I received two degrees from Neumann College and went there because many people in my town had given it high ratings. I was also led to believe by Neumann that they would help me find a career direction.I found, immediately, that the people there are very helpful for full-time, traditional students. Adjunct professors and full-time professors are very accessible and it feels very much like a small-town, close-knit community.
Neumann also imparts its Franciscan values into their learning, teaching that learning is best applied when done so in service to others. In no way do the use a guilt-trip method and "jam" this belief down people's throats; instead, they speak of the positive difference people can make in the lives of others and how that is related to the lives of Christ and St. Francis.
My undergraduate education was full of classes that challenged me; the professors pushed me and the work was just a little bit more than I could handle (in terms of workload) so I always felt challenged and motivated. The content was also relevant to my major.
Since I was a commuter student with friends who lived there, I went home most every night but did stay over a few nights.
Everyone said - and I experienced - that the campus is in a rather boring location. There are a few bars around that are cool, but that's about it unless you made the 45 minute trek to Philly. There were plenty of campus social activities (mainly through mission and ministry dept.) and that's where I met most of my friends. Frankly, I enjoyed the small atmosphere where I knew a lot of people and in which everything was in one building - all of the resources (library, classroom) were in one location which made getting around and accessing information both quick and relatively easy.
However; this school has plenty of negatives and is the reason I suggest looking elsewhere if you want a quality education.
First of all, the career development office was a joke. I was told (by the college president) that I would have a job when I graduated.....the career development office, where I was quite often, did nothing to help me get a job. The internship that I did get was just more of an office admin. position which barely gave me the tools to get used to a "real world" job (as I would find out when I got my "real world" job out of college). After my internship ended and before I graduated, the CD office got me no interviews, gave me outdated resume writing techniques, and did not well-prepare me for the interview process.
Secondly, having to take (and therefore PAY FOR) mandatory theology classes, though I liked one of them, has proven to be a waste of money. I have used none of them since being out in the "real world." Third, the registrar's office is a joke. They were always late on processing information and were generally rude.
When I went back for my Master's degree (what looked to be a balance of cost and content), I found the content to be great and relevant. I majored in Strategic Leadership and attended in their "accelerated adult" program, which meant that I did some online work, and some at-school work (it ended up being mostly online).
My classmates were motivated, and the information taught (the "theory") was relevant.
However, the professors were terrible. The program director actually left 2 or 3 months into the class and the school did not have a new director for a few months, leaving the program without much direction and leadership - so our professors could be constantly late on responding to our requests and, frankly, quite rude and indignant when they were interacting with us, almost as if we were inconveniencing them. Incidentally, most of the professors ended up being fired after our class finished and before the next batch of students began classes.
Also, the job that the professors did of explaining how we could apply what we learned to the real world office was dismal - and one of these guys even had a regular, private-sector job!
Again, as with the career development office in while obtaining my undergraduate degree, they were completely worthless. Basically, I was told to use their website, which I ended up doing from then on.
All in all, while populated with professors that served traditional students well and were certainly very nice and accessible, Neumann College failed to honor its commitments to get me a job and provided me with a graduate program that was horribly mismanaged.
For this reason, even if it means paying more, I will seek out other institutions of higher education rather than Neumann, should I ever again need to obtain a Degree.
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