After reading the complaints against UOP, I tend to agree with some of the statements. Yes, unfortunately the classes are too easy and do not expand upon an individuals field of interest. I would feel inadequate to counsel individuals at this time.
My largest complaint is that I received every grant available. After completing my B.S. in Human Services September 2008, I received from my lender, (I was required to enroll with each collegiate year), a bill for approximately $24, 000. Yes, higher education is extremely expensive. I was constantly in touch with the school and Wells Fargo. My gift to all students of any school is "just try, try, try to get an answer for loans and grants!"

I just recently discovered this site, and I too would like to share my story concerning the University of Phoenix. I am a single mom that has two teenagers and a grand baby at home. We live off of social security that I receive for my girls from their father's death. I have always wanted to go back to school and get a degree so I could better provide for my family. After extensive research I choose to attend University of Phoenix through their online education program. Within a week of speaking with an admissions advisor my classes began. After completing my first two classes and getting prepared for the next two I received a letter stating that I owed them $1400.

I had completed every financial aid form and faxed to them everything that they had asked for. I was qualified for complete financial aid due to my low income status. I immediately called them to try and get the issue resolved, but as you have probably already guessed, I got absolutely no where. They had told me that my aid information had not been forwarded to the proper agencies, therefore my aid was denied.

This was of no fault of my own. The responsibility was with the financial aid department at the school, and there was nothing that I could do about it. I now have this reflected on my credit report. I don't want anything from them except for them to remove this from my credit report. It was there fault and in no way should I be held responsible for someone else's mistakes. Someone should have been fired for this. It has hard to tell how many other people they have screwed over like this.

If someone would like to involve me in a lawsuit against them, I would be an eager and willing participant!

The University of Phoenix's main premise is that the student can 'Log in and participate with your class when and where you choose. Participate three or four days each week depending upon your degree program.

This is not true. They only give you 4 weeks to complete the class. This is not enough time to 'learn' anything. And the teachers are not even available. If you ask a question you have to wait 3 days for an answer or longer. By that time almost all of the assignments in question are due! They give you so much work, but not enough time to complete it in. It is almost impossible to remember it all. Even if the student does well, they probably don't absorb the information that was covered. There is no standardized testing, and the whole idea that you can

'Log in and participate with your class when and where you choose. Participate three or four days each week depending upon your degree program.'
is a lie.

Sometimes the instructors post questions, and you answer them, but that doesn't count towards the 'participation' grade that mainly effects your score. The student's score is based on whether they log in and talk to themselves! It is ridiculous. I can't imagine someone actually graduating. I never got above a C+ after the easy 'pre-requisites' they made me take.

Originally the recruiter who called me to sell me on UofP basically ignored me when I said I wasn't ready to go to college because I couldn't afford it. He said, 'well you will make more money once you have your degree, and therefore make yourself more marketable in the workforce'. I didn't even agree and he still enrolled me. I cautiously just agreed (after he enrolled me)and thought perhaps I could handle it! I knew in my heart it was a scam, but I was hoping it wasn't. The 'recruiter' or as I like to call him 'scam artist' told me I could apply my credits, but none of my 65+ credits were applicable, so my graduation date was projected as 2009 and I enrolled in 2005. So the whole graduate in half the time scenario is also false, because they pile on so many classes it is basically like going back to school and starting from scratch!

All these 4 to 5 week classes all cost 1500 per class. Absolutely a rip off. Regular brick and mortar schools may boast about that or more per class, but at least you get a teacher, in the class and way more time to complete the course. If someone reads this and finds any kind of legal mis-doings, or could assist me, I would be very grateful. I know I must pay for the services, however, I feel I was conned, and now out a lot of money for nothing.

Let my start by saying that I was an enrollment advisor for University of Phoenix Online, and AXIA/WIU Online under Apollo Group for 3 years. I recently quit from my position as one of their highest paid advisors. Paid on the amount of enrollments I did in 2003. I also completed my MBA/MKT while there.

For all of you in this forum defending this organization, you are simply spewing ignorance and rehashing information provided you by this organization. Please stop, you are not doing any good and I am sorry to say this, but you are wrong. So wrong that it borders on ignorance.

Let defend something for a moment. The company as a whole does contain good people, some of which do try and help and have good intentions. The problem stems directly from one man the CEO, Brain Muller. He has set in motion internal policies that create a hopeless scenario for all within the organization. They either comply, lose money, or are fired. When you start threatening a person's lively hood, they will usually fall in line. This is why so many good people have had to deceive or lie to potential students, and why you see so many reports in this forum.

There are many things that can be addressed here but let's start with some basic things. Accreditation. UOP Online is Accredited by the North Central Association of the Higher Learning Commission (Perdue Shares the same body as do many other schools) However, this really does not mean anything.

Yes, UOP has their programs screened and verified by the HLC, but their accreditation is not reviewed for years. What most people do not realize is that it is extremely hard to loose accreditation once you have it. There is no active monitoring of courses or instructors. Any audits that take place require UOP be given advanced warning.

This means that can basically provide sub-par courses for outrageous prices. Yes, their classes are a joke. If you believe that college is about shooting emails back and forth via Outlook Express and working in 'Learning Teams' then you are delusional. Fact: Learning Team arose as a reaction to an audit by the Federal Government on UOP's financial aid usage. They had to require learning teams in order to maintain Title IV funding capacity.

As said before, UOPO is fully accredited, but they do not require the GMAT for the MBA programs. What does this mean? It means that they do not have AACSB Accreditation. Here is more on that: http://www.aacsb.edu/ This is why when I present my MBA to professional organizations, they laugh. Sorry to inform you, but your degree is not as valid as you want it to be.

Next I would like to address the organizations misuse of funds. They have been for many years now, embezzling monies from their employees and Title IV funding.

Let's start with Title IV. As mentioned about, they were abusing access to funding in the late 90's by claiming student living expenses on their report for on campus housing. Hmmm, online makes that a little hard to validate. They were using this money as venture capital to finance growth and investments. They continue to do so till this day, just in a different way.

First, you must understand the accounting variables that go into a billion dollar company. There is money flying all over the place on their balance sheets. Income, expenditures, investments, etc. It is a fact that UOP has continuously decreased its amount of new enrollments each year since its peak in 2003. This is part of the reason they rolled the UOPX stock back into Apollo group last year. However, the CEO's Brain Muller and Todd Neilson still need to generate shareholder interest to keep the stock high.

Now, if there is a decrease in enrollments as compared to prior years, but the CEO is still claiming huge growth in years to come, how does the company make up for that? By counting scheduled students as enrollments for their report without every actually having those students start.

There is one problem. Smart investors can look at organizations financial statements and tell if they are losing money. So how does UOP make up the money difference in the accounting department? 2 ways. First, it decreases the pay of its employee workforce and (for years) violated AZ and Federal Overtime law by making overtime mandatory but refusing to pay employees overtime wages.

A quick search online will reveal the lawsuit filed by the AZ Dept of Labor last year and the $10 Million settle UOP had to pay. 10 Million? Sounds like a lot right? Not when you consider the amount it saves over the last 20 years by not paying overtime wages. Somewhere in the 100 million mark. Wonder how they were able to grow so rapidly?

Second, accounting is basically money in, vs money out in an organization. When you are dealing with a billion dollar company, it is hard to keep track of every dollar. One might wonder why UOP Online takes so long to distribute Title IV funding to students. They tell you it takes 2 to 3 months, this is a lie.

The money is in the hands of UOP a week or two after you attend your first day of class. Why do they take so long to distribute the funding? Two reason. One is to keep their official default rate down. Considering they lose about 30% of enrollments after the first class, it would look very bad for them if all these students started defaulting one loans they done think they need to pay back because they didn't take a full class.

So it is official UOP policy to hold the funding in accounts until the person has completed the first few weeks of class. This allows them to send the money back if the student does not complete the class without reporting anything to the lender. The student is then in debt to UOP collections and not to the lender. Not to mention, FA doesn't pay for dropped or failed courses. What of the money in the holding tanks for months at a time. Hmmmm. Well, when you have over 100, 000 students, 80% of which use FA in the sum of roughly 15K per year, they are basically counting that money as income for the organization even though technically it does not belong to them yet.

What that means is that they can invest monies, gain interest or assets with money that does not belong to them. Sound illegal? Borderline, but impossible to prove through accounting audits.

Questions from the public.

Yes, advisors are trained to lie and manipulate. I did this training myself they call it the AMOPS process. It is a technique used to manipulate leads into buying a product.

Yes, advisors are paid off of the number of enrollments. It's called the Matrix; they changed it in 2004 to look more in line with requirements of the DOE. This led to a record number of pay decreases across the board, a record turn over rate for employees, and a mass exodus of their top advisors.

No, the degree is not looked upon as being high quality. I attended the ground campus with 2 managers from Intel here in AZ and they showed me a memo that went out to their managers stating that they are no longer allowed to hire graduates of the BSIT program at UOP.

No, you will never be cleared by the collections department. Yes, EAs will tell potential student that student loans do not need to be paid back.

Yes, the CEO once said that he wanted to be the Wal-Mart of education. Obviously without the low pricing.

No, the cost of tuition increase has nothing to do with expenses, it has to do with showing income on the books.

Yes, there is a promotion every month.

Yes, you should select your own lender and choose to have the funds distributed to you, even if that means you have to wait to start and pay for the first class out of pocket.

No the people who defend this place have no clue what they are talking about.

Yes, I know there are probably typos in this so you tards that want to point them out, save your fingers.

If you have any questions post them in here and I will check in and try to answer them.

Peace. Oh yeah, if you want to get to the root of an issue here are the names of the top executives in the organization who promote this shady crap. Brian Muller CEO. Vince Grell VP Enrollment, Aaron Wettstien Director North East, Trish Elliot Director NE WIU, Larry Etherington VP mkting. Brett Romeny Senior EM. Kristin Tursinni Senior EM, Nikki Fossi Director and the most viel manager of them all, Jacob Nevzoroff. The list goes on.

But you can call 1-800-366-9699 and ask to speak with them and they will transfer you. Or you can take their fist name dot their last name and add apollogrp.phx.edu on the end and that should go directly to them. Not really sure on that one though.

I enrolled in UoP for a class in May 2001. When I found out about the 'Learning Teams', I dropped the class. I am a single parent and i was doing all the work while the 'team' was getting the credit. I wasn't comfortable. I had until June 6, 2001 to drop the class.

On June 4, 2001 I emailed the instructor and told her I was dropping the class. She replied that I couldn't drop the class, but I could, and I did. On June 20, 2001 I snail mailed my advisor and told him I was dropping my enrollment for good. Then in September of 2001 I started receiving collection letters for a $1200 tuition. The letters asked my to respond in writing if I disputed the debt. Since I dropped the class, did not receive a grade or credit, I responded that I did not owe the debt.

I received three 'canned' letters and sent three responses, all went ignored. Then in 2003 I noticed UoP as a charge-off on my credit files. I wrote to the collection office listed on the credit reports, again, ignored.

In late 2004 the name on my credit files changed to Apollo Group, and I wrote again. This time I received responses from Margreat Iacangelo that my records and claim would be looked into. YESTERDAY (now it's 2006)she sent me an email that she can no longer get to the archives and my debt still stands but I can send the 9 past letters I've written to a Finance Grievance Committee for a review, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I've had it. UoP conveniently dragged this out and ignored me and now the only verification they have of a debt is MY letters (which Ms. Iacangelo has taken to quoting back to me). I wrote to the Finance Grievance Committee this morning, but I'm tired of waiting for yet another run around. After reading all these complaints I contacted my lawyer and am going to see about initiating a class action suit. Anyone interested in joining me?