5-15-07

ACBSP:

Your recent accreditation of UOP came as quite a surprise and to the dismay and disappointment of many. It appears that ACBSP has compromised its values and/or lowered its standards in order to be the accreditation agency of the largest university in the US. Another possible conclusion is that ACBSP was lied to and deceived by UOP or ACBSP did not conduct a very thorough audit. Either way, your actions have cheapened the value of ACBSP accreditation, doing a great disservice to you longstanding members.

Using ACSBP accreditation standards, it is difficult to see how UOP practices would meet any sensible accreditation standards, unless ACBSP did not observe the reality of these practices during the site audit. Some of the ACBSP accreditation standards are compared with UOP below:

(Sec 5.8) In what types of scholarly research are your faculty members involved?

As you are probably aware, UOP’s 22,800+ faculty is overwhelmingly adjunct and part-time. By and large, UOP faculty do not have research facilities or opportunities as UOP hires primarily practitioner faculty with full time jobs, family lives, and without sponsorship to conduct research or office space.

(Sec 5.8) In which publications are your faculty members being published?

As UOP hires primarily adjunct practitioner faculty with full time jobs, family lives, and without sponsorship or facilities to conduct research, they have little time or opportunity to publish academic articles. While UOP advertises that its average faculty member “publishes and presents academic papers on a regular basis,” this has not been the findings or experiences reported by most students and faculty members. Furthermore, one must question how the adjunct practitioner faculty find the time to hold a full time job, maintain a family, teach at UOP, and conduct research in order to obtain material suitable for professional publications. One must further question what they could possibly be writing about with such limited research opportunities.

(Sec 5.8) How do you improve the balance and degree of faculty involvement in scholarly and professional activities that support the fulfillment of the institution’s mission?

Most UOP faculty is hired on a contract basis for 5 to 6 weeks at a time. It is difficult to perceive how UOP maintains any knowledge or sense about its faculty’s professional activities during this short time period, and how it can enable any professional standards upon faculty who are hired only for only a few weeks at a time.

(Sec 6.3.3f) A graduate program must have an articulated admissions policy that accepts students who can reasonably be expected to succeed in a graduate business school.

a. What are the admission policies of the business unit for each of the graduate level programs?

f. Do admission requirements allow entry to students who can reasonably be expected to succeed in graduate business studies? Please explain and give reasons for this conclusion.

UOP has bare minimal admissions requirements, and does not even require an entrance exam. The only requirement is that the student has a job and 3 years of post-high school work experience. In other words, anyone with a pulse, a check book, and a job can enroll in the undergraduate business programs, and anyone with the same and an undergraduate degree from just about anywhere and any field can enter the graduate program. These are bare minimum requirements - the requirements simply cannot be any lower. How can this possibly indicate that a student will be expected to succeed? A high school diploma is NOT an indication that a student is success prone, nor is an undergraduate degree. If this is all that is required to expect success, then every student everywhere can be expected to succeed by ACBSP standards.

A frequent complaint amongst students is the incompetence of classmates, especially because the school relies on team work as a substitution for facilitator-lead instruction. This is clearly a big problem at UOP and degrades the quality of the entire business program and the student experience.

(Sec 6.3.5) What policies and procedures do you have in place addressing recruiting students?

Did UOP show you the memos sent to their admissions staff regarding recruiting?

These memos show that UOP’s student recruiting practices mimic that of a used car dealer. Are these the kind of practices that ACBSP endorses? Are these practices that a quality ACBSP school uses to recruit? Furthermore, the Department of Education issued a report in 2003 regarding UOP’s recruiting and admissions practices which depict deplorable admissions practices. Additionally, there is pending litigation with which there is some merit; however, we will have to wait for a final verdict. One cannot simply take UOP for its word when they say they are innocent.

By far the biggest hoax at UOP is the substitution of team learning time for seat time with instructors. How can a five or six week course where the first and last sessions are either administrative, overviews or testing and presenting be effective for learning comparable with other ACBSP member institutions? How can the students in teams supply the same level of content and application that a qualified instructor can in class? Per my personal experience and the reports of others, it is rare and uncommon for students to actually spend the required team time learning together as they are expected to. By nature, students tend to spend as little time learning and studying as necessary. To believe otherwise is foolish, and UOP (to my knowledge) does not monitor or audit actual group study time performed. In short, students are graduating with a severe deficiency in instruction and instruction time compared to their counterparts at other ACBSP institutions. This is not fair to UOP or your other members.

5-25-07