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College

University of Phoenix is Not a Good College

In this current economic recession, many laid off workers are going back to college to learn new job skills, as the twenty-five percent increase of enrollments from last year suggests (Keen). It makes good sense to desire to improve your skills and qualifications in an increasingly competitive job market, but “would be” college students need to understand that all colleges and the skills and qualification they provide, are not created equal. Choosing the right college could mean the difference between landing a secure job or maintaining your position in the unemployment line. A laid off worker has little income and requires an affordable college that gives them the biggest bang for their buck. In addition, a laid off worker needs a degree from a college that is respected by employers and helps them stand out from the crowd. Also Laid off works need  a college that is designed for on campus classes, that foster live one on one interactions and that build relationships that may prove beneficial in landing a future career. The University of Phoenix is not affordable, is not highly regarded, and does not foster personal interactions between students and is not a good choice for laid off workers because of it.



According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost of tuition and room and board for a public university from 2007 through 2008 was $11,578 and the average cost of tuition and room and board for a two year public college was $6,966 (United States Table 331). Traditionally, students who wish to save money will attend a two year college and then transfer over to a four year university in order to cut down on cost. Most  universities allow a student to transfer more than just two years worth of credits. This allows them to stay an attentional year at a two year college and save them even more money. The savings that attending a traditional two year college and then transferring to a four year university brings, makes attending traditional college a very safe and good investment for a laid off worker who doesn’t have a pot of gold hidden under their mattress.

In contrast, The University of Phoenix’s tuition was on average $12,000, which is higher than both a public university or a two year college ( Miley sec. 80.29). That number might not seem so bad when you look at the average price of public universities, but when you consider that the University of Phoenix’s average doesn’t include room and board, most public universities are actually far cheaper, especially if the student attends a two year college first. The University of Phoenix also has hidden cost according to a class action lawsuit that was filed against the University of Phoenix by three students in the U.S. District Court of Little Rock, Arkansas. According to the  lawsuit, “…the university ‘effectively pays off’ the loans of students who withdraw from the institution, then demands repayment from those students under terms more onerous than those of the original federally guaranteed loans.” (Blumenstyk sec. 55.20) If that is the case, then on top of costing more in tuition, there are some hidden cost associated with the University of Phoenix, making it not affordable and certainly not a good college for workers who were recently laid off.

What laid off workers are looking for is a college that is at least regarded as a good college by employers, which effectively gives them a step up in terms of job market competition. What college you choose is almost as important as what degree you choose, in terms of what an employer looks for. A peer reviewed study released in The American Journal of Distance Education found, of candidates that employers would hire with identical credentials,  85% of respondents, “…indicated they had reservations with doctoral degrees earned online, and only 4% indicated that the type of institution where the degree was earned was of no importance and that when “…considering an applicant with 50% of their coursework earned online, 15% indicated that the type of institution was of no importance, 53% had reservations, and 32% had ‘other considerations,’ which were provided as qualitative explanations” (Adams 78). Obviously not everyone goes to Harvard or Yale, but it is obvious that employers put more worth in a degree that was earned on campus, rather than one that was earn while wearing pajamas in front of a computer.

The university of Phoenix may even be less regarded than other primarily online institutions. Any college that has to advertise itself as much as Burger King cheapens itself to the point where fast food restaurants can become a metaphor for said college, fast, cheap, and unhealthy. According to an Advertising Age article “The University Phoenix spent $134 million on measured media…“ in 2008 (Miley sec. 80.29) . When was the last time you saw an ad on TV for a public university?  Seeing the University of Phoenix’s ads on websites, on build-boards, on buses, on TV, and  hearing them in telemarketing calls, doesn’t make us think we are getting an education. It makes them think that are ordering fries and a coke, which might just be what you end up selling if you get a degree from them. Even the US. News and World Report’s Best Colleges of 2010 has the University of Phoenix listed as an “Unranked School,” yet other primarily online colleges are ranked (“University of Phoenix.”). If you were an employer checking out a prospects credentials and you found that the applicant’s school was “Unranked” you might have second thoughts about hiring them. The lack of regard for the University of Phoenix’s graduates is one of the reasons why it is not a good college for people who were recently laid off, or maybe anyone for that matter.

Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Peter Drucker once said, “More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.” That’s true, but traditional universities do foster student interactions.  When people attend a university in person they build relationships with other students, teachers, and club members. The student you are sitting next to, or your dorm roommate, or the guy you helped cheat on his math exam, you never know what they will turn out to be in the future. They can become doctors, business owners, lawyers, actors, senators, real estate kings, heads of non profit organizations, or even president of the united states. We never know what opportunities our current relationships might bring us in the future. I mean, if you are the guy that the President of the United States cheated off of in an economics class, you can probably use that information to get a job recommendation. Its the same with all professions. If a person knows that their college buddy is a reliable smart person that they can trust and count on, they are sure to trust working with or vouching for that person. That is why the relationships you develop at a college or university determines how good of a university it is for laid off workers looking to improve their job security.

The university of Phoenix is a primarily online university and the students interact through social media, email, forums, and live chats. It doesn’t matter how many times you chat with another student online, you will never develop the same personal relationships that you do with a traditional college or university. Face-book is great an all, but you can’t count on a face-book friend to be there in an hour of need, like you can with someone you actually know. This is why the University of Phoenix does not meet the required criteria to be considered a good college for laid off workers.

Some people might argue that a primarily online college, like the University of Phoenix, has something that the traditional universities don’t, and that is that the students can take classes around their work schedule. Also, the students who are lucky enough to live near a University of Phoenix campus could always take a class in person. Supporters would say, “colleges like the University of Phoenix are exactly the thing a person who was laid off and perhaps looking for another job needs, because it provides them a flexible schedule that won’t effect any job prospects.”

While it is true that an online format is very flexible, the social interactions between students is so important that the these types of workers or students would actually be better off if they just planned a good schedule at a traditional college. It isn’t as if public universities don’t  have online classes that students can fit around their schedules, but there are many courses that have lab work or classes that are in your specific field that would be better to attend at a college designed for real classes and not a campus that promotes online interactions.

In Conclusion, I believe that the University Of Phoenix is not a good college for people who were recently laid off. There are far cheaper alternative colleges to attend, and when times are rough, we need every dollar we can spend. In addition, Employers don’t consider the University of Phoenix a good college and when considering the whole point of laid off people going back to school is to better their chances of landing a job, attending the University of Phoenix could be a waist of money and time . Finally, the University of Phoenix’s online interactions do not foster relationship building with college peers that one day may be essential to landing a more secure job. In these trying economic times, a person looking for a job needs every slightest edge over other job competitors. In this current market, the University of Phoenix does not meet the criteria necessary to give you that edge and is therefor not a good college for our recently laid off workers to attend.

What do you think. Is University of Phoenix a good college? Let me know in the comments.

Works Cited

Adams, Jonathan, and Margaret H. DeFleur. “The Acceptability of a Doctoral Degree Earned Online as a Credential for Obtaining a Faculty Position.” THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION 19.2 (2005): 71-85. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Feb. 2010.

Blumenstyk, Goldie. “Suit Accuses U. of Phoenix of Improper Loan Tactics.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 55.20 (2009). Academic OneFile. Web. 25 Feb. 2010

Keen, Judy. “After layoffs, many workers go back to school for a fresh start.” USA Today 08 Apr. 2009. USA Today. Web. 25 Feb. 2010.

Miley, Marissa. “A LOT OF BRANDING BUT NOT MUCH UNDERSTANDING; University of Phoenix spends $100 million annually on advertising, but misconceptions linger about the school.” Advertising Age 80.29 (2009): 3. Academic OneFile. Web. 25 Feb. 2010.

United States. U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics, 2008 – Table 331. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.

“University of Phoenix.” Education – Best Graduate Schools. US News and World Report, 2010. Web. 27 Feb. 2010.

My Bones, Stones and Human Evolution Class

When I started my Bones, Stones, and Human Evolution class at Mesa Community College, I thought I had a good understanding of evolution and Natural Selection. I mean, I have read things here and there and watched the Discovery Channel, that made me an expert in my mind. Can’t blame me, because it turns out that our minds were the last thing to evolve, which is something I didn’t know until I took this class. The truth is, I didn’t learn as much about human origins as much as I learned how little I know about our origins. Learning that the time line of and how we developed is not something that is currently set in stone. Our collective knowledge about our origins is truly amazing when considering how lucky we are to have found the evidence that we have. Everyday we learn something new and every time we do, we answer one question and seem to have a thousand new ones. It is as if we are the greyhound and our origins are the stuffed rabbit that is always just out of reach. If I had to choose what the most valuable lesson of this class was, I would say that it was that we know we evolved from some kind of primate and that natural selection was the designer, but that we are just barely discovering the specifics of our evolution. This is truly an amazing time of discovery and I can’t wait till I am a part of it.

While we were studying our hominid ancestors, a new discovery was made, Ardipithecus. This new Paranthropus was added to our studies and was an example of how things change. Many anthropologist theorize that we evolved from chimpanzees but the more we discover, the more likely this was not the case. We may share a common ancestor but after the discovery of Ardipithecus, we are not finding that we share enough with Chimps. For one, they are knuckle walkers and Ardipithecus does not seem to have any signs of ever knuckle walking. Our separate lineage with Chimps may be far older than we originally thought.

In class we were able to get a glimpse of how we evolved by just studying all the other primates on the planet. There are primates of all different types, sizes and environments. It is very possible that our oldest ancestors were a primate similar to small monkeys that later developed into other larger primates. Perhaps those primates developed social systems similar to the kinds we share with baboons and maybe that was the beginnings of our brains evolution. Maybe that animal evolved into a tree walking primate like the orangutans. Before Ardipithecus, I might have said Chimpanzees but now it seems that our direct ancestor walked in the trees instead of on its knuckles. I say maybe it was something like the tree walking orangutans but as of yet, no on knows. Perhaps our ancestor developed similar to Chimpanzees and grew more intelligent like they have and started eating meat for the same reasons the chimps eat meat. Perhaps our ancestors lost their large fangs because our females chose to breed with less aggressive males, like the highly aggressive males we seen in chimpanzee groups or tribes. Maybe that is why ours have virtually disappeared while all other primates still have them. We continue to find new fossils like Ardipithecus which helps us answer some of our questions, but until we have more artifacts, the study of primates is revealing a lot to us.

The biggest one of these unanswered questions would be, why are we bipedal? In class we learned a great deal about primate bone structures and how it relates to our own. While we are closest to the skeleton of a Chimpanzee, our bones still have similarities with all primates. Some noticeable differences are that, primates have longer arms compared to their body size and they have a Sagittal Crest that allows them to eat hard plants. Another major difference between us and other primates is our pelvis. We are bipedal, so we require a more bowl shape when compared to the longer primate pelvises. While we need our ribs and pelvis to be balanced other primates need them to be more flexible for swinging in the trees.
Still none of that answers the question, why are we bipedal? One theory we learned was about was heat absorption. An experiment showed that by being bipedal we expose less of our bodies to direct sunlight which keeps us cooler. Do to natural selection, we became better at cooling ourselves. We lost our fur and started sweating, no other primate sweats. This points to an animal that was more successful  because it cooled itself better. Studying the skulls of hominids showed that we developed better ways of controlling blood flow to the brain, and as we became human we became better at cooling our brains through blood flow. Some people even theorize that the cooling of our brains may be one of the causes for the development of a larger smarter mind.

According to the fossils we have found, many different types of hominids existed at the same time and were the most successful. Some of the later types of hominids have such similar fossils to us that it becomes harder and harder to tell us from them. The one thing we know for certain is that us humans have been more successful than our extinct hominid cousins and ancestors.

There is one major and obvious difference, our ability to make art. Art is truly the thing that makes us say, “this person was human.” We have found cave and rock art all around the world and they share similarities with one another. We know that people had language by the simple act of making art. Art requires the ability to think in the abstract. You have to be able to say that one thing represents another and it is the basis of our languages. We make sounds that represent something else, and we are able to understand that meaning. No other animal or hominid has had this ability and it maybe why our hominid cousins, the neanderthal, did not survive while we did. We don’t know for certain, but I suspect that one day we will discover the answer.
While we were not the first hominids to leave our home base of Africa, we certainly did leave and learned to adapt to all other environments. As we left Africa our tools began evolving faster and faster. Our populations are abundant because culture and tool use made us more successful. Today, we are 99.9% the same according to genetics and are not that  much different than the first people who left Africa, yet we now wield the power of the atom and the electron.

It took our species millions of years to evolve from a tree walking primate into the varying cultures and booming cites of today. Even now that we have developed car driving and space exploring societies, we can recognize our lineage in our everyday lives. We still war like Chimpanzees, we still have a sweet tooth and crave fat even when we have reached our daily need. We still display aggressiveness. We even share cultural responses to populations size with the Japanese Macaque.

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These are just some of the things I have learned in Bones Stones and Human Evolution; the other major part of the class is learning how to think scientifically and how to do your own experiments. We learned about dating archeological sites using techniques such as dating using the depletion of carbon 14, dating by counting and comparing tree rings, dating using the topography, and dating by comparing fossils to pig fossils. (Pigs adapt quickly to their environments so you can use the changes in their fossils as a way of dating when you compare it to climatic changes.) We learned that anthropology really is interdisciplinary and brings in other sciences such as genetics, geology, and forensics. We learned how to properly come up with research projects. We learned the basics of digging at an archeological site. In short, we learn what the scientific community has learned about evolution, how they learned it, and how to go about thinking of new ways of learning more.

As I reflect back on all of the things I have learned in Bones Stones and Human Evolution, I think the most important thing was that theories are very powerful things. That we landed on the moon based on our theories. While there is a trend for people to act as if theories are just guesses, I learned not only how powerful they can be, but what actually makes them qualify as a theory. They are no mere guesses. Theories are a purposed answer to a question that is testable and has not been disproved by a test.

I have become satisfied that I have learned something useful to my future and understanding of my world. To bad more people don’t take anthropology classes. Maybe seeing data and learning about its collection would end some of the doubt brought on by religious zealots and give a stronger voice to the more educated among the clergy and religious spokespeople.

How to eat while living in a dorm.

You just moved out of the security of Ma and Pop’s and you are moving into the dorm. You have seen all the important and educational films, namely “Animal House” and “Old School.” Now is time to do your checklist. Do you have your class schedule? Check! Do you have your condoms? Check! Do you have your parents wire transfer service picked out? Check! Do you have any food? No! you are going to die of starvation.

For the first time, you just realized that the dorm doesn’t even have a kitchen. I mean how are you going to make food without a kitchen and your mother? It isn’t like you have enough money to eat out everyday, or ever for that matter. Welcome to the grown up world of fending for yourself.

Don’t worry, I got your back.

First off, lets talk finances. You can’t afford anything. You are a broke college student. So you are going to have to find cheap and free food that you can make in a dorm room with a microwave.

Free is nice, but nothing is ever free.

Food Banks: These are great source of free food. Many churches run these food banks. The only thing that it cost you, is your pride. If your pride can’t handle waiting in line with other needy people, then you need to move on to another source of food.

Academic Clubs: And you thought that those physics club geeks were going to talk about physics. Go to the club meeting and eat their food. This will cost you time and you might get suckered into volunteering for something. Note: Not all clubs have food.

Image from http://www.gamil.com/

Fast Food Condiments: This might actually be stealing. I’m not really sure, but you can get free BBQ Sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, and salt & pepper.

Cheap food but remember that you are what you eat.

Ramen Noodles: This stuff is the best food for your buck. It isn’t healthy at all, but it will get your calorie intake up. Mix some canned meat or vegetables in and it might actually be considered a meal.

Instant Rice: It is cheap but tasteless. Just like Ramen, you need to add stuff to this. Maybe not, if you like choking on a bowl full of flavorless rice.

Tuna: Oh my, a cheap food with nutritional value. Put Tuna in a sandwich, add it to your rice or add protein to that bowl of Ramen. Just wash your hands afterward, fishy fingers are not a turn on.

Totino’s Pizza: For about two dollars you can eat this thing they call a Pizza. It isn’t bad, but I don’t think you can legally call this a pizza. It is like a cracker with some ketchup and cheese. This undefinable alleged food has no nutritional value.

Fruits: Yes those things that grow on trees. Apples, bananas and oranges can be kept in a bowl and even taken with you. These also have important things like Vitamins.

Vegetables: You are stuck with canned vegetables since you lack a way to keep things cold. The best part about the ones in a can is, you can eat them right out of it. The one vegetable that you keep out of a can is potato. These can be cooked in the microwave. All you have to do is add some of those fast food condiments and you got yourself a good amount of carbs and potassium.

V8: I don’t care if it does taste like a mix of motor oil and tomato juice, you need vitamins and this car engine lubricant has it.

Peanut Butter and Jelly: This American classic is a must. Just make sure that you have a toothbrush.

There you have it, It might not be the best tasting list of food in history, but you can live on it. I also recommend splurging and getting yourself a good multi-vitamin.

BON APPETIT!