The Ugly Truth: My Experience at the University of Phoenix

The University of Phoenix is a private institution that prides itself on being able to provide a top-notch education to the working adult. The school hired real world business professionals as part-time instructors. Class would meet from 6-10pm on Monday nights. One paper assigned weekly, typically 5-10 pages in length due before those Monday class meetings. The San Bernardino campus I would be attending was located five minutes from my job, fifteen minutes from home. Wow, sounds like an ideal situation, right? As a working professional striving to better his self, these were some of things that appealed to me the most. Boy, I wish I would have done my homework. To be honest with you, I did not do enough background research on the school or the MBA program I was about to enroll into. Something should have told me to stop and apply elsewhere when I was in the enrollment counselor's office and she was asking me off the record, if they were hiring at my job. Are you kidding me?

This school is a complete scam! Let me explain why. Since the instructors were only part-time, they were not concerned about your education and it showed. For example, constructive feedback on assignments was minimal at best. When they actually "took the time" to review your paper, it was fairly common for the instructor to leave a few check marks here and there on your paper to give the appearance your work was read. Oh yeah, everyone received an A on their assignment regardless of the quality of the assignment or the grammar. I will admit some of the work I submitted was way below accepted academic standards at times.

Speaking of academic standards, when you were feeling lazy and not up to writing a quality paper, there were a ton of websites (Hot Essays.com and All free Essays.com-just to name a few) where one could find a paper that was previously submitted by another a student and submit it as their own. One would have to be a complete moron to get busted because the school had a plagiarism checker. That was another red flag for me. What kind of university has a plagiarism checker? The kind of school that lets its student slide by.

Some of the instructors even admitted to the class they were only there to collect some additional income on the side. The school wrote the syllabus and the power point slides for the instructor. All the instructor would do is read the power point slides word for word and occasionally add in their two cents. Most of the time, the instructors sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp. I'm dead serious. After a while I began feeling as though I was not learning anything. A few of my classmates shared the same feeling.

One of the things the school liked to do to encourage teamwork was the learning teams. The learning teams consisted of a group of 3-5 people. Within these learning teams, the students were expected to complete team papers/presentations in perfect unison. Yeah right! The majority of the time, one person got stuck doing all the work, while the others just gave minimal input and did absolutely nothing else. By the way, everyone received the same grade, even if you did all the work.

When I reached my breaking point after course number five and realized this school was not for me, my guidance counselor sounded more like a car salesman rather than someone who had my best interest at heart (No surprise there). If you're expecting your guidance counselor to call you regularly, you will be disappointed. The University of Phoenix staff in general is terrible when it comes to returning your calls back on a timely basis except for when you owe them money. They are on that like white on rice.

The one thing positive thing I can say about the school was they had some tasty food. During our fifteen minute break, myself and other students would walk into the break room to grab some Mexican food. They sold tamales, tacos, nachos, burritos, and enchiladas. Sometimes this was the only thing I looked forward to because I knew I was going to be bored to tears in class.

I did not realize how much I valued my education until I went to this university. Initially, I was thrilled about attending graduate school, but after while I finally had enough. Eventually I dropped out of the school after taking several breaks in between classes. This was not an easy decision. The graduation rate of the University of Phoenix is only 16 percent, by far a low rate for college graduates. In my opinion, the University of Phoenix is the equivalent of college hell. And we all know that's just one place no ambitious student wants to be.