The University of Maryland University College

Date: Oct 29 2011
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
I've been reading a lot of bad reviews and comments regarding the legitimacy of UMUC. I wanted to chime in with my experience because I feel like people are only bashing the UMUC experience because they feel like it's some sort of money machine university when it might be but the experience is well beyond paying for a piece of paper.

I'm a military member who started in 2004 with UMUC not knowing what I wanted to study but I started any way out of Darmstadt Germany. All of my classes were on different army posts around our region but always with staff who understood what we dealt with daily as young enlisted soldiers. They made us work like we were supposed to but also worked around time in the field and deployments. I graduated in 2011 with an undergrad degree in English. I took several years off to focus on deployments or random TDY's so I could focus on school and family when it was time. I was recently accepted into the army OCS with my degree from UMUC.

I'm proud of my college experience because it was unique to anywhere else. We studied German culture in Germany. We studied the German language, in Germany. We studied European art in the artists homes and museums and studios. I had the same English teach through most of my English class, face to face. He was an outstanding educator who loves what he's doing and brought that to class every day. Some of the teachers are current or former military service members and/or experts in their field. The faculty are world travelers with real, real world experience.

Because I had the advantage of taking most of my classes in real classroom settings I got the real experience of having classmates, not just message board commandos. The students were from all over the world and brought it with them to the class. We didn't just go to class together, some of us worked together, some of us were war veterans together. Sometimes people traveled Europe together. This was not a university experience full of c… sucking high school graduates who have dreamed up a world of higher education as suckling a beer bottle in awkward social situations. We came from all ages and back grounds and appreciated each other. I started as a single soldier and graduated as a married war vet with two kids. It wasn't always easy and required a lot of traveling from site to site between Stuttgart and Frankfurt towns, sometimes down to Munich and other areas, but I enjoyed it and appreciated the experience.

Stop bashing this school because you a..holes think it's tripe. The professors worked hard and they expect the same of you. It mightn't be what some people consider "traditional" but it's definitely an experience worth writing a good review about.