Jasmine Baucham and College Plus

[kb2]

A side note--do those "potty train your kid in one day" programs really work? I've done a lot of potty training when I was one of the teachers in a 2-year-old classroom, and no one got it in just one day! Sometimes they do get it very quick if they're ready, though. I just always think those "do it in one day!" things sound fake!

I bet if they're old enough, it only takes a day to explain what the toilet is for. But I also bet that accidents don't completely stop after that one day...

[starfish]

I think the only excitement that comes out of it is the bragging which never makes the CollegeMinus grads better than others. A person who finishes college in two years isn't any better than a person who spends 4-6 years years finishing a degree. I have a friend who is 26 and he finished his college degree last year. There were periods in which he had to attend part-time or take time off due to issues with an ill parent. He told me there were times he felt like shit for not finishing college in four years. He is over that now and he is happy with how his education and the timing turned out.

I have a feeling that a complaint site dedicated to College Minus will pop up someday. Last year, there was a poster on IMDB 19kac boards, who said he worked at tutoring center at public university. He never said the name of the school. He said he tutored another guy who used CollegeMinus for credits and then enrolled in the public university. The guy said some of the CollegeMinus alum's CLEP credits weren't accepted by the university. There are probably some CollegeMinus alums who might have been rejected by grad schools or that they might have issues with getting credits accepted to schools outside of TESC. Eventually some of those alums will go public and talk about how CollegeMinus is a scam. University of Phoenix, Full Sail University, and similar schools have been exposed several times. When CollegeMinus gets exposed, there will of course be people defending it. There are still people who defend U of Phoenix all the time. CollegeMinus and the people behind it have succeeded in taking advantage of fundie families simply by preying on certain fears.

I've *heard* that the current administration is looking into some of these online diploma mills.

[chaotic life]

Why would you pay College Plus to be a middleman for something you can do yourself??? Anyone can take CLEP testing at any Univesity's testing center. Most states have at least one state school with a strong and growing online division so you can get an entire degree from a regular non-profit and do it ALL online. Free, accredidated education with an in-state price tag. WHY would College Plus hold an advantage over that?

Anyway anti-establishmentarians? Why make up a new word instead of just saying anti-hegemonic? .....Unless you fail to recognize that looking slightly like the word demonic does not in fact make a word in anyway related.

[emmiedahl]

Here in Canada, law schools don't really look at WHERE your good grades came from, just your GPA and your LSAT. Are there different weights given to different undergrad schools when you're applying to an American law school?

It is definitely something that is considered, from what I hear. It is not just based on the clout of the school, but in the difficulty involved in earning certain grades and also the amount of material taught. Certain Ivy Leagues give A's to anyone who shows up, and some community colleges have first class organic chemistry facilities. And everything in between. But admissions people often know enough about a program to get an idea of what kind of student the candidate is.

[desertvixen]

Why would you pay College Plus to be a middleman for something you can do yourself??? Anyone can take CLEP testing at any Univesity's testing center. Most states have at least one state school with a strong and growing online division so you can get an entire degree from a regular non-profit and do it ALL online. Free, accredidated education with an in-state price tag. WHY would College Plus hold an advantage over that?

I think it's just the whole separation factor, being "special" and set apart. That, or parents don't want their kids to know how easily they could get out and get an education.

I've *heard* that the current administration is looking into some of these online diploma mills.

There is some looking going on, partly due to the fact that a lot of servicemembers and veterans are using online schools. For those of us on active duty, it may be the only way that we can manage college classes. Part of me applauds the idea, but part of me does not like how it's being phrased, like we're too stupid as a group to look at stuff like accreditation. There's also starting to be more emphasis on people in the service earning degrees, at least an Associate's.

I completed my BA in History through American Military University (which is an online, for-profit school that's viewed pretty favorably by the military) with a combination of classes there, credit for my military training (which included college-level courses in Russian, so legit), CLEPs, and AP exam credit I earned because my parents sent me to evil public school and insisted I work my tail off.

I'm doing my MA in History (currently - there's a lot of thought going into possibly changing) through Western Kentucky University's online branch. While I felt challenged at AMU, I now wonder if maybe I wasn't challenged enough or if the difference between undergrad and grad is that noticeable.

[Buzzard]

If CollegePlus! is your college program of choice, you know that if you’ve talked to anyone outside of a certain circle of friends, or outside of the people who think that you’re really cool for stepping outside of the box and cutting the cost of education dramatically… they’ve looked at you and gone, “So… that’s it? You’re not going to a real school?†Especially if, when you were in high school, the expectation was that you had the acumen to do something “better.â€

This one paragraph alone is why you should NEVER deal with College - (not to mention the fact that punctuation should never be a part of a respectable name). Why would you ever put yourself in a position where you know that you will have to defend a choice? If an "institution" (I use that loosely) has such a horrible reputation that you have to defend it as a "real" school then RUN!!!! You will be defending that choice for the rest of your life!

Lets say she does get that diploma mill PHD and applies to teach at the local college (yeah, right). There will be a panel that screens applicants before interviews are set up. You know which CV is going straight in the trash? Right, the one from College Plus and its affiliates (easily identified by the fact that you got a BA at 19) and the worthless PHD is bullshit that you printed out yourself.

You know who else finds those degrees to be bullshit? COURTS! Good luck ever getting qualified as an expert witness! I've seen judges refuse to qualify someone with an online degree 4 times and I have personally passed on experts more than I can count.

Save your money and your time and get the fuck out of the house to LEARN SOMETHING! Leave the potty training to the parents.

[Kaylee]

I've *heard* that the current administration is looking into some of these online diploma mills.

Many schools are doing this, and a lot of them won't accept credits from them at all or are very selective. One big problem with them is that they claim to be accredited and usually are by some national board, but not by anything that a reputable school or a more selective employer will recognize. (I got burned by one of them after leaving the state college and didn't realize the degree was actually worthless until I started reapply to colleges, because I assumed the accreditation actually meant something).

Thanks to a diploma mill and an unaccredited fundie college, I have a useless "BA" & "MA" that I paid 4x as much for as the years I spent at a state school and earned credits that will transfer. If I had looked into it and known better at the time, I could have already had a real PhD from a state university, in the same amount of time and for for less money than I wasted on those. I wonder how many CollegePlus grads are gonna find themselves in the same situation - in their late 20s or 30s and having to start school again because the degrees they think they have are worthless.

[divadivine]

Maybe she meant the Oxford College which is Emory University's distinctive freshman/sophomore college situated on the University's original, historic campus 38 miles east of Atlanta in the village of Oxford.

http://oxford.emory.edu/a_distinctive_place/index.dot

Or maybe she meant Miami University in Oxford, Ohio? AKA- J. Crew U. Although, I highly doubt this because Miami is a selective school. I don't see any College Minus! kids getting in there.

[FaustianSlip]

I agree that Jasmine misses most of the point of the traditional college experience in her essay. As for Oxford University, you know, if I hadn't gone to grad school (at a pretty competitive, highly-ranked uni, though not Oxbridge) in the UK and seen some of the international students who were accepted, I would agree that there is no chance someone with a CollegePlus degree could get in. But to be totally honest, when you've seen the huge influx of international students who can barely communicate in English, admitted as much because they pay four times as much as your average British/EU student as anything else, you can't help but wonder. Obviously, Oxford is not struggling to find very intelligent people who want to go there, but neither was my university, and I still saw things going on there in terms of plagiarism, English ability and other issues that blew my mind. If I had known then what I know now, I would have applied to Oxford and Cambridge (where I didn't apply largely because I thought that a freshman year of hard sciences had destroyed my undergraduate GPA to the point that I couldn't possibly get in).

So out of curiosity, I moseyed on over to the Oxford University website to check out the qualifications they require. All they say about GPA requirements and such is:

We expect that anyone applying for graduate study at Oxford should usually have at least an upper second-class result with honours in a UK Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.

Now, a 2:1 is a pretty good result and all, but it's not impossible to get. I mean, I have one, and I don't consider myself of the academic caliber to go to Harvard or Yale or something. It's not a First, and it's not like they're demanding a 4.0 or anything like that. In looking at the site for admission to their history department, they say very specifically that they do not require an interview. I remember hearing that they interview people as undergrads, so maybe it's only the graduate program that requires an interview. They do say that ideally, an applicant would have either a 2:1 or a 3.7 GPA (though I would argue, having gone through both systems, that the two aren't necessarily equivalent, but whatever), but it's not a hard and fast standard. I suspect that were you prepared to shell out the cash for years of doctoral study, or even a Master's, Oxford would probably be prepared to be more flexible about their GPA requirements. Not that they'd admit totally unqualified applicants, but my experience has been that universities in general, and this is not limited to the UK at all, are much, much more willing to consider people as international students that they might never admit domestically, because hey, they pay. A lot.

Now, do I think the average CollegePlus kid is going to Oxford? Uh, no. Firstly, because even someone like Jasmine, who seems open to the idea that there may be something beneficial about the university experience, is not going to have parents willing to shell out the kind of money (or allow her to take on the kind of debt) we're talking about to live and study in the UK, at full freight, for one to three years. They won't even let their kid go to the local community college! That said, I can believe that a kid who, say, took CollegePlus courses as a supplement to a public high school or home schooling program as a way to find more challenging work, or who took CollegePlus classes and then used them to matriculate to a traditional university could feasibly get into Oxford. And I have no doubt that CollegePlus would claim anyone who managed to get in there, no matter how tenuous their affiliation to the CollegePlus program.

[starfish]

I think you're right on about Cambridge and Oxford. I had a convo with someone in the know, and he told me that someone with an online degree could possibly get in to those schools, at least graduate school, as long as they had the cash to pay for the thing at "full freight" like you said. I think they have to let anyone in the EU in for cheap, so they are somewhat lax about the graduate programs as long as you can pay.

Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine. Let your parents change the diapers and get out of there. There's a whole world just waiting.....

[lilwriter85]

In fundieland, I think Jasmine has better chance of escaping compared to the Maxwell girls. I think she has more skills that would help her make it compared to the Sarah M. who has been isolated.

[LucySnowe]

Excellent post, FaustianSlip.

They do say that ideally, an applicant would have either a 2:1 or a 3.7 GPA (though I would argue, having gone through both systems, that the two aren't necessarily equivalent, but whatever).

I'd say it would be tough to correlate. What I was told when I was applying for UK postgrad programs was that a 1st was the top 6% of the class, and my 3.7 GPA was the top 7% of my own class (because that was the cutoff for magna cum laude; summa was top 3% and cum laude was 10%). In which case a 2:1 would have been equivalent to, I dunno, a 3.5-3.7 GPA? And that was just *my* (excellent, admittedly) university; would that work across the board?

[mirele]

I feel sorry for the fundy girls you see who clearly have that 'spark' of intelligence and desire to learn that will never be realised because they have received such a sub-standard education and are continually repressed by their idiot fathers.

My father, on the other hand, absolutely insisted I go to college, and then, when I was enjoying myself entirely too much at community college, insisted that I go away to a harder university. Thanks, Dad!

[chaotic life]

Well, Jasmine is NOT claiming that any College Plus have gotten into Oxford. She says someone with a Thomas Edison degree went to Oxford. I think it's misguided and arrogant to assume that everyone who graduates from Thomas Edison started with College Plus. In fact, since TESC is marketed as a non-trad college and College Plus has to get an exemption to their age requirement for their students, I suspect they are a small minority of students who attend TESC in the first place.

The federal government IS cracking down on for-profit colleges. Their students are 95% of all of the student loan defaults in this country and they carry on average significantly more student loan debts than non-profit students. They also have a habit of not graduating, or having worthless "certificiations" issued. It impacted my degree at a non-profit state school when the regulations started changing. The Feds aren't quite brave enough to just target the for-profits so they are making everyone prove that students are truly coming to class, staying in class and doing the coursework.

College Plus says you can get your degree for $15,000. That's not cheaper than an in-state school and it's not counting what it's going to cost to actually transfer to TESC to finish the degree. That's just College Plus costs. It actually comes out quite a bit more than most state schools. It's room and board that racks up the costs of college, not merely tuition. And these kids don't have to pay room and board because they are living with their parents. They could avoid the same costs by commute to state school or doing state school online for less money and a better education.

Heck, they'll even teach you hegemony as a Sociology 101 vocabulary word!