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University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

uopeople.edu

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Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#101

Post by StupidPeople »

infogulch wrote: post #49
themodelplumber wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could not grasp the idea of plagiarism being unethical I remember experiencing this at a private religious university. At the time, my hyper-religious mind was blown to see students outright cheating in the Testing Center. Since then I've been exposed to additional perspectives on plagiarism. It is an extremely deep and nuanced topic. A few years out of school, I ended up mentoring and then teaching college student…

The problem with plagiarism isn't best characterized as some sort of power struggle between teachers and students via bullshit assignments. The purpose of learning to write is to make yourself a formidable communicator. If you can independently analyze a new topic to learn something new and apply the results of those learnings towards a particular goal, you can be amazingly effective in everything you aim for. But if…

> Plagiarizing some work doesn't really hurt the work, it hurts you

Except learning isn't really the reason most go. It's to get a well paid job at the end of it.

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#102

Post by phaus »

There are different types of accreditation for schools. Generally speaking, if you are in the US and want minimal risk in terms of transferability, you want to attend a school that has been accredited by one of several regional authorities. National accreditation is different and for purposes of credit transferability in the US, it is considered inferior to regional accreditation.

The University of the People applied for regional accreditation in 2020. They are not regionally accredited yet. The process can take years.

Note: Good schools can lack accreditation and bad schools can get the most prestigious accreditations.

Another note: There are schools that set up accrediting organizations to, surprise, accredit their own schools.

Edit: I think this is the list of legitimate regional accrediting organizations:

https://www.chea.org/regional-accrediting-organizations

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#103

Post by cguess »

eikenberry wrote: post #84
uopeoplestudent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new institution, learning I had been attending U of the P, promptly told me that U of the P credits would not transfer. Universal transferability in question, I opted out. Yes, many schools will not accept coursework from nationally accredited universities. This includes coursework from UoPeople. You will not be able to apply for many graduate schools as well. A degree from UoPeople definitely comes with limits…

This isn't restricted to untraditional schools. At least one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges due to the practice of transferring for the final couple years. Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

A degree says something about the student. I completely understand why universities would not want to accept credits from school below their own qualification level. If they confer a degree to a student that student is representing the university's education quality to everyone that hires them or works with them.

Spending three years at a community college and expecting the credits to transfer to a major university makes no sense for the institution. At that point they did a minority of your training, why would they recommend you?

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#104

Post by uopeoplestudent »

misterhtmlcss wrote: post #81
uopeoplestudent wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

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 inte…

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.)

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#105

Post by myself248 »

pugio wrote: post #71

I took a semester of courses from UofP. It had a wonderful diversity of ages, genders, and nationalities. Interacting with those people through peer assignments was interesting, and I applaud what they're trying to do. Ultimately, however, I found the entire thing way too tedious - full of the classic "make-work" and silly hoops. The level of pedagogy was very basic. I dream of (and am actively working towards) a day…

A young lady's illustrated primer? ;)

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#106

Post by uopeoplestudent »

elil17 wrote: post #90

Reading the comments in this thread, it seems like there is a real need for a version of this that focuses on being more rigorous and achieving regional accreditation.

I wish the school were more rigorous, but they are working towards regional accreditation. It takes time, unfortunately (or fortunately?).

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#107

Post by yters »

A university's selling point to an employer is their degree ensures a student knows the material and can reason about it. That is the practical point of academic ethics. If a student cheats, sure they may get a decent job, although their lack of competence will eventually catch up with them. However, what they've done will impact the worth of everyone with a degree. So, getting a degree by cheating is essentially stealing from those who got the degree ethically.

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#108

Post by dmix »

uopeoplestudent wrote: post #41
non-entity wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

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 an…

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.

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#109

Post by non-entity »

eikenberry wrote: post #84
uopeoplestudent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new institution, learning I had been attending U of the P, promptly told me that U of the P credits would not transfer. Universal transferability in question, I opted out. Yes, many schools will not accept coursework from nationally accredited universities. This includes coursework from UoPeople. You will not be able to apply for many graduate schools as well. A degree from UoPeople definitely comes with limits…

This isn't restricted to untraditional schools. At least one of our local state universities have stopped accepting credits from the community colleges due to the practice of transferring for the final couple years. Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

> Might be something similar going on here. It might be that they want the degree to represent the full 4 year experience at the school or it might just be the money. The cynic in me prefers the latter.

Everything I've ever heard about and learned of the college admissions and pricing situation makes me prefer that latter.

Re: University of the People: Tuition-Free, Accredited Online Degree Programs

#110

Post by zerof1l »

rdiddly wrote: post #13

Great, they made it tuition-free, accredited, and online; now take it all the way and get rid of the idiotic hoop-jumping of the admissions process! Edit: I know nothing about their admissions process, only that they have one . Somebody's unimaginative I see. "Admissions" should be filling out a form including contact info, bank info and so forth, and then verifying that it's all true. What could they (or you downvot…

This university does not have a quota. They take in all students who apply as long as they meet minimum criteria.

There are reasons as to why there should be admissions. For starters, they require a high school degree. It's obvious that you should be well familiar with all of the school material before university. All studies and communications at the university are in English only. They accept people from the whole world so they need to ensure that you have adequate English skills. In the case of CS studies, they also check if a student has some basic math skills and any previous experience in the field or recommendation.

But even here university is trying to help students who don't pass minimum math and English requirements by offering them to take introductory English and math course. If they pass it, they can go on and pursue the degree.

There are good reasons as to why it is necessary. If you don't have basic English, you can't communicate with your peers. As a part of the study, you have to read and write a lot. You also need to understand your peer work and grade it. Finally, it is easier for the rest of us to study.

Before they were more lenient in requirements and it was causing problems. They had a very high drop rate because people who enrolled had no adequate English skills for example. It also made it difficult for others to study.

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