South University Review-My experience

**schoolnurse222** · 04-19-2010, 10:23 AM

Please everyone, DO NOT ATTEND SOUTH UNIVERSITY. It is a horrible school, extremely expensive and certainly not worth the money. They do have "ground schools", they are private and that is why the expense is so high, 30k plus for an Associates, 60K plus for a bachelors. Granted there are many schools in this country that cost that for one year alone but I would have thought that doing a degree online would be cheaper because one is not using the same materials. The only positive about online schools is the ability to complete your degree that offers you flexibility in a daily schedule. You don't have to be at school at a certain time as the classes are open 24/7. However, the teachers hardly teach. You READ A LOT and complete assignments, but there is little interaction or not the valuable interaction that a classroom forum offers. In an actual classroom you benefit from a lecture where in most cases the professor sheds insight into readings and fellow classmates ask questions that you get to hear. If your an auditory learner, then this is the way to go. In an online classroom, your instructors do respond to your assignments but traditionally they respond by asking additional questions and not really critiquing your paper to the extent that it should be. You do get to hear from other people in the classroom but you have to take the time to read all of the responses and I ask "Do you really get the same effect?".

Anyway, the time, many say faster, but thats only if you go as a full time student. Be prepared to spend at least 10 to 15 hours in a given week per class. Do you have the time to spend 30 hours per week if you go as a full time student at South University? This will help you shave about 6 months to maybe a year off your degree but many of us have full time jobs and families to take care of. And in actuality if you go to school at South University, and do it in a comfortable time frame you could be looking at a longer period than in a ground school.

When you speak with an enrollment advisor be prepared to be "WOW'd" because you will be. These are trained salespeople. Their goal is to sell sell sell you on the school so they meet their quotas. Its a fact, face it. They say things like "I'm interested in what you want to do" "How do you think you will feel when you get that degree, good right" "what are your goals" and that might make you feel like they care about you, but trust me, they don't. They may go onto pressuring you to go to school, "But I thought you wanted to get a degree for financial success, or that promotion or to take care of your darling children?". They care about keeping their jobs and making more money by the number of students that they seat in a class, and that is it.

Financial Aid - Ok let's talk Pell Grants - First off you are not eligible for Pell if you have already obtained a bachelors degree level. Currently the most you can get is 5350 per school year. However bear in mind that your spending about 20k per year for this school. BOOKS ARE NOT INCLUDED WITH TUITION. Financial aid can come by tuition reimbursement but most companies may only pay 1000 per year. Yes there are student loans but do you really then want to pay even more for your education? What if you get into a financial burden, what if you quit school, you will need to start paying back your loans 6 months after you leave.

If you don't mind working independently, only learning from what you read and paying a lot of money for school, by all means go to South University. But if you want a quality education, DON'T attend South University.

**rumesh** · 04-22-2010, 08:44 AM

I too had to experience similar circumstances in my practice. Any way we should be prepared for the worse. This is what the nurses are called for, isn't it?
What about your views in working at psychiatric wards?

Personal Injury Lawyer in Philadelphia

**lizap0405** · 05-06-2010, 02:39 PM

great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

**adamsbaker** · 05-13-2010, 06:00 AM

South University has laid a tradition of excellent education for all its students, with a personalized support and quality-based syllabus. A wide variety of online courses offered by this reputed university provides an easy way of earning a degree, without attending any schedule bound classes.

**Gona_bea_nurse** · 05-14-2010, 01:54 AM

you sound like a bot off their sale add adams.

**KPerkin** · 05-21-2010, 10:15 PM

I stumbled on this board looking for info about South University. I will say up front I am not in the nursing field at all, I wanted to talk about my experience at the school itself. I was an Information Technology major. I had attended a couple of traditional schools before finishing my bachelors at SU, so I think I have a good basis for comparison.

The main thing you need to know about online degrees in general is that there are tradeoffs. Conducting an online-only degree program, from a school's perspective, is much more expensive than a physical classroom. This is because they are paying not only for the professor, but for the bandwidth, servers, web developers, administrators and software engineers that keep the entire infrastructure alive. If you ever see a "discount" online-learning curriculum, then be cautious. South University tuition is not cheap but they also have an exceptionally good online learining infrastructure (at least they did when I attended a few years ago). This type of infrastructure is simply unavailable in a public, state-funded school. Believe me I tried to find it. Taxpayers do not want to pay for that level of technology, the only way to fund it is privately, so public universities might offer great education, but NOT AT THE DISTANCE LEARNING LEVEL.

Now, if someone asks me whether South U. is great, I will put my answer in the context of the other universities I attended in the past (and one of them is considered in the top 10 public universities in the nation).....

.... Some of my experiences were forever memorable, some experiences forgettable. Some experiences were frustrating, some experiences were fun. Most of the time what made the difference was the professor. Guess what? I noticed the same thing when I attended traditional university. Some professors were great, some not so much. Some professors were popular with the mainstream but not so great in my eyes, and vice versa...

The one difference that stands out to me was that at SU, quite a few of my professors were teaching part-time but had REAL WORLD jobs and experience. This is a big contrast to what I found in traditional classroom universities. Like I said I was an Information Technology major -- so, in universities, you often meet academic scientist types who can theorize all day long, but they do NOT know anything about real world application of technology, because they've been in academia their entire life. This was not the case at South University. I worked under real-world professors, many of whom had published highly-rated books that anyone could buy at Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com or whatever. Beyond the regular learning syllabus, having already had real-world experience myself, I found that some (not all) of the professors were extremely knowledgeable in their field. I already had real-world experience before starting the curriculum, and to me the energy created by interacting with professors with real-world experience was much more valuable than the interactions I had with professors who had made a career out of academia.

That's the good. Now here's the bad. In some of my classes I saw some students who seemed to be inappropriately placed in high-level technology courses, saw them headed toward failing the class, witnessed their frustration as they expressed it online, and some of them mysteriously disappear from the course even after the drop-class deadline was over (which I am guessing means they lost their tuition money for that class?)... Courses at this school are simply too expensive to drop after the drop-add deadline, in my opinion. What does this tell me? These students either signed up for classes they are not ready for, or their advisor did not advise them properly, I'm not sure which.

Now here's the bottom line. Online universities require you to be EXTREMELY self-motivated. Some of your classes may involve web cams and other interaction, but for the most part you cannot depend on the teacher to "give you that look" that motivates you to do better. They are there to do their job, teach and provide for their families. You are there to pay attention to the assignment deadlines, read the textbooks, watch the online lectures, and perhaps most importantly participate in discussions. If you do not do all of the above, it is likely an online teacher will tire of you and flunk you in the course, then you might as well have thrown $1500 or so out the window.

Like I said, I'm in the technology business so I wonder how online applies to nursing at all. I know there is a lot of science and technology there that can be completed online, but as a nurse you will also be interacting heavily with people. You will absolutely get social interaction in an online learning curriculum. If you do not value others as individuals it will show in your writing -- but I'm not sure that an online-only degree is right for the nursing profession which seems to be about 33% science, 33% psychology, 33% sociology and 1% timing. All of those factors are important in other fields to, just maybe at different percentage levels?

I would say the overall education I received at South exceeded my expectations by orders of magnitude. Whether or not it is for you might depend on the curriculum you are interested in, whether or not you are extremely self-motivated or need a more chalk-n-talk traditional classroom, and also whether you are committed to getting it right the first time you take a class. I remember meeting students who took a class 2 or 3 times, and I could not imagine how expensive that must have been for them?!

Kal

**slgyirl99r02** · 05-23-2010, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by icurn1967

Hi to everyone,
I am new to this thread and was reading your comments on South University and just wanted to post what has happened to me regarding this school. I have spoke with an advisor with the school about their Master program for Acute Care Nurse Practioner and everything sounded great, could do at it my own pace and it is online. Paid the 50.00 processing fee for admissions, get transcripts sent and financial aid in order and working on the other items they wanted. Thinking everything was good, I get a call today and I mean today that they have suspended their nurse practioner program, and they are sorry, not really able to give me a reason as to why, wanted me instead to go into their master of nursing education program, the core classes are the same they said and they would pay for my first set of books for my inconvience. I told them that was not what I wanted to do and their reply was to think about it and let them know. ANY SUGGESTIONS????

This is because they are not accredited by the CCNE yet and I'm having the same problem, thought I was in their adult NP program and found out this week that they are not accredited yet and have no idea when they will be! Trying to transfer out for the fall term, hoping my credits transfer.

**cassco2014** · 06-11-2010, 11:10 PM

Hello everyone I am about to start @ South Univ on campus and so far I like it but is there anything I should be aware of? So far I already know 2 people that have graduated from there and are working and doing wonderful so I don't see any issues so far. But I do know that they are expensive so I am preparing my mind for that

**cassco2014** · 06-19-2010, 10:46 PM

Re:Hello everyone I am about to start @ South Univ on campus and so far I like it but is there anything I should be aware of? So far I already know 2 people that have graduated from there and are working and doing wonderful so I don't see any issues so far. But I do know that they are expensive so I am preparing my mind for that for that

Ok so I changed my mind I am going to Keiser University....Anyone heard anything about them??

**cassco2014** · 06-19-2010, 10:46 PM

Re:Hello everyone I am about to start @ South Univ on campus and so far I like it but is there anything I should be aware of? So far I already know 2 people that have graduated from there and are working and doing wonderful so I don't see any issues so far. But I do know that they are expensive so I am preparing my mind for that for that

Ok so I changed my mind I am going to Keiser University....Anyone heard anything about them??

**supalil** · 06-20-2010, 10:37 AM

Hi everyone,
Even though I have been a member of this site for over 1 year it's the first time I am posting and I am sorry I never visited B4. If I had I would not be in the mess I found myself in with SU. I found their info on-line & was hounded by one of their reps-Megan Sherman. She lied thru her teeth. I wanted to pursue my RN-BSN, she told me she had to enroll me in the BSN for health Sciences until my transcripts came in. Never told me that they have a 7 year limit on what courses R transferrable. Rushed me into accepting the financial aid not informing me that it was only covering 1 class at a time. I had explained that I wanted to complete the program in no more than 18 mths and she said as soon as my transcripts were received & I was given the credits then I could speed up the # of courses I take. I started, wasnt impressed by the caliber of students I interacted with & wondered what were the qualifications for admission as most of these students didn't even have elementary school level comprehension & writing skills. Anyway I was eager to get going & trusted this Megan. I kept in touch with her weekly checking on my transcript progress. Eventually it was received but my status was unchanged, I had only been given credit for some general courses, no nursing, micro or A&P. I spoke with megan about this & she told me she would have the major changed now that everything was in, she placed the call on hold stating that this had to be done by the admission dept. She came back to say everything was now in place, major changed & it would take 2-3 days to be reflected on line. I kept checking but nothing changed, couldn't reach her either. In the mean time this guy Brent Arnold calls says he is my Academic Advisor & that they have not received my High School Transcrpt so I am not eligible for Financial aid & not considered enrolled. Told him the conversations Megan & I had & that no on ever told me that High School Transcripts were needed. (Mind U I have an AAS Degree & have been a practicing RN for 8 years yet they want my High School Transcript. Go figure!) 2 weeks B4 the end of the course I cannot get anyone to speak to re registering for the next class. (Still trusted that everything would work out). Eventually I saw where I was registered for a basic computer class. Spoke with Brent telling him I dont need this class as i was computer proficient & this class was not listed in the syllabus that I had looked at. He insisted that I had to do this course as it was a prerequisite & that I was health Science major not a RN-BSN & that my nursing courses were not transferrable as they had a 7 year limit so I would have to do these courses again. He & I went on & on about this over several phone calls. I told him I could not understand their policy as I was a practicing RN licensed in sevetal states & that this was ridiculous. At that point I told them off & told him I was going to withdraw. Then I was told about the different steps I had to take to withdraw & reminded that I was indebted to them for the course which was useless anyway. They r a RIPP-OFF!!. They have a major drop-out rate which i had checked B4 registering with them. I should have known better. Now they R hounding me for $1500.00 which I dont have. BE WARNED everyone!!

**silkypink** · 07-29-2010, 12:29 AM

Hi to all,

I just wanted to comment on this thread because I was a bit shocked by some of the post. I am a South University nursing student and very happy there. South has always provided a wounderful learning enviornment and the staff is great. I started in Jan of 09 and took all of my classes online until this summer. Yes it is very hard but if you work hard it is more than possible to make good grades. There have been time that I became ill and my online instuctors always worked with me, as I had a doctor's note to back me up. I am now on campus and love that as well. All of me professors want to help and know their stuff! I am sorry for anyone who has had a negative experiance with South but I can say if you are not self-motivated or need extra help from the teacher then online schools are not the way to go. South is not the first school I have taken online classes with, and the other school was just as hard if not harder. If you take online classes exspect to work at least twice as hard as an on campus class. I hope this helps...

**brinbrooks** · 08-09-2010, 12:42 PM

I started off at SUO. But when my boyfriend and friends were all talking about thier loans and the grant they got they asked me...well all I could say is all my money went to my college. I didn't think much of it. Well after reading some of these post on this and other sites I am tring to transfer to a local community College. I am trying to see if I can cancel my loan payments b/c I am not going to pay people that really don't give you an education they promise. I would not recomend going to SUO. If your interested in the online colleges My sister and friends that take online classes are attending University of Pheonix Online. I am so upset at my expereance with and urge anyone else to not waste your money and time with them!!

**westcoast** · 08-23-2010, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by smclendon70

And I would have to disagree with you! I am no longer a student at South University Online to due to scam-like practices. As the first poster said, the rep. gives a sales pitch and promises things that they never intend to fulfill. They also make it hard for you to transfer credits that would transfer to any other reputable school in the system. Then they try to charge you for classes never taken. Their financial aid office is hard to reach by phone except when they are begging you for a non-existent payment. I would not advise anyone to go their without doing their research first, as there are many other options to getting a degree (I would first look into schools local to your area). Also, make sure you understand the difference between private and public schools; most private schools are unnecessarily expensive, why be in debt when you can go to a good local schools for thousands of dollars less! I hope someone reads this and learns from the mistakes of others...

is this school accredited?

**JimenaTatou** · 08-25-2010, 07:02 PM

Originally Posted by slgyirl99r02

This is because they are not accredited by the CCNE yet and I'm having the same problem, thought I was in their adult NP program and found out this week that they are not accredited yet and have no idea when they will be! Trying to transfer out for the fall term, hoping my credits transfer.

I'm planning on going to SU for the nursing program on campus. Wondering if I move (which I'm planning in the future) and go for my DNP will my credits transfer to another university??
Did you credits finally transfer?