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Comment by raghava | Hacker News Reader

Wait, University of Phoenix? Isn't it the same university associated with scams and sham degrees, am I wrong?

UoP is accredited by the same board which accredits University of Michigan. [http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/accreditation.html] For whatever that is worth.

They have experienced difficulty regarding the rates at which students receiving Federal Financial Aid graduate - i.e. their issues are based on low graduation rates and not based on being a diploma mill.

Disclosure: my spouse teaches for UoP part time.

They have also received criticism for the large number of loan defaults, and lobbying to change how the loan default statistics are calculated to make their numbers look better (at least according to Frontline). Same program also mentioned private for-profit schools account for a quarter of all student aid in the country, a disproportionally high number since they are not a quarter of our schools.

Public universities have large numbers of lobbyists serving their interests as well.

UoP had about 400,000 students at the time the Frontline piece was produced - that's seven Ohio State Columbus's [http://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php] so number of schools is not perhaps the best measure.

Rightly or wrongly, because UoP has open enrollment they admit more students who are eligible for Federal Financial Aid than most schools because of the population they enroll.

And nothing in the Frontline piece accused UoP of being a diploma mill as was implied by the prior comment to which I responded. A criticism of their business model is a different indictment altogether.

Not sham degrees, exactly. They require the absolute minimum level of educational achievement necessary to edge over the fuzzy line between a diploma mill and legitimate education. Students go to UoP to get a piece of paper that helps their career and that they would generally be incapable of acquiring at a real university, while in exchange UoP is there to milk the students for every federally-guaranteed loan they can qualify for.

Students go to UoP to get a piece of paper that helps their career ... while in exchange UoP is there to milk the students for every federally-guaranteed loan they can qualify for.

Wait, so just like a real university?

Selective quoting much?

No, not so much.

Sorry, but I thought this was hilarious.

However, using Hassan's affiliation with UoP as a means of questioning his qualifications is a bit of a stretch. Given the rate at which bricks and mortar universities churn out graduates with advanced degrees for which there is little employment opportunity on physical campuses, online schools like UoP wind up as the best available option for new MS's and PHD's with an interest in teaching such as Hassan particularly those with one foot in the commercial world.

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