Bachelor of Science in Information Technology

Barry January 23, 2008 at 11:33 p.m.

Degrees are handed out to people who ride on others' coattails.....

I have been attending UoP for the past 6 months and my company pays 100% of the tuition so cost is not a big deal for me.

I do find fault with how the teams are graded. The school gives us evaluations to fill out on our fellow team mates and even if you give a bad review to someone because they contributed only 2% of the content for the final project, the grade they get is the same as you got for contributing 33% with 2 other people. So you do have people that have not even applied themselves getting the same degree as those applying themselves 100%.

I think the worse part is every 5 weeks I get a new advisor who asks me for my voucher for the next class when I've already sent it to the previous advisor. So I have to locate the voucher and send it to the new advisor but it's like the advisors don't even talk to each other and wouldn't you think they'd store the vouchers in a central location so all the advisors could get to them. This has happened twice.

Wayne November 29, 2008 at 9:32 p.m.

It's a good school if you're a working adult with kids wanting a BS. There is simply no easier, faster way. It is expensive but you can coast through the classes if you're a skilled googler. If you take the UOP route, make sure you take some regular classes at your local community college to get that experience, and then transfer the credits in.

Chris August 9, 2009 at 12:26 a.m.

I received a BSIT degree 2004. Only a few of my classes were on-line. I must say that the on-line classes required much more work and participation than the actual classroom and the instructors did a good job.

Be prepared to spend three to five hours a night in the course web area, exchange well over 1000 emails in the course's time frame (class participation), write close to a dozen of small papers, try to work as a team, and assume that you will have to do the entire team project yourself as you've never met these people and all but YOU in your team may drop the class by the third week.

I attended Drexel University and they had classes that inadvertently very much resembled the UOP model. Computer programming was one. We had 900 students in a lecture hall with an instructor who couldn't speak English and then, as a natural course of student survival, met on the side in "study groups" to do our work.

Both classroom and on-line suffer from the same issues with learning teams. Teams work best when you're in the same class group for your entire time there, something that typically only happens with the classroom. There, the lower learners eventually all move to one team and the serious students move to the other. Otherwise, the concept fails because - like it or not - UOP is a money making operation first and an educator second so they will take the dumbest of the dumb adult learner operating on a second grade level -- I've had people on my teams who can't write or think yet I saw them class after class. So, yes, as D.N. says, you had to carry the ball with those turkeys just as you occasionally do in real life on the job.

All in all, though, the BSIT degree is a "Rodney Dangerfield" degree -- "it gets no respect" at least in my circles. The best and the brightest guys in my class still haven't had any luck putting it to use.

I would say that this degree is to be completely avoided by anybody thinking that they can get into IT with it. I and my classmates found that it's only useful for: 1) somebody already in IT who wants a promotion but can't because HR says "you must have a degree.) 2) Somebody with teaching credentials who wants to teach IT 3) Somebody who is bored and wants to get a college degree just to say that they have one. 4) Somebody who wants to make UOP even richer and take a followup graduate degree.

Allen October 27, 2009 at 10:11 p.m.

Honestly, I did the BSIT program as I was working. UoP gave me the piece of paper I needed to move on in my career.

From a salary perspective pre-degree i was capped out at 43k. Afterwards with job changes I experienced jumps from 45K->75K->125K. Within 7 years. For me the numbers speak for themselves.

UoP is great place to get in, do your work and get out. I made know illusion that I was attending college for purely academic purposes. It was very much a means to an end.

I will conclude with this, especially if you're in information technology you always have to keep up with new technology and what is available. That translates into keeping up certifications, continued education etc. Post-bachelors education I would just do that at community college or other universities.

Allen