What happened to the “I dropped out of Argosy” post?

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Bummer! There was a wealth of info that was helpful to potential applicants out there and now it’s gone.
 
TikiTorches said:
Please give the cliff notes version of the thread
Click to expand...

Here is what I recall about the original thread. Anyone, please feel free to add or correct me on details:

The individual described himself as the typical PsyD applicant “that Argosy preys upon”: someone who had performed poorly as an undergraduate with a below 3.0 GPA, found a passion for psychology after obtaining their Bachelors degree, and was desperate for a chance to pursue the competitive Clinical Psychology field. He started to attend the PsyD program at various Argosy campuses, but he ran into various issues that led him to ultimately dropout after obtaining a non-license track Masters degree at Argosy.

One major issue he described was the dubious financial aid at Argosy. Basically, he alleged that Argosy takes advantage of students’ federal student loans. He alleged that Argosy was never transparent about significant details, such as raising tuition from what was originally promised by thousands of dollars. Whenever he had a question about his financial aid at Argosy, he would typically be passed around to different staff without anyone actually answering his question. And, it was apparently “taboo” for a student to challenge the financial aid department about the way they handled things.

A second major issue is that an increasing number of Argosy campuses are shutting down. While you can transfer to another Argosy campus to complete your studies, they only transfer a maximum of 30 credit hours. This would mean that if you had invested 5 years into a doctorate program at a particular campus and it suddenly shut down, you’d have to start back nearly at square one at another Argosy campus. What’s more, no other schools will accept credit from Argosy due to its poor reputation.

Finally, he claimed that many professors in Argosy’s PsyD program are incompetent, such as professors amounting psychopathology to “stupidity” or people “just being stupid.” Many professors who teach at Argosy seem to display severe psychopathology themselves. When professors opened up discussion on topics, some professors would become defensive if a student politely challenged the professor’s own view on the topic. Clinical supervision was nearly nonexistent and unhelpful — instead of providing students guidance, supervisors would spout off some “inspirational” anecdotes from their own therapy practice. One example that stood out was a supervisor who claimed to have “connected” with a young, troubled teenage client by “boxing with him.”

He said that not all professors were bad, but there was a high turnover rate. The professors who were genuinely good would leave within a year, while the ones who remained long-term represented the worst (typical) that Argosy had to offer. In academia, being affiliated with Argosy is like the scarlet letter — hardly any reputable university thinks highly of a school like Argosy. For the professors that OP was close to, they would often tell him that they regretted taking a job at Argosy.

Ultimately, as I said, the OP dropped out of the PsyD program at Argosy shortly after obtaining a non-license track Master’s degree. He has settled on just pursuing an LPC at a more reputable institution.
 
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Below is from a private conversation with another person here on the forum who also dropped out of Argosy (shared with permission). I asked them to share their experience.

The Dean's of the various campuses share all manner of student information with each other weekly on a conference call. Within my campus even the "admissions counselor" (salesman/woman is what they actually are) would be cc'd on anything of importance about any student, even enrollment concerns such as add/drop/withdrawal, etc. My campus and from what I understand other campuses are nothing but clucking hen societies when it comes to confidential student information. It really is that bad. A 4th year advised me when I started years ago to "not give them anything because they WILL use to to run you out and everyone in admin. and all the faculty will know about it." She explained and I have seen in my own experience as well that they will string a student along as long as possible for their money I'm sure, and a student will think everyone loves them and they are doing great right up until the second comp exam/dissertation defense so there is a "legitimate" reason to keep them from graduating or going on internship. I have seen this happen several times with the comp exam for instance. It is a 3 stage process so students know how they are progressing and students will be passed without exception during the first two only to be failed during the 3rd. The comp exam is a case study from a practicum clients so the content of the phases does not change, the exam simply scrutinizes the student's work more intensely and phase 1 & 2 should let a student know where they stand before phase 3. They will pass you with no listed concerns in phase 1 & 2 only to fail you in phase 3. That is an extra year right there and more tuition and no guarantee they won't do that to you again. More well off students use professional assistance to ensure there is no way they can be failed, but that is deemed unethical and very costly so they keep that under wraps. Lower income students are on their own. This is before I even get to the problem with the internship coordinator position and how that is used by professors to engage in all manner of blackballing. The coordinator at my campus was so egregiously prejudiced toward individual students and whole groups (any student over 30) it was common knowledge you had to kiss her ass like it was candy for 4 straight years or you would not go on internship. Even then students of color were often shocked at how favorably their interviews went only to not get matched anywhere. Again, common knowledge among students but there is no way to address the problem, none. The forum where students are supposed to be able to come together and talk about anything faculty/administration related is called "collective unconscious." The people that run that forum are literally the student workers who work for various faculty and are their pets and those students immediately go to the faculty and tell them everything talked about during the forum... I'm not making this up, it's literally Stalinist level informer type ****. Only 1st years and the faculty pets attend those forums because 1st years don't know any better, only to be blackballed when they hit their 4th year and not know why. So yes, there is a venue, and that venue is used as an information gathering tool by the faculty to blackball students.

A lot of the time this may not be a bad thing however because most of the students themselves would frighten you if you were in a room with them and thought of them becoming clinicians. One of the campuses had a 4th year who was arrested as part of a child pornography ring. With that said competent clinicians can come out of Argosy but that is 100% in spite of Argosy, not because of it. At least the APA requires the syllabi to look good, so if a student does the readings and practices self-introspection they should be okay, but my guess is the immoral and honestly criminal (we haven't even talked about their financial aid practices yet) environment students are exposed to leaves them very confused about the profession by the time they leave and the best I have seen is when students are just happy to have survived and getting the **** out. No one leaves with anything good to say about Argosy except the student workers and knowing a few of them even they hate the place but know the game and so they play it-and become clinicians thinking being an informer was just what they had to do to survive. What that does to a good person is awful, but the environment that creates for a bad one is even worse. Unless a student knows another student VERY well you do not associate with each other because you have no idea who is an informer and who isn't, and the student conduct committee needs no proof of wrongdoing to boot you, just one "anonymous" complaint will do the trick... in your 4th year of course after they have all your money.

Quite simply, it is a criminal enterprise that only gets APA status at it's various campuses because of the lobbying arm of Goldman Sachs. With the changeover and all but 9 campuses closing many students I know who cannot finish by the end of this year are transferring out because they don't see Argosy staying in business very much longer AND they have moved all the remaining campuses to smaller locations with leases apparently negotiated last minute, as if it was a big maybe they were going to be around at all but all the students heard was "all is fine."

And this doesn't even touch financial aid which makes everything I've said here pale in comparison and I've been dealing with them all day today so you got quite the rant, sorry.

As far as having a chance to develop empathic clinical and diagnostic skill sets... not a chance. Students that put in overwhelming amounts of time outside of everything they have on their plate through class/practicum can do it, but it's rare. Argosy is just too toxic and students have too much on the line to put anything else on their plate and that's the students who are even aware they are being given immorally substandard training.

Okay, I gotta go. You keep all this bottled up for a few years and not have any way to do anything about it you start to lose it a bit... a lot in my case. Anyone who asks you about Argosy should be told to avoid at all costs, changing desired career paths is better than attending one of their campuses by far. I wish I had.
Click to expand...
 
Can we make this a sticky thread? What happened to these people is horrible, but this information can at least serve as a cautionary tale.
 
Did the diversity post also get deleted?

That was a good recap of the Argosy post, by the way!
 
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It sounds like OP got nervous and thought they could be identified through their posts.

That Argosy campus sounds like a nightmare. Can students file complaints with APA? It seems like an independent investigation would be warranted if enough of these allegations came out.
 
The erasure of the post made me wonder if the OP was a litigant and realized he/she broke NDA of a settlement.
 
We really need this info to be out there on the internet for folks to find in contrast to the sales pitch they get before entering Argosy, so thanks to all of you for reviving this thread and piecing the info back together!
 
Rivi said:
It sounds like OP got nervous and thought they could be identified through their posts.

That Argosy campus sounds like a nightmare. Can students file complaints with APA? It seems like an independent investigation would be warranted if enough of these allegations came out.
Click to expand...

Yes. Any questions or concerns can be directed to the Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation: 202.336.5979 or [email protected]
 
psyche27 said:
Yes. Any questions or concerns can be directed to the Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation: 202.336.5979 or [email protected]
Click to expand...
I wonder how seriously they will take the concerns when Argosy is a primary sponsor of the APA convention.
 
TikiTorches said:
Please give the cliff notes version of the thread
Click to expand...
I also posted how my experience was actually quite similar at adelphi in regards to run around from financial aid and such, tuition being higher than they said it would be, stipends being less, unprofessional professors, etc and that I also decided to drop out as a result of facing similar issues of gross disorganization and professionalism at nearly every level from individual instruction to billing and aid (with the exception of a few helpful people who unfortunately were the minority in my experience)
 
MCParent said:
I wonder how seriously they will take the concerns when Argosy is a primary sponsor of the APA convention.
Click to expand...

They take formal complaints very seriously. I seriously doubt that argosy being one of many sponsors of the convention even enters the conversation.
 
Argosy is in receivership, and one of the six regional accreditation bodies is saying the “university” may lose accreditation.

Mentioned that in the other deleted thread.
 
TikiTorches said:
What is receivership
Click to expand...

Imagine that a person, say an elderly person with dementia, can no longer adequately manage their finances and the family/treatment team petitions for guardianship because they can no longer manage their financial obligations and such. Kind of like that. ALso can be part of bankruptcy proceedings. So, essentially, despite bilking gullible people out of large sums of money, this institution is still financially insolvent and cannot pay its debts. They are incompetent at every level.
 
Temperance said:
It has been a little weird that multiple people have been posting about problems with Argosy recently and then either swiftly changing their username or deleting their posts or threads.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using SDN mobile
Click to expand...
Seriously! It’s like sitting down at a restaurant and being given the dinner specials, and just as you’re about to order, “sorry we are all out of Prime Rib tonight!” Give is the juicy stuff! :laugh:
 
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