Capella Education - Worth the Cost
Written: Mar 28 '06
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Pros: Regionally Accredited, Responsive Staff, Good Educational Program/Material that was applicable to my professional IT position
Cons: Occasional Lack of Participation - resolved with support calls. Courses pricy - over 250$/quarter credit.
The Bottom Line: A valid education. You must earn your degree, this happens here. An accredited university that enables you to learn what you need to know - all via the Internet.
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| dprice32's Full Review: Capella University |
The first and foremost reason I chose an online school was availability. Of my time. I am the father of three, and a husband to boot... with a full-time PLUS professional position. I have worked in IT for 10 years, and hold Cisco CCIE and ISC(2) CISSP certifications, and as gainfully employed as I have maintained, I was interested in pursuing a BS in IT to round out my resume.
I attended school for 2 years at Capella. In the beginning I crammed hard. I completed two concurrent courses a quarter, but this took a lot of time. I was told initially to expect 3 hours a week per class... but the IT courses I took, it was more often 6-7 hours per class per week, with additional time thrown in (depending on the course) for a project.
One component of the Capella Program that I would like to point out, which they market, is the nearly immediate ability to apply what you learn in your professional job. I took security courses, system development courses, telecommunication courses, etc, etc. each of which I was able to leverage learned information from for application directly on the job. This was a huge benefit for me, and my superiors recognized this, I am now expecting a promotion.
I will say that the professors Capella uses are indeed mainly adjunct. Of all the courses I took at Capella I had two bad experiences with professors, and both experiences related directly to their participation in the course. One of the first courses I took at Capella was Ethics. 5 weeks into a 10-week course, I had not received an email, a comment, or a grade for ANY of the work I had turned in. I called and complained, and the professor was replaced within 2 days. All students papers were graded and returned within the following 2 weeks... It was definitely disappointing to have this experience, but Capella administration was quick to rectify the situation, and have the professor replaced. The very NEXT quarter, I had another professor that was absent from the course room for the first two weeks. I placed the same call, with the same complaint, and they replaced that professor immediately as well, with the best professor I had throughout my experience at Capella.
Other than those two instances, I had no other negative experiences with any professor. They always responded either through personal email or within the construct of the courseware within a day or two. Rarely did I have an experience where submitted work took longer than 1 week to grade.
With this paradigm though, you must consider the professors are largely adjunct. Many Universities employ adjunct professors (do the research), and these professors have other jobs.... teaching, or working in the profession of which they are teaching. I was pretty satisfied overall with the professor's knowledge of IT in the courses I took, and I have been an IT professional for sometime prior to enrolling at Capella.
I would simply state that one learns to be a distance learner. Think about what that means. Are you able to participate in a team in the manner required for distance education? If you learn more comprehensively with personal contact, distance education at large may not be a fit.
As for the complaints/suits against Capella, etc, that others have alleged... I am sorry for their experience. I did not experience any sign of any discrimination, nor any negative experiences with any of the administration staff of their organization. I would suppose that any company runs the risk of having stupid bigoted employees. I would also imagine that if this were substantiated, that Capella would address this (and assume much more readily than any replacement I experienced based on fulfillment of duties). I saw no sign of ANY institutionalized bigotry. Exactly the opposite, there was a complete open request for the sharing of ideas throughout my educational experience.
As for the program at large... I felt I received a valid education for my money. I was very satisfied with the effects the learning experiences had on my job performance, and the improvement of my understanding for IT related functions (especially relating to System Development/Analysis and Design/Software Engineering).
Another huge plus for attending Capella was their reputation. Of course I found dissenting opinions that claimed they were a waste of time, but I found many more impressive opinions of the organization. A HUGE plus for my decision was the fact they are regionally accredited. When choosing a program anywhere, ensure it is regionally accredited, and not nationally accredited if you want to use the degree for continuing on with the Masters Degree and further, or else you may get stuck with having your degree count for nothing at other institutions of higher learning.
As Capella is striving for continuous improvement, they participate in the AQIP plan with The Higher Learning Commission North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (their regional accreditation). The public is free to submit comments to the NCA with substantive complaints. I would expect individuals with real complaints would submit them in this manner, rather than here on Epinions.
Again, overall, I feel I earned a valid degree. I just completed taking the GRE and received a 750 Quantitative, and 580 Verbal. I would have been happy with a higher score on the Verbal.... but alas, I am happy in general with the score. The GRE measures your preparedness for Graduate School. A big measure of the success of a BS program, I would expect, is how well the students they graduate perform on the GRE (maybe not in all cases - but it seems generally logical). Some of the words on the GRE, I never have encountered in my life... let alone in my BS program at Capella, so perhaps increasing the advanced vocabulary words could be improved within their programs, but I am no certain this isn't the case at any University in an IT Centric program.
I did experience issues with other learners in regards to participation. I am not sure if it was my initial postings in each class, but I was always picked on team projects as the project manager for the virtual team (a group of students that are required to work on a TEAM project). Of a team of 4-5 it never failed, I always had 1 team member that would NOT participate. On the good side of the coin, this does not affect your final grade, but on the bad side of the coin, much time is spent back and forth with the professor complaining about the lack of participation of the one individual. I never once had this affect my grade, but it made me wonder how that individual (without participation) fared in their grade for the course, but overall that was never really my business.
In summation, getting my education at Capella was a good experience... for me. I learned a great deal that I was to apply to my professional position nearly immediately. I experienced nothing overtly negative in my entire time there, and believe me I would have spoken up if I had. The only issues I had in the beginning related to the adjunct professor's participating in the course, and a quick complaint resolved that. The support staff is responsive and when/if an issue goes unresolved at the immediate call staff level, escalation to a Director is always an option. One last closing notes, I was in an IT Centric program, and Capella has a wide range of programs. My experience may well be different than a Masters Learner in an HR program. The support staff, advisors, adjunct professionals and curriculum would be entirely separate, similar to Colleges within Universities.
Thank you
Recommended:
Yes
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dprice32
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