Walden U under investigation

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DynamicDidactic

DynamicDidactic

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Nothing too surprising here
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/profit-walden-u-once-tied-bill-clinton-put-under-review-n661281
Some of the Walden students interviewed by NBC claimed they were misled about how long it would take to get a dissertation approved and earn a doctorate and ended up with more debt than they anticipated.
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Thornhill's suit, which seeks class action status, alleges that Walden tells students they will complete a dissertation in 18 months and incur $70,000 in fees, when the time to complete the dissertation is much longer and the debt accrued much larger.
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18 months to get a doctorate, how ambitious.

I remember seeing a lot of Walden University doctoral degree in clinical psychology advertising on SDN. Looks like its been replaced with Midwestern University ads, another winner.
 
DynamicDidactic said:
Nothing too surprising here
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/profit-walden-u-once-tied-bill-clinton-put-under-review-n661281



18 months to get a doctorate, how ambitious.

I remember seeing a lot of Walden University doctoral degree in clinical psychology advertising on SDN. Looks like its been replaced with Midwestern University ads, another winner.
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Admittedly, I dont care enough to investigate this further... but for clarification: 18 months for a doctorate, or 18 months for a dissertation? To me, both seem pretty hard to accomplish even under the most ideal situations.. but I've heard of rare students in doctoral programs getting their ducks in a row and knocking out the dissertation once everything else is out of the way. Usually they're 5+ years into their studies by then, however.

I've also heard of one "they shall not be named" school accepting a terrible masters thesis (that imo should not have even counted as a masters thesis- yes- I've seen it first hand) be accepted as a dissertation. That too, is a complete shame.

EDIT: did not remember that the "they shall not be named school" closed in 2015. For the better.
 
bmedclinic said:
Admittedly, I dont care enough to investigate this further... but for clarification: 18 months for a doctorate, or 18 months for a dissertation? To me, both seem pretty hard to accomplish even under the most ideal situations.. but I've heard of rare students in doctoral programs getting their ducks in a row and knocking out the dissertation once everything else is out of the way. Usually they're 5+ years into their studies by then, however.

I've also heard of one "they shall not be named" school accepting a terrible masters thesis (that imo should not have even counted as a masters thesis- yes- I've seen it first hand) be accepted as a dissertation. That too, is a complete shame.

EDIT: did not remember that the "they shall not be named school" closed in 2015. For the better.
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I read the article, and it didn't seem to be clear. Just stated students were told they could complete their dissertation and earn their doctorate in 18 months, although that could be read to mean either of the options you listed.
 
Instant psychologist, just add water (and tens of thousands in debt) 18 months!? For a PhD?! Ouch.
 
BUT... did you know?

"50% -- More than half of Walden doctoral graduates who responded to our survey say their degree contributed to earning a pay raise."

"95% -- Almost 95% of Walden alumni responding to our survey say that their program helped them to advance positive social change."


With statistics like those, how could you say no?

edit: after looking around the website a bit, it turns out that those stats above are apparently true for every and any doctorate degree at Walden.

edit edit: I'm delving deeper into the belly of the dragon. their alumni career outcomes says that actually only 38.3% of alumni thought their degree helped them gain a promotion

edit edit edit: did you guys know that employers of walden graduates believe online degrees are equal to OR MORE VALUABLE THAN face-to-face degrees? https://www.waldenu.edu/-/media/Wal...-in-the-value-of-online-degrees-v-2.pdf?la=en

I feel like I'm on some weird cult website or one of those sites about how the moon landing never happened
 
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GoPokes said:
I feel like I'm on some weird cult website or one of those sites about how the moon landing never happened
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Cognitive dissonance can cause some rather unique outcomes. That said, I'm pretty sure places like Walden don't mind, "outside the box thinkers"…like this guy.

1e9494df0b206c608e42ca07e6746e16691b2ccc7e573c32234ee5bb427d7803.jpg
 
BuckeyeLove said:
we had a walden phd grad in our office as a psych asst. lied on their resume, and when asked to give a WAIS said "what is this for again?" needless to say this person did not last a week.
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Are you super cereal, yo?
 
bmedclinic said:
I've also heard of one "they shall not be named" school accepting a terrible masters thesis (that imo should not have even counted as a masters thesis- yes- I've seen it first hand) be accepted as a dissertation.
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I read one dissertation from a still active for profit school during a lit review. The sample was 27 people (half of them were graduate students in the cohort per the study methods) and the entire dissertation contained only three correlations between three brief mood measures.[/QUOTE]
 
BuckeyeLove said:
we had a walden phd grad in our office as a psych asst. lied on their resume, and when asked to give a WAIS said "what is this for again?" needless to say this person did not last a week.
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That's worse than the Cal Southern grad I worked with. He only misled people into thinking he was from USC and over-interpreted HTP drawings to impress the midlevel trainees.
I have some pretty strong feelings about these types of programs and feel they make the FSPSs almost look like saints in comparison.
 
smalltownpsych said:
That's worse than the Cal Southern grad I worked with. He only misled people into thinking he was from USC and over-interpreted HTP drawings to impress the midlevel trainees.
I have some pretty strong feelings about these types of programs and feel they make the FSPSs almost look like saints in comparison.
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To be fair, anyone who interprets HTP, is over-interpreting the HTP.
 
smalltownpsych said:
That's worse than the Cal Southern grad I worked with. He only misled people into thinking he was from USC and over-interpreted HTP drawings to impress the midlevel trainees.
I have some pretty strong feelings about these types of programs and feel they make the FSPSs almost look like saints in comparison.
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My tree always has a hole in it. I think I'm lonely, but I'm not sure. Maybe I just hate my mommy?
 
WisNeuro said:
I drew a tree that dgaf about the house or the person. It was there before either of them existed, it will be there when they are long gone. I'm probably a sociopath or something.
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Maybe you're psychotic for anthropomorphizing a tree?

My person lives in the tree, not the house. Either I had a bad childhood, I'm a free spirit, or I'm just a pretentious jerk who read too much about Diogenes.
 
Istilldontknow said:
The raven/human dissertation? What in the heck...
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This is a "thing"...and they are out there. Beware.

Last time I checked, the major carriers deem assessment of such "not medically necessary" however.
 
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That's is honestly insanity. The state of Texas will hire her and I don't get considered for a VA gig because my CV was incorrectly formatted. I apparently fail at life.
 
Sanman said:
That's is honestly insanity. The state of Texas will hire her and I don't get considered for a VA gig because my CV was incorrectly formatted. I apparently fail at life.
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I would imagine it was HR that kicked back your application; they're, unfortunately, fairly notorious for "disqualifying" candidates for purely administrative reasons before the applications are even seen by the folks actually involved in reviewing applications. It's frustrating, to be sure.
 
I did my internship and later worked somewhat close to where Antioch is located. Interestingly I only came across one of their grads through a shared telemedicine didactic program. Subjectively, my sense is that it would be hard to thrive in New England with subpar credentials. I found that even in remote clinics a solid percentage of folks came from Ivies and the rest were often from places like Tufts, and if "from away," very solid schools. Skeptical, taciturn, dry-humored folks up there. God I miss New England.
 
ClinicalABA said:
As the poster who first directed all your attention to that way back when, I'm strangely proud- In a fatherly kind of way- whenever the raven diss is referenced!
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You have much to be proud of.
 
That human-raven abstract was hilarious. I think I need to get a raven as a "therapy animal" for my office now after reading some of this ground-breaking paper. My adolescent patients would think it was pretty cool especially if I could get it to say "nevermore".
 
AcronymAllergy said:
I would imagine it was HR that kicked back your application; they're, unfortunately, fairly notorious for "disqualifying" candidates for purely administrative reasons before the applications are even seen by the folks actually involved in reviewing applications. It's frustrating, to be sure.
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It was for sure, I have always gotten at least an interview for every other VA position that I applied for. Silly me for trying to make my 8 page CV somewhat more readable and getting myself kicked out of contention. The current position I am looking at wants the hours/wk listed for every position I have ever had in addition to month and year...sigh.
 
Sanman said:
It was for sure, I have always gotten at least an interview for every other VA position that I applied for. Silly me for trying to make my 8 page CV somewhat more readable and getting myself kicked out of contention. The current position I am looking at wants the hours/wk listed for every position I have ever had in addition to month and year...sigh.
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Huh? When I was hired 3 years ago, I had just uploaded my regular ole CV to USAJOBS. No one seemed to have a problem with that. Is this something new?
 
erg923 said:
Huh? When I was hired 3 years ago, I had just uploaded my regular ole CV to USAJOBS. No one seemed to have a problem with that. Is this something new?
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I remember the posting for my current job requested that I list the hours/wk worked for my current position; I don't know that they required it for all past positions. I was on fellowship at the time, so I basically just listed "Full-Time (40+ hours/week)" below the name of the site, and that seemed to work fine.

I also remember applying for a position, making some sort of minor administrative error in the paperwork, and being told I was ineligible and could not change anything, as the application window had closed by that point. So I feel your pain, Sanman.
 
Thanks for the support AA.

ERG, you think that is bad, I also have to submit PDF copies of my grad school transcripts and my license. At least this one is an 8 day window and I saw it posted on day one. The last poseted position had similar requirements and I saw it on the last day of a 5 day application window. I almost need to quit my current job to have time to find a new one.
 
Sanman said:
Thanks for the support AA.

ERG, you think that is bad, I also have to submit PDF copies of my grad school transcripts and my license. At least this one is an 8 day window and I saw it posted on day one. The last poseted position had similar requirements and I saw it on the last day of a 5 day application window. I almost need to quit my current job to have time to find a new one.
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Well, i did have to do that too.
 
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