patten university undergraduate

[Saharapost]

Since 15th June last year, I have completed 39 credits (excluding New Student Orientation Course ) and I really like Patten. Currently, I have only 5 more classes (15 credits) to complete my program. Upper level classes, in my experience, are not frustrating. I think the frustration comes from wanting to breeze through the material without learning anything. Of course some of the course materials are dry, but then, if one takes the time to study and understand the content, questions may not be drawn directly from the books, yet one should have an idea of where the questions are drawn from and the correct answers. I have pretty much taken some courses in my major (aside other upper level management and business courses) and I am so far contented with Patten.

I finished up 27 credits with Patten in about 5 months, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Based on the few general ed classes that I took (and based on some other folks experiences I've seen), the lower level stuff was pretty straightforward. Once I got into my major's courses, though, it was super frustrating. The course material had very little to do with what showed up on the exam, and often a question from the exam would stick out in my mind so I'd go back after the fact and try to find it in the book, and it would often be in a page not assigned in the course reading (or not in the book at all). Since you can't see what questions you got wrong or review the exam afterwards, there's no real way to question this with a professor or the university.

Grading of projects was usually pretty straightforward, but some evaluators were more picky than others (just as some professors would be in a traditional B&M). However, on one paper I was marked down for the same "error" on two separate lines of the rubric provided, and neither of those rubric items had anything to do with my perceived error. I appealed this using the school's process which gives the specific example of "markdowns outside the scope of the rubric," and the dean replied to me saying essentially "sometimes the instructions are unclear or incomplete, sorry. grade stands." I'm not too certain he even reviewed the appeal in any real way.

I ended my 27 credits there with a ~3.6 GPA, and it was cheap (actually free, thanks to my employer's tuition reimbursement), but studying for days based on course material then finding out the tests were way out of line with the study material got too frustrating. I want to be graded on what I know, not based on how good I am at guessing on poorly worded, unrelated exams.

Classes I loved that I had a firm understanding of, was able to pass Patten pre-finals and random online practice exams with flying colors, would lead to a final exam with a very marginal relationship to what I had learned, or sometimes nothing to do with the field of study at all. For example, on a Social Psychology exam, I had a question about how a small business can gain marketshare in a niche field.

I have a feeling that the general ed stuff has had enough people going through it and complaining about the errors that they fixed those quirks, but very few people are in the upper level courses so there are too many flaws that haven't been worked out (and no one seemed to care when I pointed these things out to them, with the exception of one professor who I really liked). In most my classes there were only 4 or 5 people who had ever completed the course (it shows the photos of people who have completed the class on the course menu). As of July 2015, Patten only had 9 graduates of their BA online courses according to WASC filings. Nine. That's crazy. I know it's a fairly new program, but that's still surprising. The flaws might be fixed over a few years as more students go through, but I wouldn't bother right now.

I'd rather go the TECEP/DSST/CLEP route, study enough to pass, and not worry about how it effects my GPA (and not have to do time-consuming projects that may or may not be graded based on the rubric provided). It'd still be cheaper overall, and I'll be a lot more proud of getting my degree from a place like TESU than a for-profit school with a ton of historical and accreditation baggage that will probably not be around too long.