University of Maryland University College ?

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Q. I have been researching distance ed. schools for about a year now (and got burnt once in the process), and have decided on UMUC. My major is Computer and Information Science. I am transferring enough credits from a private university to cover all my gen. ed. requirements, and then some (I switched majors). I really can't see anything wrong with the school, but it is expensive. I live out of state, and for the Fall, tuition went up to $350/credit. That doesn't include books, etc. The CMIS program online is fairly new, so they have no distance grads to give statistics on, however, they have been teaching it on campus for years. I would like to know if anyone has experience with them in any of their distance programs. Like I've said, they look great, but the price is high. I will end up paying no less than $16,000 by the time I am done, and that is a conservative figure. Anyone that can help me with this, please do. I want a good education, and am willing to pay for it, but at the same time, I don't want to pay for something that I will end up disappointed with.

A. This is a copy of a comment I submitted about Maryland last December. When I posted it I got lots of email from folks who had very similar experiences. I've just taken my first course (Master Software Engineering) with Univ of Maryland University College, and was very unhappy with the teacher student interaction. There wasn't any. With Maryland, we would submit a graph or chart and have no idea if it was correct. Submit a term paper and weeks later it would still be unread and no word as to when it would be graded. As many students in the class remarked, we could have assigned ourselves chapters to read in a textbook and saved the money. Given UMUCs experience in distance learning, I was very surprised. Even though this is a new program going online, there seems little doubt that the course was conducted as an afterthought. I am taking my first classes with UMUC. I have taken many classes in different schools while in the military and even though UMUC may not stand up to the on-campus version of their school in terms of quality, they are well established in the distance learning world. I have read in this group of a few individuals who respond to every query and keep repeating their bad experiences with the school, such as not getting responses to questions in a timely manner, broad grade scale for the classes, etc. My experience so far has been they give good response time for a distance learning class (voice mail and web based), and the courses are a good challenge. In terms of price, quality and support I have (so far) found them to be a great value. I have seen a great many more complaints about U of Phoenix and they are astronomical in their prices.

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