So disappointed in Excelsior. Should I bail or suck it up for the last class?

[profstudent]

I have one class left at Excelsior, and am so disappointed with the school that I'm considering quitting/transferring out.

I've taken 4 credits so far at Excelsior, and they were painful. 

My main frustrations with the school:
- Financial aid is garbage. They keep changing my award so I owe more than expected. They don't understand military benefits at all, or even Pell grants. It feels like a bait and switch with them. It "looked" free, just to cancel awards and stuff me with a bill.
- Classwork is busy work. The cornerstone assignments were an ungodly waste of time. I'm about to graduate... I shouldn't have to submit 5 versions/steps to a single research paper. We did that shit in high school. I dread taking the capstone class. I like challenging classes, but Excelsior classes are high school homework. They take forever and I learn nothing. It's a checkbox degree, but I really hoped I would learn something. I didnt.
- Professors suck. I had one professor claim I didn't cite enough. She said she would've failed me, but "knew" I meant well. Um, I cited EVERYTHING. I over-cited, to say the least. There were zero factual statements in the essay that weren't cited. I've shown it to friends, a few professors from other schools, an essay tutoring website, and a dean from another school. None found anything wrong with it. I'm exceptionally careful about citing. I asked this professor which sentence was the error, but she ignored my repeated questions about this for months. I don't like being falsely accused of shit. She gave me a good grade, but I don't appreciate the false accusation.
- Registration. It is truly painful to try to register or get my advisor to be helpful. I had to send one of my previous transcripts 3 times to get Excelsior to put it on my file, even though the transcript ordering system had shown that it was been opened/viewed on the first 2 times. That made me miss a pre-req registration deadline. 
- Degree conferral isn't truly "monthly" after you finish. My degree won't be conferred until 2 months after classes end. It's still quick compared to traditional colleges, but they advertise/mention this as a perk so much. You can't see their degree conferral schedule until you're a student with a login. This isn't my main frustration with them by any stretch: busy work classes and financial aid are the key frustrations.
- Transfer credit evaluation was painful/took forever. They kept leaving off classes that ultimately counted. All the back and forth with advisors who appeared to not be able to read was beyond frustrating.
- Reputation: it has none to speak of, other than being a quick degree completion school. I knew this going in, but it's still disappointing to have a degree I will never want to tell people I have.

I'm one class away from a degree I don't want. Or, at least, a degree from a school I'm embarrassed of at this point. I don't mind online no name schools, but the trivial busy work for assignments and a professor falsely accusing me of plagiarizing/not citing (but refusing to tell me which sentence I supposedly goofed on) has me wanting to transfer out. I hoped the classes might be useful or engaging, but they weren't in any way.

I'm so bummed that I'm incredibly close to a degree I don't want from a school I'm beyond disappointed in.

---

I suppose one good thing is that they have 25,000 students enrolled. It's easy to come across fellow military that went/attend there. I just am bummed at how incredibly bad the learning experience is. It makes me miss even community college or high school, at which I learned more than at Excelsior. I also didn't get falsely accused of plagiarism/bad citing- just to be given a good grade by the professor anyway.

[FastTrackDegree]

You have one class left.

[LevelUP]

You cited a common concern of being discriminated against for getting a college degree from Excelsior.

A college degree can serve several purposes, such as getting an entry-level job, a higher salary, and a promotion.

I think it is important to feel good about your college and major though it may not matter all that much depending on your career. 

So you will have to decide if it's worth switching colleges.

[davewill]

I vote for "suck it up.'

[frankc]

Finish your last class and move on.
I have 3 weeks left in my capstone course.
Everything went smoothly except for the group project in the capstone course...

[profstudent]

Finish your last class and move on.
I have 3 weeks left in my capstone course.
Everything went smoothly except for the group project in the capstone course...

A group project in the capstone? Oh lord. That sounds hellish at Excelsior. The discussion forums made me want to drink... heavily. I probably will suck it up and just do it, but I regret not looking into TESU or COSC more.

[rachel83az]

I would definitely say to just suck it up for the final class. If you really can't stand it, you could always get a degree from UMPI for only slightly more than the single Excelsior class. But you'd need to do at least 30 credits at UMPI. Probably not worth it, but putting it out there as an option.

[Tedium]

I’m just echoing what other people have said, but just finish the last class and get out of there. I say that from personal experience.

Most of the stuff you listed is in the past, except for maybe reputation. And to be honest bud, that’s not as big of an issue as people seem to think. Come on here and vent to your heart’s content. We’ve all been in your shoes at one point or another in our educational journey. We’ll gladly commiserate over the effed up beast that is higher education with you. But just get the last class done.

Spend that frustrated energy worry about getting a master’s from a school you can be proud of, and just get the box checked now.

[withrown]

Dude, I feel your pain. During my capstone class at COSC, I had a classmate copying and pasting discussion board answers from course hero. I'll echo what the other posters are saying - just go ahead and finish it.

The busy work is just a check in the box for accreditation. On the instructor side, we hate grading busy work assignments .

[ss20ts]

I would suck it up so you're done with your degree then move on to what you want for master's and never look back. I wouldn't leave with 1 class left. Nowhere else will you only have 1 class left. It's 8 weeks. I would just deal with it and get through it as fast as possible.