TLDR version. UoP and others like it are in the business of taking your money and giving you little in return. They arn't a real university. Anyone can call their business a university without it actually being one.

UoP isn't a University. Its a for profit business that is traded on Wallstreet. Anyone can call their business a university without it actually being one. They arn't the only ones ether. DeVry, ITT Tech, Kaplan, Westwood, Everest, NIT, Bradford Career School also do this. They are in the business of selling you a degree for as cheap as possible while charging you 3 times what normal colleges cost. This means then tend to hire people who have no background in teaching, let alone actually know how to teach, and if a course becomes unprofitable or enough people drop it mid semester they cancel the classes all together and tell you that you're **** outta luck and they're keeping your money without you getting any credits.

They also claim to be accredited, but the problem is they're not accredited with anyone that matters. Its a hook to get your money. If you see any of their advertisements look closely at the fine print at the bottom of the screen where it says, "Credits not likely to transfer." This basically means that no real college will take any credits you get while attending any of these so called universities. They know the education quality is so poor and laughable that they need to reteach you these classes to get you caught up with real coursework.

They're also guilty of lying about their job placement statistics. They'll say things like they have a very high job hire percentage within so many months after graduation. What they arn't telling you is those jobs are not necessarily in the field those people graduated in. They count people who are forced to get a job at McDonald's or other fast food places to make ends meet as a successful placement. They lied about this and exaggerated so much that ITT Tech got sued and raided by the FBI back in 2005 or 2006 for this reason. Several of their campuses where shut down as well.

If this wasn't bad enough their recruiters are actually treated as car salesmen. If you don't get X number of students a semester you're looking for a new job. The recruiters are put under heavy pressure to make their quota. The financial aid department isn't any better ether. I'm not sure if this is straight up ineptitude on their part or if they do it on purpose but they'll take out student loans with high interest rates from places like Sallie Mae in lieu of utilizing the most from federal loans (MUCH lower interest) and grants.

Employers generally laugh at anyone with an ITT Tech, DeVry, or UoP degree.

Relevant links.

FBI related stuff - http://certcities.com/editorial/news/story.asp?EditorialsID=571&page=45

A former recruiter speaks out – http://ripoffreport.com/reports/0/154/RipOff0154604.htm

From what I hear from profs and PhD students here, the university hires based on mostly on research output (papers published) with some consideration for teaching.

Also, is U of Phoenix supposed to be terrible or ????. Never really heard of it.

“I will say, we do use adjuncts where we should not. I don’t care if they have a PhD or masters, but I’m often not comfortable with lawyers teaching sociology courses, or political science masters people teaching sociological theory. But we do it because they can show up and teach.”

I recently started at a new school, and they told me that they haven’t had a geography teacher teaching their geography classes since their full-timer retired several years ago. History teachers and anthropologists were teaching the geography classes. While the subjects are closely related (my BA is in Anthropology), geographers have a unique perspective, and use different techniques to look at the world.

The key to geography is spatial analysis. I don’t know that someone who hasn’t had special training in geography could provide that unique geographic perspective.

At teaching colleges, I agree (I’ve always been at teaching colleges). There aren’t many differences between PhD level adjuncts and tenure line faculty. When I got my PhD, I knew that I had to market based on certain things to get a tenure track job. In my field they were crim, quantitative skills, and prior pubs (even for a teaching college job.)

It worked. I’m tenured at a regional state college. I’m very grateful. I actually talk to the adjuncts, too, but not everyone does.

I will say, we do use adjuncts where we should not. I don’t care if they have a PhD or masters, but I’m often not comfortable with lawyers teaching sociology courses, or political science masters people teaching sociological theory. But we do it because they can show up and teach.

I should talk. I mainly taught econ for my adjunct courses. I never even had a course in it. I learned it out of the textbooks.

FYI, California comm colleges are required by law to maintain a ratio of 60:40 FT to Adjunct (check that stat). They don’t, so are in contravention of that law, but no one does anything about it.

The rise of the adjuncts is directly correlated to the rise of monetarism and people with Macho Bullshit Acronyms (MBAs) who spend their days looking for ways to save money for institutions (ie, make them more profitable at the expense of basics like tenure, health, holidays and pay). That also correlates to the demise of unions (because unions like to promote tenure, healthcare, holidays and pay …).

Finally, the FT faculty including the heads of departments could give a fuck about the plight of the adjuncts. For the record, when I told one head of department I was going to quit and leave the country for work (I did, and now earn at least 10 times what I did as an adjunct), she frowned and told me about how tough it had been for her when she was starting out as adjunct. But that was 30 years ago when the money was better and, as you point out, there was a prospect of a full-time gig. She thus revealed that she was utterly clueless about the conditions of the people she employed.