Lame Threats

[Hotdogman1]

In general, I agree that Sophia isn't afraid (did I say that?), but a potential lawsuit is a nuisance you should avoid if you can. Otherwise, you need to allocate resources to deal with it - resources you could use for other things.

Sophia Learning is owned by Strategic Education inc, which is the parent company for Capella University, Strayer University, and a bunch of other companies. It looks like Strategic Education inc has in-house counsel so they should be fine. Worst case scenario, they should make the CEO go to court and stand still since all he would do is probably try to dox the Judge.

- If he got banned (presumably on 05/29), why did he still receive credits for 7 courses (I exclude the duplicates) on and after 05/29? In particular, he got credits for the courses with the allegedly disputed papers. Usually, a ban means you don't get any credits for courses if you're found to have violated policy.

In my experience:

• A Sophia course is complete when all required sections are completed. (Edit 1: Thinking about it, You had to manually press the submit course button to trigger the completion. I also had a course that got automatically submitted with a touchstone that got graded after the subscription lapsed. Maybe the system does it automatically when it's lapsed?) (Edit 2: It's probably a 24 hour timer. He was complaining about his Ancient Greek touchstone grade so he received a grade. Since he couldn't press the submit course button as he got banned, it automatically submitted it the next day. The fact that he got his Credly badge means that he would have passed the course regardless.)
  
• The Sophia course completion email are automatically sent after completing the course. 
  
• The Completion email will not trigger until all touchstones are graded. You also need to get at least 50% on the touchstones to pass the course. 
  
• You can resubmit a touchstone once with fixes based on feedback. However, it was my understanding that you had to get less than a 70% to redo it but I'm not sure about that.
  
• It takes several days for touchstones to get graded. The graded final touchstone would trigger the completion email. For example, on 05-05-2025 he commented: "Finished first Sophia course this afternoon = "Workplace Communication" (Touchstone submissions are now awaiting grading)" https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...-I?page=11 The Credly badge was awarded 5/8/25.
  
• The Credly badges are automatically awarded within 30 minutes of receiving the Sophia course completion email. 
  

The last credits he received were:
5/29 Principles of Marketing, Human Resource Management, Business Law
5/30 Health fitness and wellness, English 2, Ancient Greek philosophers 
5/31 Personal Finance. 
Each one of these courses had touchstones. 

It's possible that Sophia disabled his login information and sent an email about the ban. Whatever the process, Graders work remotely and Graders grade assignments so they probably just did their jobs and graded his assignments over the weekend, which triggered the completion. He stated he was getting multiple 70% touchstones so it's likely he passed the course but was trying to get a higher grade. The Credly transcript only shows Pass/Fail...

I also was curious what a banned Credly badge would look like so I checked 5/29-5/31. They verified every time. As Sophia and Credly are two different entities, I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a while to sort everything out. 

And now my point about "slowness." Take a look at Sophia's official FAQs. They say:

- "With Sophia, you determine your own level of time commitment. You can move through course work quickly or slow down your pace."
- "You can take as many courses as you'd like each month [...]"

They advertise specifically that anybody can take as many courses as you want - depending on one's pace. If a grader slows you down, he / she interferes with your pace in terms of finishing courses. He does have a point here.

His claim of Sophia impeding his progress is ridiculous when you consider the fact that you can cancel the subscription and any submitted touchstones will still get graded. If it was the final touchstone, it would complete the course and trigger the completion email. This means you could end your subscription with 10+ touchstones waiting to be graded and you wouldn't have to pay for another month to get them graded. I don't understand how they could slow you down when you could request to add additional courses while the touchstones are getting graded.

I personally believe he cheated. He used AI for a lot of his comments and professed his aversion of Math. He completes Intro to stats and college algebra within a day. A week later he completes College Math, Calculus 1, and Precalculus in that order within 1-2 days. His comment on finishing Calculus: "It was "not harder" than the full Algebra course... in fact almost easier, in a way, but more "esoteric" (for math) .. and confusing... but it was easier to "gut feel." https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...-I?page=14 Most Americans use TI-83/84 calculators while this guy uses gut feelings...even Asians use paper and pencil. 55 courses over 27 days might make sense if it were all IT courses but also Chemistry, Anatomy 1&2, microbiology as well? 

At the end of the day, they didn't ban him for his rapid progress, they banned him for his email responses.

[animuscerebri]

lol, you hit some good points with me. I had to laugh here and there, especially at the "solving math by gut feeling technique"

Your hypothesis is largely sound, and there are definitely some questions, but I still would find it pretty astounding that a ban wouldn't stop the touchstones.

I thought he didn't pass the 70% threshold, which is why he was complaining about graders slowing him down. I also thought he had to resubmit several times his touchstone papers.
But in light of this new info and if he really just complained about not getting better grading for these papers, he basically made a big fuss about nothing and he could've passed without any issues. And this whole episode wouldn't have caused him to be banned on two platforms.
However, I'm not sure whether he was aware that his papers would be graded even after he canceled his subscription.

[Hotdogman1]

It looked weird to me too but it makes sense when you consider most of the processes are automated.

This is a company. As a professional lazy employee, the least amount of work I could think of is just redirecting his login to an empty disabled student account since you technically achieve "removal from the course, removal of courses from your transcript, and/or disqualification to enroll in future courses." This might explain why it's getting verified on Credly.

[TINASAM]

his online presence was eye opening. Especially the multiple, and differing, years of UoPeople attendance yet here he acted like it was beneath him.

[Hotdogman1]

his online presence was eye opening. Especially the multiple, and differing, years of UoPeople attendance yet here he acted like it was beneath him.

According to his resume, he is a BS graduate from a defunct US university and has been working on a UoPeople MSIT degree for 6+ years. According to his posts here, he never took an RA course before and needs a bachelor's to immigrate to the US.

[Duneranger]

his online presence was eye opening. Especially the multiple, and differing, years of UoPeople attendance yet here he acted like it was beneath him.

According to his resume, he is a BS graduate from a defunct US university and has been working on a UoPeople MSIT degree for 6+ years. According to his posts here, he never took an RA course before and needs a bachelor's to immigrate to the US.

Really hope he doesnt come to the US, I am sure ICE/USCIS wouldnt take too kindly to those posts.

Just saying lol