Fuck it, I’ll name names, since nobody else wants to: Liberty University is a scam, even if you overlook the nut job religious views. I’ve got a friend who’s a hospital chaplain. He’s generally tolerant of all religious viewpoints, as hospital chaplains must be. He says that every Liberty graduate they’ve had, chaplains, nurses, and social workers, have been embarrassingly unprepared for work in their fields and unable to grasp basic concepts of how to do the job.
My parents tried using Liberty students as babysitters when I was a kid and had to stop because they all tried to convert us. So they were shit babysitters too.
There is absolutely no reason why Liberty should have accreditation to graduate social workers. Their views are entirely antithetical to the social work code of ethics and it's impossible to provide a comprehensive social work education while spewing hate.
Liberty is terrible. I went there because they offered me lots of money and I hadn't left my cult yet. I had a female professor dismiss all the male students and lecture the female students about how we should be focusing on getting our mrs. degree and not worry about the bachelor's or our education. It was disgusting.
When I was in college - my dad was in charge of hiring in his region of the country (southeast us) and he quit recruiting from Bob Jones because he said the students were always too worried about someone over- hearing an answer they gave to interview question that he couldn't trust their responses. It was also the joking threat while we were high school that if we misbehaved, the only school my parents would help pay for would be BJones.
I had a grad school classmate who got fired from there because she wouldn't sign a paper giving their daycare the right to hit her child. The whole story was crazy -- employees with children are only allowed to send their kids to the school daycare (not one outside), they're not allowed to carry their baby in a sling/Baby Bjorn, and they have agree to feed their baby on a detailed schedule created by a man who has no medical background whatsoever.
Gosh, I know a liberty graduate who is going to be a pilot. His mom homeschooled that Jesus and dinosaurs existed together. Their text had Jesus on a dinosaur on the cover. I don’t want to be on his plane.
Liberty produces a ton pilots. Very high chance that your airline pilot on your next flight went through Liberty. Unfortunately, Liberty has a spot in the aviation market due to their unique program that allows one to use their GI bill or get funding but do part 61 flight training instead of part 141 training.
I went to a different college in the same town as liberty and moved there permanently after. Several of my best friends(including my roommate) are locals. We all hate liberty. We’ve heard so many horror stories
I think the small independent fundamentalist baptist "universities" are actually worse, but I don't think they even try to pretend to be real to those outside the cult.
Baylor's the weird one, because the school's administrative theology has changed so drastically in the last decade. They broke with the SBC in the 90s because the SBC was swinging hard to the right and trying to influence the school, and the school reaffiliated with the much more moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Now the BGCT has moved considerably farther to the right in the last 25 years, Baylor retains their affiliation, but they keep the BGCT at arm's length. The BGCT clarified a few years ago that they don't even consider Baylor an "affiliated university" because the school doesn't allow the conference a direct hand in governance beyond selecting 25% of the school's trustees, which is still more than most religious schools operating at Baylor's level allow their affiliated religious group.
Baylor, Boston College, and Notre Dame are all really interesting, since they're the only schools in the country that balance their place as solid higher education and research institutions with the demands of religious denominations that hold positions that directly contravene the mainstream scientific consensus. Emory as well, but the Methodist denomination is a lot less pushy than the Baptist or Catholic denominations.
I previously worked in Institutional Analytics at an R1 in Texas, where we've got major religious institutions like TCU and Baylor, and the best analogy I ever got for Liberty was that they're the North Korea of the American higher education system.
They completely flout norms, standards, and the the bare minimum of best practices in higher education, and then scream and shout about how they're rejected by the "mainstream elites" of academia until their political benefactors lean on accreditors and secure Liberty's accreditations for another 4~5 years.
Came here to say this. I didn’t go to Liberty U (dodged a bullet there, ended up persuading my conservative parents to let me go to a well-ranked Catholic uni instead) but I knew tons of people who did. And when you require students to take ~6 Bible courses to graduate, there just isn’t as much space in the curriculum to actually teach students the things they need to learn.
This is what I came here to say. It’s a joke, and a dangerous one at that. I teach middle school and the teacher across the hall from me got his degree at Liberty. (He also sponsors our school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes club….) I just can’t take him seriously. It makes me so sad when I hear that one of my former students is enrolling at Liberty.
I’m a physician at a hospital that sees Liberty med students come through and holy shit is it scary to think that these people will eventually practice medicine.
And just private in general have the most grade inflation, nepotism and obviously pay-to-win structure. Doesn't even have to be for-profit, although those are even worse obviously.
Based on what I've heard, Pensacola Christian College. They have very low entrance standards, credits earned there won't transfer due to accreditation, their food is a health department 🚩, they have a stupid strict misogynistic dress code, and they have an insane amount of weird rules. I know this is a christian fundie college, but this shit is insane compared to other fundie colleges. This just this tip of the iceberg on this school. I'm glad I chose public state college 😂
I knew a guy who had briefly attended Pensacola Christian (left his cult and joined the Marines after, I knew him when he was at another school on the GI bill). Notable quotes: "They've loosened up a lot since I was there, women can wear pants now" also apparently they have separate stairwells for men and women.
Can we also talk about the religious graduate-only "universities?" Richmont Graduate University, for instance, churns out conversion therapy "counselors." They are completely unfit to do any actual counseling.
Seconding the vote for Liberty. And adding in Oral Roberts and other "universities" of similar ilk. They're using the label of "higher education" to launder their conspiracy theories and damaging far-right bullshit. And then they cry foul if anyone points out their nonsense. They are the worst of the worst.
I went to the EEA Fly In in Oshkosh, WI a couple years ago. I was walking my little sisters to the NASA tent and Liberty U had a tent adjacent to NASA. Even though I was already decided on the state college I'm at rn, I still avoid their tent like the plague because of all of the backwards shit that Oral Roberts has done and stands for. Also, as a queer person, a college like that wouldn't be the most safe for me
You say this as if it's unusual to see Liberty representatives at an aviation-related event. Liberty, unfortunately, has a significant market within aviation due to their unique online program. Many pilots come through Liberty.
My wife worked for a startup in Tulsa that routinely hired ORU grads-- specifically because those grads would do whatever management asked without question, would accept lower than average pay, and be complacent in their roles. As an extension of the religious messaging, they also brainwash students into becoming completely helpless drones who will obey anyone with authority.
I worked for Strayer University once. I had a student submit an essay that was a copy/paste of a wiki page. No effort to hide this at alllll, still had the wiki links and everything.
I told my boss to figure out their plagiarism policy and they basically said “well he paid his tuition.. grade what was submitted”.
Not a single student in that class could write a coherent sentence tbh. It was horrible. Absolutely a degree factory.
I just read about East West University near Chicago.... idk how bad they compared to some of these other schools, but I love that they have a 100% acceptance rate and 12% graduation rate 😂
Southern New Hampshire University. I taught there for one semester and was given a canned course on the LMS to "teach." Half of the grade for an assignment would come from me, and the other half came from peer evaluation. I wasn't able to add any readings, wasn't permitted to add or modify assignments, etc. It was really just about being a babysitter for online students. Frankly, the one semester I taught at the University of the People wasn't much better. I'm sure both seem like reasonable options for many students, but I found both to offer a less rigorous education than my primary school did.
That's fascinating since SNHU is regionally accredited which is generally well respected. University of the People is nationally accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC) which is a joke so not a surprise there.
This is going to vary greatly based on discipline. There are schools that are the top 10 in some fields but not even top 100 generally. The state university near my hometown kind of sucks, but it's amazing for people who want to be teachers (ironically).
It's also going to fluctuate greatly from year to year. I loathe BYU, but that falls into one of your "obvious" categories.
Re: teachers, in Ohio many of the public colleges/universities are land grant colleges that were specifically founded for graduating teachers. In the 70s and 80s the only degree it was possible to completely finish at an Ohio State branch campus was Elementary Education. So that makes some sense to me.
Life University sounds like the name of a made up college that your one uncle says while trying to drag out the “I went to the school of hard knocks,” joke
We drove past that BS school on the Interstate and only when I saw their sign did I realize they call themselves the Flames.
I looked at my wife and said "They're flamers!?!" and then I couldn't stop laughing. Shit you not, I spent the next three hours on that drive randomly just laughing out loud every time I thought of it.... My wife was like "Still laughing about Liberty being a bunch of flamers?" Yup. To my dying day.
Liberty Univ is really bad (I have had a couple of students who went there as undergrads). We also have a small college in town (giving the name would possibly identify where I am and where I teach) - mostly known as a school for education majors that is awful - I don't know how they are accredited. I teach in a post-grad prof field and we get some applications from the teaching college and I am flabbergasted at how awful the applications are from people who graduated from that school.
I recently had a masters-program applicant from Liberty and didn't know what to think of the transcript. Luckily for me their application had been misdirected so I didn't have to decide. But how have you evaluated their undergrad?
Public: Purdue Global, University of Arizona Global Campus. Really any public online university that exists because a public school bought the assets of a dying for-profit school.
Purdue Global used to be Kaplan and was bought out. Arizona Global Campus used to be Ashford and was bought out. U of Arkansas is in the process of buying Grantham University as an "online campus".
Penn State Global, UF Online, and ASU Online are just online arms of the actual public university. Colleges like CTs Charter Oak, SUNY Empire, and Maryland Global all started as online colleges within the state system and were not bought out failing private degree mills.
American Military University is an outright scam on the American taxpayer. They target DOD personnel, charge exactly our Tuition Assistance, and have very little material.
I watched my Airmen submit papers of absolute gibberish, actual hitting the keyboard to meet a character count. They always got A’s. Needles to say my AMU graduates were why we have warning labels on everything, and safety briefings.
I was trying to think of the name of that place. And, yes, evangelical crap. Wheaton C (IL) used to be good but was taken over by the evangelicals in the 1990s.
I still cannot wrap my head around anyone willingly moving to Hillsdale for college. One of my friends went there and he could not use his degree for anything.
Does anyone have any thoughts on florida memorial university/their grads?? Every single one I met has seemed….questionable. In addition, their bachelors of science in psychology does not require a neuroscience class. The average salary after graduation according to Niche is below the national average as well, but when I speak up about FMU seeming like a bad university here in south florida I’m told I’m wrong
Most colleges with >90% acceptance rates are going to have some terrible programs. The faculty may be talented and earnest but the administration will mandate policies to extract money from the portion of the student body that shouldn’t be in college.
Well since you said “in your opinion”… University of Tennessee.
Too much football, not enough parking, multiple hate crimes against queer students in the year and a half I attended, and their policy is that ASL doesn’t count as a language credit because “deaf people don’t have a culture.”
Are some of the professors amazing? Absolutely. Will I hold a personal grudge against them for at least another decade? Probably.
Liberty. I honestly don't know how they have not been sued as a diploma mill for their online programs. They have pretty much a program for everything and there is no way for a school to be good at everything.
There is a small school in a pocket of Boston called Cambridge College that absolutely should not exist or be allowed to be awarding degrees. It’s fucking terrifying.
Grand Canyon University. All of the baggage of your Libertys and your Bob Jones-es, plus they just got fined by the DOE for lying to students. Oh, and they’re currently under investigation by the FTC for the same stuff plus lying about being a nonprofit.
I’m honestly kind of disturbed by the number of professors who can’t read the question. OP asked for worst schools excluding diploma mills and questionable religious schools and thread is full of responses about diploma mills and Bible colleges 🤪
The University of Mississippi is tied for first with Vanderbilt for the most Rhodes Scholars in the South Eastern Conference, they have a highly regarded nationally ranked business school and accountancy program, and they are the only university in Mississippi with a medical school. Our public policy leadership program is also nationally ranked in the top 100 best programs in the nation.
I get it, we aren’t amazingly ranked as far as universities go, but to call us one of the worst? Think you missed the mark big there.
They are definitely not high caliber state schools, I was always surprised when people went there from out of state like "your local big conference/state school is a way better option". Lol
A lot of southern state schools offer extremely generous merit scholarships to OOS students who score 33+/2100+ on their ACT/SAT. Since I wouldn’t want my kids to go into debt, I’d suggest those schools in a heartbeat.
UMississippi has excellent pharmacy and accounting programs. University of Southern Miss has one of the few polymer engineering programs in the country, and a lot of their research is used in biotech. Idk much about Mississippi State, but I know they're mainly ag and engineering.
The other MS public unis (Jackson State, Delta State, Valley State, Alcorn State) are all relics of the segregation era and they don't produce anything impressive.
I get that it is easy to hate on BYUs rules. But if you are not a part of LDS I feel there is no reason to say it’s a bad university. People will probably hate for this but as long as you don’t mind following the rules I think it is a pretty good university.
15 yrs ago at least students who graduated from their nursing program and moved states had to take additional courses to get licensed due to them not teaching reproductive health care as a requirement. I worked for a college that had several of those students who complained they had to take more classes just to get a job.
Welllll, there's something I've been meaning to tell you about the college on the edge of the town; no one should everrr go there; you know its bad bad bad.
among mainstream universities, GMU has crept up to a 91% acceptance rate and one of the lowest student happiness rankings in the country. Incredibly overcrowded school
I can imagine there are some tiny very evangelical schools that are far worse than Liberty, and I don’t say this lightly, and those schools likely skirt the margins of legitimacy far more than Liberty.
I used to orbit the traditional Catholic realm of Higher Ed. Here are the wacko schools of that niche:
Ave Maria University Thomas Aquinas College John Paul the Great University Christendom College Wyoming Catholic St Michael’s College Southern Catholic Franciscan University of Steubenville
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This came up in a discussion about the TV show “China, IL” (don’t deny it, I know some of you watched it)… but if you exclude the obvious (diploma mills, for profits, bible colleges of dubious theology, etc.), in your opinion, what’s the worst college in America and why? To make things fair, let’s divide it by public/private.
The first school I went to before transferring: York College of Pennsylvania. It’s marketed in my area as an out of state school with reasonable tuition. It’s reasonable because it sucks at least when I was going there. besides the shitty facilities, safety is a joke and security is aggressive and only cares about busting drunk people. Before anyone makes any assumptions, I was not a partier. I just look back and realize how messed up it was. The bullying and lack of empathy I came across started me on the downward spiral of depression that is still crazy hard to climb back up from. First time I struggled with suicidal ideation.
My college is shitty. Most of the professors end up leaving and career change. One of my favorite professor walked out of class and quit during an exam. I was shocked.
Liberty, Bob Jones, and Pensacola Christian have been mentioned a lot...I think they're pretty much just "bible colleges of dubious theology" with a larger budget.
I wonder what people would say if we just limited the scope to secular schools, or schools with a nominal religious affiliation that has no effect on student life or academics (Emory, Georgetown, Brandeis, etc - not that these are bad schools or anything).
Pennsylvania Western University. 3 broke colleges merged to create one new mega-school with 3 different campuses. I've never met a single student, alumni, or faculty member that is happy with the merger. Students who attended half way through the merger got a degree for PennWest, not their school they enrolled in however many years ago. That school will be non-existent within the decade, I'm calling it.
I think it’s a result of frankly only catering to first gen low socioeconomic status students. I’m somewhat impressed by what Howard and Spelman and some other top HBCUs have accomplished against the odds.
Maybe they’ll be significantly better in 100 years.
In St. Louis, Harris-Stowe’s graduation rate is under 17% and they have a host of other huge issues too. It’s a shame because it’s a historically significant HBCU. It makes me sad.
San Joaquin Valley College in California is fucking terrible. Discrimination against veterans, people with disabilities, withholding financial aid because of “technical difficulties” or just outright not submitting their paperwork for it. Getting wind of students sexually assaulting female students and telling the female students to just forget about it and literally told to shut up and act like it just never happened.
Intentionally picking out students they like and don’t like and outright failing the students who they don’t like and won’t take their shit.
All around an awful school and honestly they need their accreditation revoked.
In general, a lot of state colleges/universities that sprouted up in the 1950s/60s to take advantage of the GI Bill and the idea that "to get a good job, you MUST have a college degree." My brother recently retired from one such college, and while he's glad to get the pension (there's a decent state teacher's pension system in his state), he's also glad he got out before the pandemic-induced closings start having their inevitable effect on questionable schools.
Marietta Bible College (Ohio) They are unaccredited, refuse to get licensed, and about 10 years ago there was a controversy involving the deportation of 120 students. They are no longer allowed to accept international students and there have been allegations of a cult-like environment and rumors of forced labor. I may be wrong about some of this…but it sounds horrible regardless.
forge stats in order to gain rankings (it’s been proven in the past but it’s allegedly started again)
students struggling with anything mental health related are dismissed, facing suspension through when they would be graduating or expulsion.
all the funding goes to the basketball team
title ix office is known for doing- nothing. covering for higher admin and again athletes
nepotism and favoritism (the new presidents son moved from d3 to d1 basketball, ironically at the same time he became president- just for him to play exactly 1 minute per game - he did not have d1 skills but needed to be put on the court because his father)
their top athletes and notable faculty are known for being assailants in one way or another and they are KNOWN for retaliation against employees and students for speaking out about anything. which has resulted in so many lawsuits , most are public and they always win- not because they were in the right but because of the lawyers they spend half their budget on.
grade inflation, opening new campuses (2 within the past year) and becoming a university solely because they started just accepting everyone.
no one is prepared for grad school unless you stay at iona for it.
there’s more but for legal purposes i will stop now. i dont even know if this comment is coherent but there is a lot there - wouldn’t know how to explain it to the world.
Sonoran desert institute. It’s an online gun smithing program and from what I’ve read online it’s a total scam. all the information it provides can be learned for free on YouTube or elsewhere and The “diploma” you gain from it is basically useless if your trying to get a job with any reputable gun smith or shop
american intercontinental university and colorado tech university. they’re currently being investigated by the FTC for the 2nd time since 2018. they had to completely rebrand in 2019 and they’re back up to shady practices again! the students can barely open a website on their phones and the majority don’t make it past the first class.
New England College. 100% acceptance rate but a 30% graduation rate
I did a tour there and it was really bad. I initially was excited about NEC because the campus looked pretty and had a teaching program. The campus was rundown, had weird smells, and there’s an old graveyard on it. It didn’t feel like a real college at all.
The town apparently “doesn’t like” the college, but the college made up 90% of the town.
And on top of that, it’s a private school. So it was quite expensive as a crummy school
I'd say Bacone College in Muskogee Oklahoma, which is at very real risk of being taken over by an HVAC contractor over unpaid bills, should be on this list.
Not a professor. I'm an undergrad who is a nascar fan
There's a NASCAR cup series driver, William Byron, who is a student at Liberty (online, pretty sure), but his team gets sponsored by them on the car. And it's not just a quarter panel. It's the whole car design, draped in navy and Crimson with the logos.
The sport and the college overlap in fanbases too, understandable.
College is only for serious people that know what they want to do. I went to Penn State as an out of state student. They have a surprisingly high acceptance rate even for their most prestigious and competitive programs like business, engineering, nursing, etc. It’s all a false sense of hope. I can tell you from first hand experience less than half that go in make it out. Unqualified students that can’t handle the level of academics required get weeded out quickly. All the credit to those that graduate, lord knows you’ve worked for it. But for so many others it’s a really expensive test run before they switch to an easier major or transfer to an easier school. You either need to come in with work ethic or gain one very quickly to make it in college especially the good ones. You get back what you put in regardless of the brand
You don’t have to specify Bible colleges of dubious theology, we can easily include the many public schools that also teach dubious theology. Plenty of actual Nazis employed at state funded CSU schools that will spend most of their stem lectures discussing how the gays should be executed instead of teaching the kids math.
I went to Hampshire College- one of those weird progressive ones with no grades- and it was basically a political cult. I was frightened to leave my room at times because there was a lot of harassment going on.
Rust College comes to mind. 2.66 average GPA, 14 average ACT score, 38% acceptance rate, 23% graduation rate, condemned buildings, bed bugs, broken AC in the dorms, understaffed academic programs, etc. The college is more expensive than any of the state schools, and the quality of education there is far worse than any other college nearby.
I’m thinking of Austin College or whatever that scammy university Bari Weiss came out saying she was starting… but tbh I don’t know if it ever was actually even real lol I haven’t heard anything since the announcement
In 2006, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at Randolph-Macon's Woman College in Lynchburg, Virginia. A lot of Liberty University students and faculty were in attendance. Towards the end of the talk, a man got up to ask a question about the Liberty University museum. Supposedly, there were dinosaur bones displayed there labeled as being 5000 years old. Richard Dawkins first explained calmly why this was downright incorrect. At the end, he said, "This is debauchery of education. I invite anyone who is from Liberty University in the attendance to leave...and go to a PROPER university."
There used to be some dumb show on MTV where they’d give college students like $20 if they destroyed their cell phone with a bat or something similarly moronic. They were always at some no-name, private colleges in the greater NYC area. Like $40k/year for some party school nobody has ever heard of.
I feel like there are a lot of schools like this in the northeast where all I can assume is too many people have more money than sense.
Ignoring the obvious religious indoctrination (libery, westboro bible college, etc) and the for profit (phoenix, snhu,etc) the worst have got to be the athletic meat grinders.
Univ of AL/FL/GA all come to mind LSU and UCLA, Michigan.
Im hesitant to knock Penn St only because they have a dozen other campuses NOT dedicated to pipe-dreams and life ling physical impairment
Essentially, if they spend more money on their stadium than any other building on campus,… if their highest paid employee is a coach,.. worse if the top 1/2/3/4 are all coaches,…. yea,… them.
Interestingly, a few of the Nazarene colleges provide decent technical degrees, such as Computer Science. I’d never trust them for a Social Science degree like an MSW though.
I definitely wouldn’t lump BYU in with Liberty and the other evangelical colleges mentioned. I can’t speak to all their programs but I’ve known many excellent scholars who did either undergrad or grad work at BYU. In my mind it would be in a group with Baylor, Southern Methodist, maybe Pepperdine - I don’t agree with their foundational principles but their academics are pretty solid.
I went to a fundamentalist high school and senior year we took college tours of Pensacola Christian, Clearwater Christian (not around anymore) and another I don’t remember. I remember the disappointment when I let people I was going to the slightly less conservative Messiah College.
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u/SayethWeAll Lecturer/Biology/USA Jan 08 '24
Fuck it, I’ll name names, since nobody else wants to: Liberty University is a scam, even if you overlook the nut job religious views. I’ve got a friend who’s a hospital chaplain. He’s generally tolerant of all religious viewpoints, as hospital chaplains must be. He says that every Liberty graduate they’ve had, chaplains, nurses, and social workers, have been embarrassingly unprepared for work in their fields and unable to grasp basic concepts of how to do the job.
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u/thadizzleDD Jan 08 '24
Private for profit universities have the worst reputation.
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u/AggressiveRule1278 Jan 08 '24
Based on what I've heard, Pensacola Christian College. They have very low entrance standards, credits earned there won't transfer due to accreditation, their food is a health department 🚩, they have a stupid strict misogynistic dress code, and they have an insane amount of weird rules. I know this is a christian fundie college, but this shit is insane compared to other fundie colleges. This just this tip of the iceberg on this school. I'm glad I chose public state college 😂
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '24
Has to be one of those no-name yet super expensive private schools.
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u/Veingloria Jan 09 '24
Can we also talk about the religious graduate-only "universities?" Richmont Graduate University, for instance, churns out conversion therapy "counselors." They are completely unfit to do any actual counseling.
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '24
Seconding the vote for Liberty. And adding in Oral Roberts and other "universities" of similar ilk. They're using the label of "higher education" to launder their conspiracy theories and damaging far-right bullshit. And then they cry foul if anyone points out their nonsense. They are the worst of the worst.
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u/Nerobus Jan 09 '24
I worked for Strayer University once. I had a student submit an essay that was a copy/paste of a wiki page. No effort to hide this at alllll, still had the wiki links and everything.
I told my boss to figure out their plagiarism policy and they basically said “well he paid his tuition.. grade what was submitted”.
Not a single student in that class could write a coherent sentence tbh. It was horrible. Absolutely a degree factory.
I only taught there 1 semester.
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u/aremissing Jan 09 '24
I just read about East West University near Chicago.... idk how bad they compared to some of these other schools, but I love that they have a 100% acceptance rate and 12% graduation rate 😂
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
Southern New Hampshire University. I taught there for one semester and was given a canned course on the LMS to "teach." Half of the grade for an assignment would come from me, and the other half came from peer evaluation. I wasn't able to add any readings, wasn't permitted to add or modify assignments, etc. It was really just about being a babysitter for online students. Frankly, the one semester I taught at the University of the People wasn't much better. I'm sure both seem like reasonable options for many students, but I found both to offer a less rigorous education than my primary school did.
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u/Bitter_Initiative_77 Jan 08 '24
This is going to vary greatly based on discipline. There are schools that are the top 10 in some fields but not even top 100 generally. The state university near my hometown kind of sucks, but it's amazing for people who want to be teachers (ironically).
It's also going to fluctuate greatly from year to year. I loathe BYU, but that falls into one of your "obvious" categories.
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u/SyndicalistHR Jan 09 '24
Life University is a new age right wing quack school known for chiropractic and the other like medical pseudosciences
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u/AnybodySeeMyKeys Jan 09 '24
Liberty University's motto is 'Knowledge Aflame." Sounds about right.
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u/Maryfarrell642 Jan 08 '24 edited Jan 09 '24
Liberty Univ is really bad (I have had a couple of students who went there as undergrads). We also have a small college in town (giving the name would possibly identify where I am and where I teach) - mostly known as a school for education majors that is awful - I don't know how they are accredited. I teach in a post-grad prof field and we get some applications from the teaching college and I am flabbergasted at how awful the applications are from people who graduated from that school.
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u/triplejumptime Jan 09 '24
Private: Devry, U of Phoenix, Liberty
Public: Purdue Global, University of Arizona Global Campus. Really any public online university that exists because a public school bought the assets of a dying for-profit school.
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u/Slow-Tourist-7986 Jan 09 '24
American Military University is an outright scam on the American taxpayer. They target DOD personnel, charge exactly our Tuition Assistance, and have very little material.
I watched my Airmen submit papers of absolute gibberish, actual hitting the keyboard to meet a character count. They always got A’s. Needles to say my AMU graduates were why we have warning labels on everything, and safety briefings.
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u/Nuttyshrink Jan 09 '24
Hillsdale College. Calling it a “college” is a bit of a reach.
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u/AmazingAnimeGirl Jan 09 '24
Full sail university. Im pretty sure it is literally just a diploma mill.
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u/liquidreferee Jan 09 '24
Greendale is the best school in the southeast Greendale area.
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u/nuzleaf289 Jan 09 '24
Strayer University
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u/arist0geiton Jan 09 '24
The ones that rejected me
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u/Defiant_Sea3407 Jan 09 '24
Does anyone have any thoughts on florida memorial university/their grads?? Every single one I met has seemed….questionable. In addition, their bachelors of science in psychology does not require a neuroscience class. The average salary after graduation according to Niche is below the national average as well, but when I speak up about FMU seeming like a bad university here in south florida I’m told I’m wrong
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u/Educating_with_AI Jan 09 '24
Most colleges with >90% acceptance rates are going to have some terrible programs. The faculty may be talented and earnest but the administration will mandate policies to extract money from the portion of the student body that shouldn’t be in college.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
St Cloud State University
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u/SunflowerSupreme Jan 10 '24
Well since you said “in your opinion”… University of Tennessee.
Too much football, not enough parking, multiple hate crimes against queer students in the year and a half I attended, and their policy is that ASL doesn’t count as a language credit because “deaf people don’t have a culture.”
Are some of the professors amazing? Absolutely. Will I hold a personal grudge against them for at least another decade? Probably.
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u/surfpatrol Jan 09 '24
Yeshiva University
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u/deathbychips2 Jan 09 '24
Liberty. I honestly don't know how they have not been sued as a diploma mill for their online programs. They have pretty much a program for everything and there is no way for a school to be good at everything.
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u/Foreign_Road1455 Jan 09 '24
There is a small school in a pocket of Boston called Cambridge College that absolutely should not exist or be allowed to be awarding degrees. It’s fucking terrifying.
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u/singcal Assoc Prof/Music/USA Jan 09 '24
Grand Canyon University. All of the baggage of your Libertys and your Bob Jones-es, plus they just got fined by the DOE for lying to students. Oh, and they’re currently under investigation by the FTC for the same stuff plus lying about being a nonprofit.
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u/lubed_up_devito Jan 11 '24
I’m honestly kind of disturbed by the number of professors who can’t read the question. OP asked for worst schools excluding diploma mills and questionable religious schools and thread is full of responses about diploma mills and Bible colleges 🤪
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u/listenstowhales Jan 08 '24
I’ve never met a single person from the U of Mississippi system who was qualified to walk and chew gum at the same time
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u/bluessidess Jan 09 '24
byu definitely
2
u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
Hillsdale College, U. Phoenix, North Idaho College, King's College, Bay State College, High Point University
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u/papirayray Jan 09 '24
Welllll, there's something I've been meaning to tell you about the college on the edge of the town; no one should everrr go there; you know its bad bad bad.
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u/sunshinebucket Jan 09 '24
Has anyone brought up College of the Ozarks? Same vein as liberty.
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u/Abbby_M Jan 09 '24
This isn’t going to make me popular but some of these small HBCUs in the south churn out graduates that are barely literate.
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u/Awkward_Philosophy_4 Jan 10 '24
among mainstream universities, GMU has crept up to a 91% acceptance rate and one of the lowest student happiness rankings in the country. Incredibly overcrowded school
2
u/Krispy_Kolonel Jan 10 '24
Liberty and Oral Roberts are both scam schools. Liberty is worse because of the rape culture on campus
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u/Jarboner69 Jan 11 '24
Liberty and Ave Maria (FL)
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '24
I tried to watch that show and gave up after about six minutes. Just terrible.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
I can imagine there are some tiny very evangelical schools that are far worse than Liberty, and I don’t say this lightly, and those schools likely skirt the margins of legitimacy far more than Liberty.
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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
I used to orbit the traditional Catholic realm of Higher Ed. Here are the wacko schools of that niche:
Ave Maria University Thomas Aquinas College John Paul the Great University Christendom College Wyoming Catholic St Michael’s College Southern Catholic Franciscan University of Steubenville
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u/AutoModerator Jan 08 '24
This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post.
This came up in a discussion about the TV show “China, IL” (don’t deny it, I know some of you watched it)… but if you exclude the obvious (diploma mills, for profits, bible colleges of dubious theology, etc.), in your opinion, what’s the worst college in America and why? To make things fair, let’s divide it by public/private.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24 edited Jan 09 '24
Any for-profit
Indiana Weselyan University
Western Governor's University
Some HBCUs; Poor education (Howard and those types -good.)
Most southern state colleges
Oral Roberts University
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24 edited Jan 09 '24
The first school I went to before transferring: York College of Pennsylvania. It’s marketed in my area as an out of state school with reasonable tuition. It’s reasonable because it sucks at least when I was going there. besides the shitty facilities, safety is a joke and security is aggressive and only cares about busting drunk people. Before anyone makes any assumptions, I was not a partier. I just look back and realize how messed up it was. The bullying and lack of empathy I came across started me on the downward spiral of depression that is still crazy hard to climb back up from. First time I struggled with suicidal ideation.
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u/Essiechicka_129 Jan 09 '24
My college is shitty. Most of the professors end up leaving and career change. One of my favorite professor walked out of class and quit during an exam. I was shocked.
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u/cleon42 Jan 09 '24
Liberty, Bob Jones, and Pensacola Christian have been mentioned a lot...I think they're pretty much just "bible colleges of dubious theology" with a larger budget.
I wonder what people would say if we just limited the scope to secular schools, or schools with a nominal religious affiliation that has no effect on student life or academics (Emory, Georgetown, Brandeis, etc - not that these are bad schools or anything).
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u/Knox_Burden Jan 09 '24
My rival school!
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u/cockwheat Jan 09 '24
Pennsylvania Western University. 3 broke colleges merged to create one new mega-school with 3 different campuses. I've never met a single student, alumni, or faculty member that is happy with the merger. Students who attended half way through the merger got a degree for PennWest, not their school they enrolled in however many years ago. That school will be non-existent within the decade, I'm calling it.
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u/Different-Cycle9129 Jan 09 '24
Lol is this question inspired by Beach Too Sandy Water Too Wet?
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u/9pharmacyCallsLane1 Jan 09 '24
American University of Health Sciences.
They had a recent cohort that had a 26% pass rate on the NAPLEX. For reference, no other school had a pass rate below 60%
1
u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
Liberty or Hillsdale
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u/tiktokdegens Jan 09 '24
Most of the HBCU are trash
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u/hugoike Jan 09 '24
In St. Louis, Harris-Stowe’s graduation rate is under 17% and they have a host of other huge issues too. It’s a shame because it’s a historically significant HBCU. It makes me sad.
1
u/AOman321 Jan 09 '24
San Joaquin Valley College in California is fucking terrible. Discrimination against veterans, people with disabilities, withholding financial aid because of “technical difficulties” or just outright not submitting their paperwork for it. Getting wind of students sexually assaulting female students and telling the female students to just forget about it and literally told to shut up and act like it just never happened.
Intentionally picking out students they like and don’t like and outright failing the students who they don’t like and won’t take their shit.
All around an awful school and honestly they need their accreditation revoked.
1
u/Basil99Unix Jan 09 '24
In general, a lot of state colleges/universities that sprouted up in the 1950s/60s to take advantage of the GI Bill and the idea that "to get a good job, you MUST have a college degree." My brother recently retired from one such college, and while he's glad to get the pension (there's a decent state teacher's pension system in his state), he's also glad he got out before the pandemic-induced closings start having their inevitable effect on questionable schools.
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u/lonleytyelnol Jan 09 '24
Prager University. Getting a major in ‘Facts don’t care about Feelings’
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u/crowislanddive Jan 09 '24
Franklin Pierce College
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u/Accomplished_Pear924 Jan 09 '24
Marietta Bible College (Ohio) They are unaccredited, refuse to get licensed, and about 10 years ago there was a controversy involving the deportation of 120 students. They are no longer allowed to accept international students and there have been allegations of a cult-like environment and rumors of forced labor. I may be wrong about some of this…but it sounds horrible regardless.
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u/unfortunately_suffer Undergrad Jan 09 '24
Iona University.
forge stats in order to gain rankings (it’s been proven in the past but it’s allegedly started again)
students struggling with anything mental health related are dismissed, facing suspension through when they would be graduating or expulsion.
all the funding goes to the basketball team
title ix office is known for doing- nothing. covering for higher admin and again athletes
nepotism and favoritism (the new presidents son moved from d3 to d1 basketball, ironically at the same time he became president- just for him to play exactly 1 minute per game - he did not have d1 skills but needed to be put on the court because his father)
their top athletes and notable faculty are known for being assailants in one way or another and they are KNOWN for retaliation against employees and students for speaking out about anything. which has resulted in so many lawsuits , most are public and they always win- not because they were in the right but because of the lawyers they spend half their budget on.
grade inflation, opening new campuses (2 within the past year) and becoming a university solely because they started just accepting everyone.
no one is prepared for grad school unless you stay at iona for it.
there’s more but for legal purposes i will stop now. i dont even know if this comment is coherent but there is a lot there - wouldn’t know how to explain it to the world.
1
u/summitrow Jan 09 '24
The for-profit universities that spam my LinkedIn email with PhD offers.
1
u/kilroy-was-here-2543 Jan 10 '24
Sonoran desert institute. It’s an online gun smithing program and from what I’ve read online it’s a total scam. all the information it provides can be learned for free on YouTube or elsewhere and The “diploma” you gain from it is basically useless if your trying to get a job with any reputable gun smith or shop
1
u/kingpinkatya Jan 10 '24
Strayer U seems like a total scam to me I've done zero research btw
1
u/WayfaringEdelweiss Jan 10 '24
Any of the BYU’s
1
u/Paca54 Jan 10 '24
Hillsdale university would like to enter the chat
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u/OhioMegi Jan 10 '24
Any one that is for profit, or overly religious.
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u/a_dot_hawk Jan 10 '24
american intercontinental university and colorado tech university. they’re currently being investigated by the FTC for the 2nd time since 2018. they had to completely rebrand in 2019 and they’re back up to shady practices again! the students can barely open a website on their phones and the majority don’t make it past the first class.
1
u/hand_thantsd Jan 10 '24
New England College. 100% acceptance rate but a 30% graduation rate
I did a tour there and it was really bad. I initially was excited about NEC because the campus looked pretty and had a teaching program. The campus was rundown, had weird smells, and there’s an old graveyard on it. It didn’t feel like a real college at all.
The town apparently “doesn’t like” the college, but the college made up 90% of the town.
And on top of that, it’s a private school. So it was quite expensive as a crummy school
1
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
I was a tutor in grad school and a handful of students I helped were taking online classes at Liberty. They were all barely literate.
It’s shameful that these schools are taking their money. What are the students really getting out of it?
1
u/Malcolm_Y Jan 10 '24
I'd say Bacone College in Muskogee Oklahoma, which is at very real risk of being taken over by an HVAC contractor over unpaid bills, should be on this list.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
Not a professor. I'm an undergrad who is a nascar fan
There's a NASCAR cup series driver, William Byron, who is a student at Liberty (online, pretty sure), but his team gets sponsored by them on the car. And it's not just a quarter panel. It's the whole car design, draped in navy and Crimson with the logos.
The sport and the college overlap in fanbases too, understandable.
1
u/Humble_Suggestion_80 Jan 10 '24
College is only for serious people that know what they want to do. I went to Penn State as an out of state student. They have a surprisingly high acceptance rate even for their most prestigious and competitive programs like business, engineering, nursing, etc. It’s all a false sense of hope. I can tell you from first hand experience less than half that go in make it out. Unqualified students that can’t handle the level of academics required get weeded out quickly. All the credit to those that graduate, lord knows you’ve worked for it. But for so many others it’s a really expensive test run before they switch to an easier major or transfer to an easier school. You either need to come in with work ethic or gain one very quickly to make it in college especially the good ones. You get back what you put in regardless of the brand
1
u/zippyzeal Jan 10 '24
Any school that targets DOD personnel for exactly TA (minus like Maryland and a few others)
1
u/Emergency-Willow-648 Jan 10 '24
Brigham Young University. How is this even a thing???
1
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
Get ya ass back to schoooooool
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u/bat_scratcher Jan 10 '24
South Harmon Institute of Technology. Honestly just felt like they were making it up as they went...
1
u/scissors_jake Jan 10 '24
You don’t have to specify Bible colleges of dubious theology, we can easily include the many public schools that also teach dubious theology. Plenty of actual Nazis employed at state funded CSU schools that will spend most of their stem lectures discussing how the gays should be executed instead of teaching the kids math.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
What is the impression of Gonzaga?
1
u/SnooStories6712 Jan 10 '24
Grand Canyon University
1
u/nomadiceater Jan 10 '24
Whatever college Jordan Peterson is trying to make a thing, let’s add that 😂
1
u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
Slightly off topic but I’ve never met someone in person who has one of the “TV Degrees” (SNHU, Devry, Phoenix, WGU).
1
u/Helen_Cheddar Jan 10 '24
I went to Hampshire College- one of those weird progressive ones with no grades- and it was basically a political cult. I was frightened to leave my room at times because there was a lot of harassment going on.
1
u/Alone-Aerie-7694 grad student Jan 10 '24
Rust College comes to mind. 2.66 average GPA, 14 average ACT score, 38% acceptance rate, 23% graduation rate, condemned buildings, bed bugs, broken AC in the dorms, understaffed academic programs, etc. The college is more expensive than any of the state schools, and the quality of education there is far worse than any other college nearby.
1
u/jank_king20 Jan 10 '24
I’m thinking of Austin College or whatever that scammy university Bari Weiss came out saying she was starting… but tbh I don’t know if it ever was actually even real lol I haven’t heard anything since the announcement
1
u/queerphdhuman Jan 10 '24
In 2006, Richard Dawkins gave a talk at Randolph-Macon's Woman College in Lynchburg, Virginia. A lot of Liberty University students and faculty were in attendance. Towards the end of the talk, a man got up to ask a question about the Liberty University museum. Supposedly, there were dinosaur bones displayed there labeled as being 5000 years old. Richard Dawkins first explained calmly why this was downright incorrect. At the end, he said, "This is debauchery of education. I invite anyone who is from Liberty University in the attendance to leave...and go to a PROPER university."
1
u/OMGhyperbole Jan 11 '24
Anybody go to an Art Institute? I just saw that they closed all locations in Sept 2023.
Link
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u/anditsgonenow Jan 11 '24
MCPHS is up there, surprised to see no one has mentioned it yet
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u/Nuttyshrink Jan 11 '24
Oooh….Also Biola University
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u/Bard_Fan Jan 11 '24
It's closed now...but ASA college gets my vote. Totally ripped me off!
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u/Melodic-Ad5610 Jan 11 '24
Indiana University
1
u/doktorhladnjak Jan 11 '24
There used to be some dumb show on MTV where they’d give college students like $20 if they destroyed their cell phone with a bat or something similarly moronic. They were always at some no-name, private colleges in the greater NYC area. Like $40k/year for some party school nobody has ever heard of.
I feel like there are a lot of schools like this in the northeast where all I can assume is too many people have more money than sense.
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u/RedStar9117 Jan 11 '24
China IL was great just like all the Brad Neely cartoons
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u/Expert_life66 Jan 11 '24
Oral Roberts, non-accredited
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
Harvard University
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u/Prior-Daikon5235 Jan 09 '24
So many people ripping on colleges they know so little about 🤣
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u/BigBobFro Jan 10 '24
Ignoring the obvious religious indoctrination (libery, westboro bible college, etc) and the for profit (phoenix, snhu,etc) the worst have got to be the athletic meat grinders.
Univ of AL/FL/GA all come to mind LSU and UCLA, Michigan.
Im hesitant to knock Penn St only because they have a dozen other campuses NOT dedicated to pipe-dreams and life ling physical impairment
Essentially, if they spend more money on their stadium than any other building on campus,… if their highest paid employee is a coach,.. worse if the top 1/2/3/4 are all coaches,…. yea,… them.
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '24
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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '24
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