Lindenwood University

Date: Feb 06 2020
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
Full disclosure: I'm currently an online student, but I have attended on campus classes in the past.

First the good. The school is cheap compared to other schools like UMSL, but I guess you get what you pay for. The other online students all pretty much keep to themselves, but are generally friendly when engaged with either through private message or on the discussion boards. Being close and convenient if you're local to the area is nice, and the campus is beautiful. I've also have had a few decent professors and been reasonably challenged in a couple of my classes… That's pretty much it.

Now for the bad. I'm mostly going to focus on the online student side of things as that's my most recent experience:

1. Lack of caring and attention from professors. The amount of online profs I've had at this school that just use an old syllabus, have a program grade everything (or for papers just slap a grade on it and don't offer any feedback), and only sometimes answer their email and call it teaching is ridiculous. I've had better luck with online professors at community college actually giving a damn. Be prepared to teach yourself everything as more than likely your professors will not be any help to you even when you ask for their help multiple times. I've literally been told to "google it" when I was having trouble with a concept or a specific question. As if I hadn't been trying that before I emailed them.

2. Advisors are worthless. Twice I've been paired with advisors who did nothing more than unlock my portal each semester (which is a stupid practice to being with), and offered me no advice even when I asked for it. No check in's, nothing aside from

look at the BINGO sheet.

3. Not making sure profs have basic computer knowledge. It astounds me how many professors can barely type a coherent sentence and/or don't know how to use Canvas properly. Each professor has things in different (sometimes bizarre) places and sometimes the same rubric or assignment has two different sets of instructions depending on which one you click on. Apparently you're just supposed to guess which is the right one as every time I ask for clarification the professors act like I'm wasting their time for wanting to know what they actually want. Professors need to be given better training in using Canvas and LU needs to have a standard on how classes should be laid out so students aren't playing "hide-and-go-seek" with assignments.

4. Textbooks. Online students should not have to purchase physical textbooks if they don't wish to, but I had one class when I know several student literally could not buy the textbook because the only place that sold it was the LU bookstore and they were from out of state.

5. Once you're at LU you're basically stuck as their credits don't transfer to most other schools. So if you're set on going here, be sure you're going to stay here unless you want to retake all of your classes. I know because I looked and even though I'm currently at Senior status I would have to go back to being a sophomore or at some schools a freshman all over again.

6. How the weeks are set up. For being promoted as flexible for working students, the deadlines each week are ridiculous. They open and close each week at 6pm on Friday. So if you worked all week and wanted to finish up an assignment Friday night? Too bad. There is 0 flexibility from instructors on this. What online school has classes close and open at 6pm?! They can't even make it midnight on Friday. It's asinine. Every other college I've taken online classes at open and close assignments either at 12am Sunday night OR they treat their students like adults and either give them all the assignments at the beginning of class and/or have flexible dates on when to finish them, and as long as everything is turned in by the end of class you're good. You know, actually being flexible so students with busy lives can do things when they have the time. I didn't pick taking online courses so I could be stuck in the same regimen as traditional on campus students.

7. Online students are forced to take accelerated courses. Each class is only 1/2 a semester so everything is

cram as much information in as you can before spitting it back out on the test

Not sure how it's supposed to make things easier or better for online students as overall I've found it sucks for everyone.

8. Proctor U is a joke.

Closing thoughts:

Basically, if you're looking for a less expensive school and don't mind paying thousands of dollars to teach yourself pretty much everything then sure LU isn't your worst choice, but honestly? You can do better.