EAs who are not making their quotas--please consider not quitting--especially if you are doing the right thing. I hear that many of your leads are not good for the long range future of the school. A large percentage, I hear, are people who really cannot afford school (and are telling you that)...which means they are more likely to quit and default. Others have language problems that make success next to impossible. While you are there, do not be afraid to tell your supervisors about these ethical dilemmas. Doing any kind of hard sell is not a good idea. If possible, get your manager's responses in writing. If you are too afraid to get it in writing, keep a log that details these issues and your replies. Let them fire you, and you have chance to tell future employers that you did the ethical thing.
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If UOP did assessment testing and required possible students to take some basic proficiency testing before enrolling, they would know the caliber of the students they were enrolling. They tried to do it based on credits the student had to transfer in and that was supposed to establish if they had to take some basic introductory classes or workshops (UNIV/GEN). I talked with so many students (one was at homeless shelter) that were not properly screened on any level, just pumped up to believe they could do it and that they would get financial aid and/or PELL funds. Some students wanted their financial aid monies and didn't even understand that they had to be ATTENDING to get this funding and had to STAY in attendance to keep the money from being recalled. Financial aid and PELL is awarded to ATTEND school and PASS classes. You have to complete so many successful credits for each disbursement that is awarded. It's really very basic; get money to attend school and be successful at attending school. Money does not keep coming in for failing grades and lack of attendance and if you don't complete so many classes/credits with passing grades and quit, money is recalled. Finance Advisers were always telling students this and students were mad as they say this is first time they heard this (already attending by this point). They should hear this from enrollment and should read it as part of all the financial aid documents they fill out when applying for financial aid...instead, it's click, click, click....Yes I read this, Yes I acknowledge terms of loan, Yes I understand what I read and in fact they did not read any of the terms of financial aid lending and then it becomes the fault of everyone except the student. Many advisers had checklists they reviewed with students and discussed with students,, but no one remembers when times become tough. There is responsibility for everyone involved. In last few years there was so much pressure put on advisers (treating like robots) to handle more students that can possibly be handled effectively in a day. Students/teams were transferred between advisers sometimes 4 to 5 times within 2 years and each adviser tried to review all the records and see what the last adviser did and the last adviser in control of team gets blamed for things that happened when they were not even assigned to the team. Some advisers were double teaming on a regular basis (500 plus students per team) and got no Kudos for it and were told it was expected. The whole system at UOP spiraled out of control over last 3 to 4 years with reorganization and implementing new hokey computer systems and changing classroom formats. Data mining and surveys...that is what management said....according to surveys this is what the students and employees want....then whey the huge volume of complaints when something new comes in. Big hot mess and I don't think they can recover. Brand is too damaged. The concept was great at one time but it was handled with greed and that is what destroyed the great concept of online education. Online education will now be taken over by well-established colleges and universities that have brands with integrity and honor and UOP will shrivel up. I don't see them surviving.
I disagree with people who say that enrollment at UOP should be open to anyone. Most state schools don't admit everyone who applies. They take the people who have better high school or community college GPAs or do better on standardized testing (at least with the ones who require standardized testing scores). They post statistics about what their acceptance rate is for applicants.
The reality is is that not everyone is cut out for college and at a lot of schools have ways to weed out some of those people. The Maricopa Community Colleges for example have you take reading, math, and English tests before enrolling in courses. For people who don't score high enough to jump into 100 level courses, they have some remedial courses that can help prepare them for college. UOP has no such courses. Not everyone should get a bachelor's degree because there frankly aren't enough jobs available for college graduates. I've known quite a few people who graduated from state schools who have to wait two or three years before they can get a job that actually requires their college degree and pays the salary that someone who has a college degree goes to school to earn because in many fields there is a surplus of college graduates. Even some people who apply for jobs that will take any four year college degree still may have difficulty finding jobs. Low admission requirements hurts the graduates, the dropouts, and the taxpayers.
I don't believe that everyone who attends UOP is not cut out for college. There are some people that I talked to on the phone who seemed like intelligent people who knew that higher education was going to be time-consuming and require commitment. At the same time though there were definitely some people that I talk to that I remember thinking " I hope this person doesn't enroll when I transfer them to enrollment because this person appears to knows less than the average middle schooler". I worked in the Qualifying Center and we had to ask these potential students some questions for routing purposes so that they would be directed to the appropriate enrollment adviser ( which we were required to call enrollment representatives for legal reasons). There were a lot of people who got confused by the basic questions we were asking. Because UOP has specific enrollment reps who work with people who may be eligible for tribal funding, we were required to ask them if they were affiliated with an American Indian tribe. I had several potential students get confused when asking the tribal question because they had no idea what an American Indian or Native American was.
One of the many problems with enrolling people who aren't prepared for university level work is that the people who are capable of pursuing a higher education had to pick up the slack for those who weren't because of learning teams. I had quite a few conversations with re-entry students (the QC regularly calls people who dropped out and who have not contacted UOP about re-enrolling) who were very frustrated and left because they felt like they were constantly doing more work then some of the people on their learning teams who either didn't care to participate or produced poor quality contributions to their team projects. These are just some of the many reasons why I feel that the policies that upper management and the leaders of UOP make are highly unethical and that they really don't care about their students just money.
I am tired of the " We can't discriminate" BS excuse. Of course you can. Otherwise, everyone would be admitted to Harvard or Yale. In reality, we need to enroll anyone who can fog a mirror two times out of three in order to hit 20% of our target. As such, we can't afford to have anything resembling selective, merit based admissions standards. Like real Universities. Lets just call it what it is, and stop with the silly rationale.
Camdump is a sad joke
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@HyaR9lJ-1wvj, so you are saying that all of the EA calls are inbound?
Obviously Camden is a former employee, likely terminated for underperformance and whining. We should all know by now to never listen to her or her bitter psychological disorders.
Camden, you must be dense or disingenuous.
People who don't want to enter a university, any university, don't call asking for admission. The people you refer to as "customers", don't tell EAs that they can't do the school work, or don't have the skills to succeed. They call asking for admission because they believe they do have the skills, ability, and desire to get a degree. After all, all Americans should have a college education, right? (or so some politicians tell voters).
BTW, AFAIK the issue of what other schools do (like that 20% tuition money) isn't being discussed with the EAs.
@HyaR9lJ-1gkh, this sounds like more rationalizations-- and comparing yourself favorably to a sham school doesn't work. From what I gather, the leads are bringing up these issues to the EAs--especially about money. Are EAs supposed to avoid what customers are saying? If University of Phoenix fires those EAs who do listen to customers, what does that say about the company?
CamdenKid,
The responsibility for going to school belongs with the student, not with the EA. For legal reasons, an EA can't bring up socio-economic situation (poverty), communication skills, lack of time, or any other factor when a future student calls in. It's unfortunate but that is how things are. Even some not for profit schools have lowered the bar to give admission, even resorting to contracting private companies to attract students in exchange for a percentage of the tuition money. Do a google search for the recent scandal of some public university that hired a contractor to bring in students from India, in exchange for 20% of the tuition money.
BTW, things would only get worse, a lot worse, if education become "free" like your socialist friend Sanders wants. That would open the floodgates of profiteering into higher education. Then each state university would hire contractors to bring in whoever has a pulse... in exchange for tuition money.
The first reply tells it all. University of Phoenix won't reform, unless there are ethical people in the company BEFORE the merger. But there is a "culture of corruption" at the school that puts all the responsibility on the customer-students, even those who get the hard sell. Hard selling leads then blaming those potential students for the problems at UoPX is a "technique of neutralization." Besides holding customers solely responsible, some managers--behind closed doors--rationalize their behavior through racist, sexist, and classist constructs. I say "don't quit" IF you don't try to hard sell people who cannot afford to go there. Make it difficult on managers who have sabotaged the University of Phoenix brand--selling the school to people who people who will be hurt by years of student debt peonage.
That's hilarious Cumdump, tell someone they're to poor or stupid to enroll in college so you can be labeled a racist or a bigot. Haven't you learned that in Obamas United States you can be arrested for being honest.
Hey Camden, make up your damn mind! You keep telling us if we have a soul, we should run away from this place... that anyone who sticks around is a horrible, greedy, probably racist, shill. So which is it? Should we abandon the place and watch it burn to the ground or stick around and try to reform it? You can't have it both ways!
If the responsibility for the decision to enroll is solely the student's, why does UOP employ hundreds of enrollment reps who are trained in various sales techniques to "help" potential students make the decision to enroll?
Keep it up, Camden. This is exactly what should have been done all along. I don't enroll people who aren't going to be successful...and my idiot manager is none the wiser. Be ethical and get out while you can. UOP is run by thieves and morons. Bye Bye, Bird.
I enroll anyone that wants to enroll. If the highschool/GED is acceptable and he/she has funding by way of Fafsa or whatev I have to try to enroll them. We are told to keep our 7 day conversions at a high rate. Which means I am pressured to enroll people in 7 days or less from when they called in. Its ALWAYS been that way and it will continue to be that way.
Camden, you're silly. EAs don't have the right to tell potential students "look, your intellectual skills are below average and you're poor, so you can't go to school". If they did, not only they'd be fired but they could be accused by the students of discrimination for being poor, or for being judged as not intellectually qualified for college-level work.
People who want to attend UOP need to take ownership of their decisions. If you could hardly graduate from high school, don't know how to write well, can't do basic algebra, you should be honest with yourself and abandon the idea of attending college. Don't put that onus on others.
Ethical talk is something some don't want to hear...truth hurts. If EAs did proper screening and had management backing to not registet sub par students .... UOP would not have a damaged image and would not be going out of business...ruining student s' and employees' futures with them. UOP degrees and work experience may have no worth on résumés. Pitiful. Destruction by geed.
Keep your nosey assout of uop Camden. How dare you issue instructions to their employees. You really are the most pathetic type of troll there is.