I wanted to let you know how angry and disappointed I am in Mizzou’s Online program. I have worked extremely hard on my Master’s degree while working 50-hour work weeks. I have taken every course I need in order to graduate in the spring of 2012 and was just told this week that my final course is no longer going to be offered this spring. This is a contradiction to what my adviser told me on August 10, 2011.
I don’t understand how Mizzou can require that you fill our a program of study form in order to graduate with a Master’s degree, go through the trouble of having your advisor look it over and approve it, if they are going to change the courses that are being offered with no notice to their students. I decided to take classes at Mizzou because I believed it was a good program that would be fair to its students and due to it being an online degree, it would work with my schedule.
In addition to this, I submitted my program of study to Anthony Barbis on August 10, 2011 stating that I would be taking the Practicum course during the spring semester of 2012. Even though my program of study was approved, I am now being told that the course I listed, during the semesters I listed, are no longer being offered. If I knew that this class was not going to be offered in the spring, I would have taken it this fall or I wouldnít have taken so many courses this semester (9 hours) just to take 1 credit hour in the spring. I trusted that Mizzou would help guide me through the program successfully, so that I would graduate this spring. In order to graduate this Spring, I enrolled in 9 hours this semester (Fall 2011) and am successfully completing all of the work to ensure that I can keep my 4.0 grade point average while working 50 hours a week. I did this because I was under the impression that I would be able to take my Practicum this Spring and graduate this May. With the current job that I have I also am eligible for a pay raise once I earn my Master’s degree.
Due to the fact that this class is no longer being offered in the spring, I will be losing out on my 4,000 dollar pay raise for the beginning of my new contract, which will begin in August of 2012. I am extremely disappointed that I was told that this course would be offered in the spring and now I am told that it isn’t, with no time to alter my course load in order to graduate this spring. I also don’t understand why this program is not even being opened for enrollment.
How can you tell that there will be insufficient enrollment numbers to offer the course, if you aren’t even allowing your students the option to enroll? I chose Mizzou for my online Master’s degree because I thought I would be treated fairly and after working extra hard this semester, I won’t even have the option of graduating this spring as planned. I am writing this letter to express to you how disappointed and angry I am that Mizzou would do this to their students. I hope you can pass this information along to the student body, so that they are aware that this could happen to them.
Sincerely,
Lisa Antrobus
lmacm4@mail.missouri.edu