize that it ain't worth it!
If you are considering going back to school in the state of Utah then be sure to do the math. You can find all the information you need to make an informed decision (as opposed to jumping in head first, like me) on the education page of the Utah.gov website. For those of you outside of Utah, I'm sure your state has something similar.
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