Thomas Edison State University suspended indefinitely Shmoop courses

[MSK9]

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.

I disagree and there's a bit of assumption in your post, I think.

Not all brick and mortar courses are hard.

Quite true, but statements I made were not referencing academic difficulty so much as they were referencing physical time spent in a classroom. Four years of physical classroom attendance is quite a bit different than six months in front of a screen.

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

Also true, but I didn't assert this either. I was indirectly referencing proctoring as a whole, but also secure browser video proctoring as opposed to Shmoop's total lack of testing security.

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.

While I understand that what's challenging for one may not be challenging for another, I do think that with some effort and a healthy combination of desire and willpower, many obstacles can be overcome. I, cannot in good conscience, discount anyone's potential for success; even when they experience a smidge of discomfort brought on by some kind of adversity. There are far more difficult things in life than this Shmoop thing, or any other academic matter as far as I'm concerned; not that you have to take my word for it.

As far as "gaming" the degree is concerned, I do agree with you. I also agree that a degree is not necessarily an indicator of worthiness. The whole point of my post was to address some of the "jumped-to conclusions" in previous posts and the accompanying attitudes of entitlement.

[Cheeseburrito]

I'm going to go ahead and be the lone wolf here and say: while it's unfortunate such a cheap and easy source of credits are gone (possibly), I can see WHY an institution wouldn't accept them. I'm say that others won't be able to use Shmoop and TESU together anymore as it was a great way to earn non proctored units.

[originalamyj]

The real problem for me here boils down to this... Pre-approval of courses is not required. Nowhere in any communication to or from TESU was I ever told to pre-approve courses. Sure, it may be smart, and sure, people here will tell you to do it, but objectively it is not required. 

So, we get an email 2 DAYS after a deadline for the supposed pre-approval of courses.

This is the problem. If they had sent an email and said, "hey everyone, from this day forward get your courses pre-approved!" Then said, "hey everyone, you have 10 days to contact your advisor and make sure all your courses from this provider are pre-approved because they are going away by the end of the month!" then I could see how this might be a fair scenario.

But they didn't. They told me 2 DAYS AFTER the deadline to meet a policy they never told me they had in place.

[davewill]

Look at it from TESU's point of view. They don't consider Shmoop courses to be acceptable as college credit. They are grudgingly accepting them from people who they SPECIFICALLY promised transferability, but they would refuse them if they could. They certainly don't want to open the door to making MORE promises since the courses don't measure up (from their POV).

[Paramedic12]

I honestly wasn’t even aware that you could pre-approve non tesu courses to be pending on your eval. That’s an awesome tool though. I’ll deff let people know in the future to get a whole eval pre-approved to make life easier. I just used this forum to guess what classes would transfer into tesu as which worked well for me but this is a great example of what can go wrong.

[davewill]

I honestly wasn’t even aware that you could pre-approve non tesu courses to be pending on your eval. That’s an awesome tool though. I’ll deff let people know in the future to get a whole eval pre-approved to make life easier. I just used this forum to guess what classes would transfer into tesu as which worked well for me but this is a great example of what can go wrong.

I make that recommendation every opportunity I get. I always got my external credits preapproved. For that matter, I even got future TESU courses and TECEPs planned in, just for the extra peace of mind.

[jsd]

The one time i tried to preplan an NCCRS course, TESU told me I could only pre-plan TESU courses and TECEPs. I knew this was wrong because I'd seen other folks' unofficial transcripts with ACE stuff pre planned. I just let it go at the time and it worked out fine, but after this if I needed to do anything, I would make sure it was on there in case they tried to Shmoop me.

[davewill]

I should have made it clear above, that I DO think they should accept the affected courses from anyone who took the course in good faith while it was acceptable. That would mean setting some deadline and accepting anyone who did the course before that deadline, which is how the study.com downgrades were handled. I think people affected should keep asking both TESU and Shmoop for help in getting their courses recognized until they get some satisfaction.

[burbuja0512]

I will admit that I didn't read all of this thread, but I WAS TOO BUSY FREAKING OUT!!!! Is it worth it to have DS and DH reconsider studying with TESU? We didn't want to have them register w/TESU until the last minute to avoid paying extra, so they're not enrolled. We were considering using quite a few of these credits to save money, but now who knows? Should they go with COSC?

[dfrecore]

I will admit that I didn't read all of this thread, but I WAS TOO BUSY FREAKING OUT!!!!   Is it worth it to have DS and DH reconsider studying with TESU?  We didn't want to have them register w/TESU until the last minute to avoid paying extra, so they're not enrolled.  We were considering using quite a few of these credits to save money, but now who knows?   Should they go with COSC?

No idea on switching to COSC, but commenting on the other part.  There are no per-term fees for TESU, so you don't save money by waiting to enroll there.  As a matter of fact, you're much better off enrolling sooner rather than later - you need to lock in your catalog ASAP.  So if you decide to go with TESU, apply NOW and set yourself up to take a TECEP sooner rather than later.