Our most recent former president envisioned UOP as becoming the most trusted provider of higher education for adults. A wonderful vision but no chance of realization. Trust requires honesty, integrity, courage, accountability, and promise fulfillment. In UOP's case it also required investment. There are so many reasons precipitating UOP's decline that it is challenging to find where to begin. I begin with examining the model and philosophy. It was doomed to fail. Education is not fast-food or retail; yet that is exactly the model and philosophy UOP was built on. Over the past 15 years a myriad of issues has plagued UOP. The most glaring is the absence of trust in management and leadership. From the Board to C-Suite, and from regulators to stakeholders, UOP has been the victim of leadership incompetence and regulatory inertia driven by myopia, the profit-motive, growth, market dominance, and a fair share of greed, chicanery, deception, and dishonesty. Everyone is to blame for its demise. The most conspicuous culprits are UOP's Board, C-Suite, accreditors and other regulators like state DOE's and even Uncle Sam. President Obama was on the right track. He had a deep suspicion of for-profit intentions, motivation, and outcomes. After 25 years here in various administrative and faculty roles, I am inclined to agree with him, although at the time I bought into the "witch hunt" argument. It was a witch-hunt precisely because there were and still are witches! No one outside of for-profit academic institutions has regard for a UOP degree, student, or even faculty. Most believe the degree is on par or even less than a community college degree; masters included. Informed critics know the team process is a sham, faculty are part-time and not dedicated to becoming quality practitioners or scholars, quality assurance systems are superficial, there are no entrance or graduation requirements (except doc dissertations), students graduate who are barely as proficient as community or vocational college graduates, and courses are mere content surveys where there is no depth and breadth. Yes, some students do learn, but what they do learn pales in comparison to most other traditional and even adult learning institutions. Today, it seems most students are enrolled because of convenience, ease, lack of entrance exams or requirements, and of course for most military students it is $. How could anyone take such a degree or institution seriously? Enrollment is now under 90K and may well bottom out at 75K or less. An incredible decline of almost 600,000 students over 7 years. Given this decline and current culture and leadership, how could anyone put their trust in UOP or its C-Suite?
Excellent post by @QSnFrmN-4orn.