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This is an exciting announcement from APU. According to what I have read, they plan to pursue ABET after the first student graduates from their program. If they are able to pull off accreditation, it will be an amazing addition to online education. There are only two full online EE programs that I am aware of and they are both very expensive. $250 per credit would be amazing.
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How I love that school. I wish it had a B&M presence, it would have been number one on my list of graduate programs.
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I love APUS. I've tried to encourage 2 of my family members in that direction. For me, I couldn't find a good fit among the degree choices for me, but I think they are loaded with tons of cool degrees. My 10 year old would love electrical engineering, I'll have to keep watching.
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10-09-2014, 06:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-09-2014, 06:54 PM by GoneFishin.)
I know this thread is a couple months old, but thought I'd bump it up since I just got accepted into the program last month. First degree-specific classes (4 of them) begin in January 2015. The EE and engineering-specific courses will be offered January, May & September 2015. The program director, Dr. Colin Doyle, has responded within a few hours each time I've had questions for him. The credits are very cheap, but there's a significant investment for equipment, since you do the labs at home. For the 4 January classes, it's over $3K (fortunately the equipment is useful for the whole course of study). In total, Dr. Doyle says it will be over $12K for equipment/software. APU/AMU do have a book grant, so most texts are included with the tuition, but this equipment is not covered in that grant. Dr. Doyle is also organizing a student IEEE chapter.
ETA - Also, there are 3 concentrations - General EE, Communications, & Mechantronic Systems. (I'm Mech.) Dr. Doyle did a YouTube video introducing the program. He talks with excitement about one of the Comms projects, building a working radar system. Fun!
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According to the program director, the ABET guidelines have been met, but they can not be formally accredited until the first student successfully completes the program. At that point, they will be ABET accredited (and student work "grandfathered in". Dr. Doyle is very accessible - if anyone has questions about accreditation or any aspect of the program, I'm sure he'd get back to you very quickly. The first students will be completing the program as early as 2016 (I'll be one of them!).
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Good luck with the program. It will be amazing to see an EE program that has such reasonable rates.
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GoneFishin Wrote:According to the program director, the ABET guidelines have been met, but they can not be formally accredited until the first student successfully completes the program. At that point, they will be ABET accredited (and student work "grandfathered in". Dr. Doyle is very accessible - if anyone has questions about accreditation or any aspect of the program, I'm sure he'd get back to you very quickly. The first students will be completing the program as early as 2016 (I'll be one of them!).
Thanks for the update! I said it before, but I love that school more and more. Not to detract from your news, but I'm 100% sure colleges can't grandfather in REGIONAL accreditation, so I'm curious about how the ABET process works. I have ZERO knowledge about ABET, and I don't even know if you need or care about that for your career... just tingled my spidey senses, so you may want to follow up if that is a deal breaker for you.
EDIT: youtube vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxh8NeD2Ea8
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This isn't the first time I have heard that ABET accreditation is not available until the first student graduates from a program. As an early student of this program, there is a gamble. In Electrical Engineering, ABET is critical. There are jobs available without it, but they are few and far between. If APU earns ABET, it will be less than half the price of its competitors. It will be a huge step in online engineering programs.
I look forward to the updates.
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Funny, though, a quick review of their EE page didn't mention ABET. Also, with a $12,000 investment in lab equipment, it's less competitive than it at first seems. I considered jumping ship from Regis, which is $470/credit hour for undergrad. However, $12k is the equivalent of 25 semester hrs at Regis so I guess I'm better off just staying put. The EE would be a "heftier" degree than my Computer Networking degree but I'm a network engineer by trade so the EE would just be prestige for me.
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I don't believe they mention ABET at all, on the website. Really, there's nothing to mention, until there's a degree conferred. However, the program director is happy to answer questions about specifics with ABET, including his work with them to qualify for accreditation. He responds very quickly, in my experience.
As far as the equipment, the purchases are spread out, and depend on the courses needed. Much of it (maybe all, but I'll be safe and say "much") is National Instruments product...LABVIEW, the DAQ, ELVIS, RIO, add-ons. Some students have been able to source it more affordably from their work, but the APUS packages are pretty good deals. The materials are reused throughout the program. On the plus side, the books are covered by the book grant.
From what I understand of the ABET process, the curriculum has been aligned with the ABET standards. However ABET use actual student materials/product from classes as part of the final accreditation. This is why it can't be done in advance; they want to see the work actually completed, not just the marketing materials! So ABET isn't so much "grandfathering" as certifying based on actual student experiences/work product. Once the first students' work is approved, the program overall is approved (covering the initial students who were subjected to review).
I know, for example, that Excelsior asks students to save & submit actual work product from outside courses that they are transferring in, to prepare the ABET reaccreditation portfolio, in addition to the samples saved from courses in-house. So I can see how APUS is going through the process here.
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