What you must know to enter the University of Phoenix's school of criminal justice

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 30th, 2010

While the University of Phoenix is unique in many ways and it has a whole host of loyal supporters who are alumni, there are at least 3 things that you should know before you enroll yourself in any criminal justice program offered by the University of Phoenix.

Education quality

The first thing you need to know is that many students are unhappy with their experience of UoP. The major reason seems to be that the quality of education is not at par with other institutions of higher learning. The course content is weak, the faculty is weak and almost every one gets good grades with rare failures or D-grades.

Management or criminal justice?

The second thing you should know about UoP before you join is that the degrees they offer is too management and administration oriented and do not have the kind of sharp focus on criminal justice that you would like to have. You will find that with a UoP degree in criminal justice, most of the time you are competing with people having management degrees from such reputed schools as Harvard, Cornell or Wharton Business School. In such situations your application will most likely hit the dustbin rather than being at the top of the list. Getting the jobs you want in the criminal justice fields of your choice will become more or less impossible with UoP degrees in criminal justice. Your career options will be narrowed down to a very few select options, many of which you will not be interested in because had you been interested in those careers you would have preferred to obtain an MBA or some equivalent management degree rather than a criminal justice degree. And you would have been more successful too in getting a job in those fields.

Dwindling profits

The third thing you should know is that UoP is a for-profit organization and its driving principle is earning profits through selling education to students. And, during the last few years it has not been doing well. Enrolments have been going down consistently, earnings are down, the parent company which owns UoP is not doing very well in the share market. Something seems to be wrong and you have to be careful before you commit thousands of dollars to an institution that exists not for educating students per se but for the sole purpose of earning profits out of selling education. And if it is not doing well there ? that is, earning profits ? then it is very likely that that there is something wrong with the product it is selling ? education. So, think twice before you decide to buy the product of a company that is not doing very well in the market. This is perhaps the most important thing that you should know before you opt for a degree from UoP.