Widener University

Date: Apr 13 2015
Major: Civil Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Went for a Master's in Engineering, out of the 10 courses I took I had 5 or 6 professors, only one of which was a tenured professor and I later found out he had never taught a graduate level course before. All the professors seemed fairly knowledgeable in their subject area, however for the most part they kept the course load light and very broad - meaning lectures typically touched on a subject matter but never went into any detail.

Widener boasts about their 'online graduate program' they started in 2012 but in reality they use adobe connect to record and live stream the lectures. In practice the adjunct professors rarely knew how to utilize the technology and for the most part recorded lectures were hard to hear (due to instructors not recording sound, charging microphones, or just having the mic out of range of their mouth) or the lectures weren't recorded at all, again due to instructor error (not sharing screen, not pressing record, pausing recording and not unpausing) - for me this occurred more often than not, and most students I spoke to regarded this technology as a disadvantage. In many of my classes the professors would take up at least the first 10-15 mins just to figure out the bugs in order to start the recording. On top of that the 2 hour and 40 min (once a week) lectures usually only lasted around 1 hour, with the exception of one professor who just preferred to keep talking, so you may pay for 2.5 hrs a week for 15ish weeks totaling 37.5 hrs but you'll only get about half that. Not to complain, but it tends to get old fast when you drive an hour to get to class, only to have it last 45 mins, just to turn around and do it again.

About the class material itself - I only had two classes where I actually learned material that required actual effort. Most of the time my graduate level classes (600 level courses) were combined with undergraduate senior classes (400 level courses) where I relearned things I was taught in undergrad. Widener only recently started doing this around about 2014 where they would combine graduate level and undergrad courses and say the graduate students would do extra work (such as a project/report) in order to differentiate the courses, but in the 5 courses I had which were combined I never did any extra work. In fact in 6 courses I didn't have a first assignment (homework, midterm, quiz, etc.) until about week 9 or 10 (not graded by week 9 or 10, given out by week 9 or 10, and typically given out because

the computer was asking me for midterm grades

). I only had one class where there was an in class midterm and/or final, all others were take home tests. In several classes I would half-ass a report/project because I knew the teacher didn't read it, I even called her an idiot in the report repeatedly and she never saw it. In another class (this one combined with undergrads) I had a disagreement with the teacher about my final grade because he never gave us our grades for anything (5 homeworks, 1 midterm, 1 project, 1 final, and class participation). When I asked to see the number value grade he gave me for each category he suddenly got dodgey and wouldn't respond to calls/emails until I cc'd the Dean, at which point he told me I would've had an A if not for my lack of class participation, (due to the fact that he couldn't put a face to my name, even though I sat right in front of him everyday). After much debate, he agreed to change my grade from a C+ to a A-, (he was also completely oblivious to the fact that as a grad student anything below a B- had to be repeated due to the fact that he had never taught grad students before).

In conclusion, if you'd like to simply pay for a piece of paper and not have to do any work, go to Widener - it's a great place to waste your time, money, and brain cells. The teachers are glaringly incompetent (one teacher taught using a modeling program from 1995 and said it was the most up-to-date, when I personally knew from professional experience it was not), they couldn't care less if you actually do the assignments they give out, and if you're lucky they'll offer more than 2 graduate level courses each semester that are actually in your area of study. Oh and by the way, there aren't any advisers for grad students, so make sure the classes you take are for the correct program you're in and not what the degree audit in campus cruiser says, because that system hasn't been updated in 10 years! Of all the courses they list in their degree catalog very few are ever offered over the course of your graduate career, let alone each semester.