Thomas Edison State University suspended indefinitely Shmoop courses

[dfrecore]

Shame to see any courses/programs removed from the approved list with TESU. Completing a degree with them through outside resources is continuing to get tougher and more expensive each year. Hopefully, Shmoop courses after further review get placed back on the approved list.

Looking at the options now, it is SO MUCH EASIER and CHEAPER to get a degree than it ever has been (just looking at the cost for the courses).  It's about 10x easier to get a degree now than it was 7 years ago.

[frank.f.franky]

I never applied to TESU, did TESU act like COSC and put the ACE credits on their transcript even before your first class?

I'm wondering how or if COSC will follow suit, and are you safe once the ACE credits are on the respective university's transcript. 

I'm reading all this "I just lost"; is TESU taking the credits off the transcripts.

Thanks,

[Life Long Learning]

Sophia/ACE, TEEX, NFA, Kaplan, CPC Ethics/ACE, AIPC/ACE, FRTI-MU/ACE, NFHS, and many others are also unproctored exams.  

They NEXT on TESU hit list?

[allvia]

Sophia/ACE, TEEX, NFA, Kaplan, CPC Ethics/ACE, AIPC/ACE, FRTI-MU/ACE, NFHS, and many others are also unproctored exams.  

They NEXT on TESU hit list?

Sophia does have proctored final exams on all but their two free single credit courses. With that said I don't think the Shmoop problem is proctored related, it is far more likely to be UL/LL issue.  However this entire thread is speculation on the cause, reason or future outcome - none of us will know until they update us at a later date.  No one lost their Shmoop ACE credits, they may just not be good at TESU anymore - just like other schools take FEMA or Certifications, each school gets to decide what they will accept for credit and what credit it is worth.  It has been pretty clear that TESU has been doing some alternative credit housekeeping the last few months (with the UL/LL SL downgrades as an example), now they are moving into more partnership agreements with providers (i.e. Sophia, Study.com) 

I will say this is why my opinion has always been apply early, lock in the catalog and evaluation, and get your UL credits as early as you can (and have the transcripts sent to TESU as soon as you can, especially on ULs); until it is earned and posted to the official evaluation it doesn't count.

Also this thread here is the exact reason the dfrecore and other equivalency list keepers don't make public the spreadsheets they create and maintain - things can (& do) change very suddenly and not always for the better.

[High_Order1]

You're painting TESU students with a very broad brush for argument's sake.

... and to some degree, easily. There's no real academic integrity in their system, which gives us as Shmoopers an advantage over brick-and-mortar students grinding our their degree. 

At the risk of further derailing this thread, your statement also sort of paints a big field with an equally large brush.

• Not all brick and mortar courses are hard.
  

• Not all brick and mortar courses have a high level of ensured academic integrity.
  

• Not everyone, and from reading here and elsewhere, quite a few actually find shmoop courses challenging, particularly those with no former knowledge of the topic and those that don't read long passages quickly while retaining detail and nuance.
  

Shmoop and the other online credit courses serve their purpose well for the intent of a certain demographic. There will always be system gamers, whether they live on campus, or peck their tests in remotely. A degree is no certainty the holder is worthy, just a suggestion they've applied themselves more than ones without.

---

SO

8 pages, and no one really knows anything, is how I read it.

1 - If this affects you, you need to let someone higher up in the TESU foodchain realize it. Not just their facebook page, figure out some dean emails and tell them.

2 - It's not over, until it's over. We went through this with another provider, where it appeared they actually poofed an entire course out of our ACE transcript. That was resolved reasonably; I believe this will be as well.

meantime - get your stuff done and complete the steps to your college as quickly as possible. Let shmoop know you're on their side, and support them supporting your educational efforts. If they don't think YOU value it, they won't fight for it.

Rest of us need to send some supporting emails. Post, maybe in a 'response/update only' thread if anyone hears anything - this thread is hard enough to follow as is.

Keep fighting the worthy fight!

[SDO]

I think the Shmoop problem is more likely proctor related. If it was just an UL/LL issue, TESU could just make them all lower level, instead of not accepting them for credit at all. 

And while I do believe that course equivalencies can change with some regularity, we are adults here (most of us anyway) and we are capable of updating an equivalency spreadsheet pretty easily when necessary.  While a specific spreadsheet creator was mentioned, I am not talking about any spreadsheet-creator specifically, but I don't think that "equivalencies change" is a valid reason to not share a spreadsheet.  However, "It is my intellectual property and I choose not to share" is a valid, though less socially acceptable, reason. To share a spreadsheet dilutes the perceived power and recognition of the spreadsheet holder, and thus is probably not going to happen.  Again, this is not directed at any particular spreadsheet creator; this is just a general opinion.

[davewill]

..
..., I am not talking about any spreadsheet-creator specifically, but I don't think that "equivalencies change" is a valid reason to not share a spreadsheet. ...

You are free to start "SDO's Equivalency Page" on the wiki any time you want to.

[rlw74]

I have to say, I was actually impressed that TESU sent out an email. Anyone familiar with the study.com snafu of a year ago will remember there was no notice whatsoever. Thankfully, Study.com pushed back and got an extension, otherwise graduation itself was going to be delayed for a handful of us. Some of us were starting graduation audits and had no warning at all. This makes me wonder if there was something bigger that precipitated this action. Maybe something on shmoop's end. I've never had a favorable opinion of them or their customer service, so I wouldn't be surprised if something happened.

[icampy]

Wish Shmoop would send out an email.


Maybe the millennial writing style was just too much.

[a2jc4life]

I have to agree with those who said that not honoring existing course approvals is not cool. Approved means approved. If a course was pre-approved for a degree plan, there should be *no* deadline on the completion of that course, aside from whenever the degree plan as a whole expires (unless the course loses ACE certification and you take it after that or something, so it's a substantially different course than what was approved). IMO, that's just simple ethics, and it's completely unrelated to whether TESU intends to otherwise accept Shmoop courses going forward.

(Or, to put it another way, TESU doesn't owe the general public or college students in general the opportunity to use Shmoop as a credit source. They *do*, however, owe those students who were already told a particular Shmoop course would apply toward their degree, honesty/integrity in that.)