“Private. Christian. Affordable.” is how it advertises itself on billboards around the Valley.

According to someone who works there, they pay for most of your tuition if you get a job with them.

But it’s just another Christian school. I wanted academic freedom when I was at BYUI. I wasn’t going to get it. I was an English major/history minor who couldn’t write about anything that was on his mind as he underwent a faith transition.

Is there just no other way to continue my education without going into massive debt?

"The annual list price to attend Grand Canyon University on a full time basis for 2016/2017 is $32,100 for all students regardless of their residency. This fee is comprised of $16,500 for tuition, $8,550 room and board, $800 for books and supplies and $550 for other fees."

$32k per year is hardly "affordable."
Even if you get a job with them and they pay "most of it."

State Universities are not only far more "affordable," but better schools as well. For example, the very well-regarded Cal State school my son is currently attending is $6,600 annually for tuition, plus another $560 for books, supplies, and fees, for a total of $7,120 annually (not counting room and board). Federal and state grants can pay a fair portion of that, and even if you have to take a student loan for the rest, you're only looking at a few thousand. The school also has on-campus jobs available, many of which both pay you money AND reduce your tuition costs.

There are far more options.

I agree with Hie. Look into attending a community college and/or a state university. The University of Utah and Utah State, for instance, are both very affordable.

I don't have a high opinion of GCU. I think that the school's admission standards are very lax.

Community college or state university. But what ever you do, and sure they are accredited.

There are so many options available, but the majority of schools are expensive. I have a son who is attending one the CSU universities in CA. He was able to get in-state tuition which helps a lot. His housing costs, are insanely high. I believe your choices are going to be limited to public colleges/universities in the state in which you reside. And get a bunch of roommates to help with rent. Good luck.

Many adolescents are determining that college is not necessary to grow intellectually, nor a middle-class career. Many--the "elite" schools especially--are progressive propaganda mills, and students leave with questionable career preparation and lots of student debt.

That's a shame, because their "determination" will very likely lead them to a less-than-middle-class income.

They're right -- it's not necessary to "grow intellectually."
The "progressive propaganda mill" nonsense is demonstrably false -- the vast majority of far-right conservatives in Washington today are graduates of those "elite" schools.

I think it's important if you are (like the OP,) an English major and a history minor at a typical state school, that you have a good notion of what you are going to do with that major in terms of earning a living. Otherwise you graduate with a B.A., no job, and perhaps a lot of debt.

I'm trying to do my coursework at Western Governors University. I'm starting to not like how it's set up with one test to pass or fail each course. Each course material is so broad. So much reading that is mind numbing I can't focus. Then when taking the test you have no idea of what was expected and fail.

It's my belief you can build on the degree you currently have without needing to start all over again.

Your degree is marketable, if the school is accredited. Don't sell yourself short.

If you need continuing education, or brushing up on things you might've missed during your undergrad, then do that. Value the degree you've already earned, and the education you've already received - so you can maximize the return on your investment.

Grand Canyon U. sounds very expensive. Hardly affordable.

In contrast, compare BYU-Idaho on the same website grading chart.

http://www.gradreports.com/colleges/brigham-young-university-idaho

The writing skills of the people who wrote reviews for GCU are rather sad. It matches up with my observations of the GCU student teacher whom I supervised. "I have learn so much there." GCU was also *very* slow to pay me for my contracting work as an intern supervisor.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The writing skills of the people who wrote reviews
> for GCU are rather sad. It matches up with my
> observations of the GCU student teacher whom I
> supervised. "I have learn so much there." GCU was
> also *very* slow to pay me for my contracting work
> as an intern supervisor.

No kidding. Here's one who gave GCU 5 stars:

"I choose GCU because they not only offered a duel degree in education but I was also able toget the Teach grant. This grant is very important to me as I need as much loan fogivness as possible. My academic advisor is amazing, the teachers have beed great . I have learn so much. I am starting my internship next week. Supper excited. I WOULD RECOMEND GCU."

That's supposed to be a graduate in education writing sample.
OMG.

full of typos. Five stars. All the well-spelled comments are one star. Figures.

My only significant experience with Grand Canyon University has been with public school teachers who have done the majority of their coursework online through them. My experience with these teachers and with their peers who have studied online at other for-profit universities has been overwhelmingly negative.

I should not say as much as I would like to say here. The school board of which I'm a part tries hard not to micromanage and typically allows the administration to do its job, but we've had to discourage hiring of students from for-profit universities, and especially those who did most of their coursework online. We'll continue to sometimes take our chances with teachers in STEM fields because we don't always have the luxury of doing otherwise. Unless the candidates have demonstrated competence by way of long-term substituting or other means, however, we'll get most of our multiple subject and liberal / fine arts teachers from programs that required most course work to be done on site somewhere.

Where teacher education is concerned, the most successful teachers are who and what they are, for the most part, because of skills and qualities they possessed innately or managed to acquire along the way as opposed to anything they learned in their teacher preparation courses. Subject matter, along with practical tips for logistics and classroom management, can and must be taught, but a university cannot create a quality teacher where one did not exist in essence before reaching the university. Still, there's something about a for-profit institution, and particularly an institution allowing the bulk of courses to be taken online, that either lends itself to or seems to attract degree candidates who seek shortcuts. The "diploma mill" mentality is there: when a person is willing to pay enough, some unscrupulous institution out there will be willing to print a diploma. If the institution grants enough bogus degrees it will lose its accreditation, but it's amazing just how far some of these "universities" are allowed to slide.

Grand Canyon University has a nursing program. I would assume the program is adequate if only because of the length of time it has been operational. I've never, to the best of my knowledge, worked with a nurse who received her training there. In excess of $32,000 a year is a whole lot to pay for a nursing degree.

Grand Canyon University is perceived to a large degree, whether fairly or unfairly, as a diploma mill. I would not hand over such a staggering sum of cash to have the authenticity of my degree called into question.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2017 07:28AM by scmd.

The student teacher that I got from GCU had an appalling English skills. Her spoken and written language skills were terrible. You see that occasionally with urban teachers, but not that often. I asked my sister-in-law why anyone would pay that kind of money for an expensive online university when online public universities are an option. That's when she told me that GCU and similar schools will let in pretty much everyone.

My student teacher's training from GCU seemed adequate, and she had a good university supervisor from there who is a retired administrator from my district. But I never would have hired this teacher. Her background education is completely inadequate.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The student teacher that I got from GCU had an
> appalling English skills. Her spoken and written
> language skills were terrible. You see that
> occasionally with urban teachers, but not that
> often. I asked my sister-in-law why anyone would
> pay that kind of money for an expensive online
> university when online public universities are an
> option. That's when she told me that GCU and
> similar schools will let in pretty much everyone.
>
>
> My student teacher's training from GCU seemed
> adequate, and she had a good university supervisor
> from there who is a retired administrator from my
> district. But I never would have hired this
> teacher. Her background education is completely
> inadequate.

With a particular teacher from GCU, we had multiple complaints from parents regarding English usage - double negatives, "I seen," "have went, "have came," etc. Written English was even worse. It was egregious to the point that third-graders corrected the teacher's grammar, which angered her. What does a principal do when a teacher refers a child to the office for discipline with a complaint of disrespect when the eight- year-old child has [correctly] corrected the teacher's English usage?

For the record, the teacher wasn't invited back for an encore year. The child was told not to correct his teacher aloud but that he could politely express complaints in writing, and the teacher was told either to brush up on her basic English language skills or to face an extremely long remainder of the year. Speaking of remainders, her basic arithmetic skills weren't much better. The rumor was that her identical twin sister took both the CSET and CBEST [California Basic Educational Skills Test, which a reasonably bright fifth-grader and average eight grader should pass) in her place.

With others, we've seen substandard written and spoken English, and lack of the most basic of general knowledge (nonsense like one teaching that "Annapolis" was another name for the North Pole and that the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" written about Richard Nixon while another taught that the colors purple and yellow, when mixed together, make green,and that when a given number is divided by zero, the quotient is zero. I can share the information about these two teachers and the one in the preceding paragraph because the information appeared in a feature published in a local weekly free newspaper. The anecdotes I cannot share are even more shocking.

Have you ever heard of anyone not being accepted to GCU or University of Phoenix who was able to gather sufficient funds to pay the fees? I haven't. The GCU financial aid office supposedly assists with completion of the loan and grant forms.

Affordable college? What worked for me when I went back to school as an adult was to go to the local community Jr. College, get excellent grades and an Associates Degree, and then transfer to a 4 year school. One of my sons had gone to same Community college, got a graphics arts degree, and went from a local job straight to the movie industry in LA doing graphics special effects. He is currently in Vancouver, BC supervising people with PHD's in computer science.

Don't fall for the "christian education" scam.