Edgewood College/UpGrad DBA; potentially $11,250

[lidel]

Okay, so the first class (BUS903) is now behind me, and I'll briefly explain how the program has been from my end so far. This is only my two cents and is highly subjective; It may not reflect anyone else's experiences in the program.

I have no definitive number, but I feel the cohort is 7-10 people and consists mainly of students from outside North America. Everyone seems nice enough, but we are all doing our own thing.
The course materials, books, readings, and video lectures have been pretty good. I feel like I've been able to learn a lot. The first course's content dropped on day one of the program, with everything due on the final day. There are weekly "optional" discussion boards and sandbox exercises. The workload and difficulty seem on par with my MBA program, which was done through Hellenic American University. There was one professor and one TA, neither of whom was responsive to e-mail, though they did respond to group discussion posts in most cases. I think the TA and possibly the marker may be from UpGrad, but that's just a feeling I have.
The interface for education is BlackBoard, which is clunky but works.

The assignments had detailed requirements listed, but some were scattered over several documents, and some information was contradictory. In addition, when I had my video call with the TA mid-way through the program, she threw out a few surprises that were not listed anywhere. The person who marked my assignments was someone new who I had never heard of, and they brought their own perspective of required things that were not mentioned in the syllabus or instructions. It’s a little frustrating, but nothing is perfect.
For example, we were told that one of the documents needed an executive summary, which I looked up on the Harvard.edu website as I had never seen one before, but I got dinged for missing a "keywords" section. Several things like that led me to believe they had certain assumptions about what papers should look like. I feel like they want the documents to be up to research standards but don’t expect to teach us what that looks like. Several students had requested assignment samples so we could fully understand the expectations but were told no. Overall, very little feedback was given on the graded documents.

The way the course was structured, you bundle up your assignments and submit them on the final day. There are no rough drafts, nor sample assignments to view, and no real discussion about the assignments by the instructors in the course materials. We were given a 30-minute TA call to discuss the assignments and could ask questions in the forums, though some people's questions were never answered. If you fail, you get to rewrite, and depending on who you are talking to, that may be immediate, or it may be some months down the road. UpGrad and Edgewood gave me different answers on this. 

The worst part of things so far has been UpGrad. They aren't horrible, but they aren't great either. They are kind of like dealing with your local public utility after all of the labor has been outsourced overseas. I attended a couple of their live meetings and found them to be a complete waste of time. The UpGrad agent isn't directly involved in the course and reads answers from what they have written. Some of the information they have given contradicts that provided by the instructors. Their technical support is generally inefficient, and you really need to stay on them to get answers. It took me over two weeks and multiple attempts to be added to the WhatsApp group. At the end of the last course the UpGrad advisor left his position, we are now 10 days into the second course, and I have not heard of a replacement. I don't think I will need them often, so it shouldn't pose much of a problem in my situation.

Overall, I’m enjoying the program and finding it pretty “doable.” There are some new things that I need to become accustomed to, but I’m optimistic and looking forward to the courses ahead. No regrets so far.

Apologies for the length of this post; I felt it would be shorter when I started writing.

S

Thank you very much for the detailed write up. Apologies if you have mentioned this elsewhere: are you an “UpGrad student”, I.e., did you go through them, get their scholarship/discounted rate, etc or did you apply, pay, etc directly through the college?

You are most welcome! I should be thanking you for the initial post about the program. 

Yes, I enrolled through UpGrad; that was the only way to get the full discount, and I needed that to make it work in my situation. I was assured that by and large, the course materials are the same. They compress the course completion by one week and eliminate much of the break time between courses to meet the two years, but the content taught should be identical. 

On a note about UpGrad, my initial contact person there was stellar. Nothing he has told me has been inaccurate, and even now, he is super responsive if I reach out.

S