written complaint – Matthew Chan: Real Estate Broker, Publisher, Instructor, Investor

January 31 2012

University of Phoenix: The Ideal Faculty Member

Matthew Chan University of Phoenix academic bureaucracy, entrepreneur, faculty compensation, faculty indoctrination, faculty recruiter, part-time faculty, university of phoenix, uopx, written complaint 0

univ-of-phoenix One of the questions I want answered is when going for a job, project, or assignment that requires my personal work, services, or talents, is: What are you looking for in an ideal candidate? In this case with University of Phoenix, I asked, “What is the ideal faculty member?”. The answer I received came from a variety of sources that included the University of Phoenix FAQ, employees, interviews, and what I was able to figure out on my own.

You might be surprised with the list I come up with.

1. UOPX prefers part-time faculty. In fact, the majority of the faculty is part-time which is one of the big criticisms from traditional academia. But that argument carries little weight with me because I have seen and met many full-time faculty over the years and those people couldn’t survive the outside world for more than a year. They like the protective, insulation of academia. In any case, I digress. There is no big commitment or promise needed to keep part-time faculty around. No benefits needed to pay. Easy to hire, easy to fire.

2. They prefer faculty that work in areas in which they teach. They want faculty to have at least 5 years in relevant areas. I don’t have anything bad to say. It makes sense and I can get onboard with that.

3. They prefer faculty members that have PhD degrees. People with PhD are relatively scarce as far as the general population goes. In the world of academia, the higher the degree, the better. It looks good on paper and good for its reputation as a university. Goodness knows UOPX need all the help they can in the reputation department. For UOPX, this means PhD faculty gets paid more and have a better chance of being promoted into administrative and leadership positions. They get preference for teaching the courses they want.

4. They want faculty to go through a “Faculty Indoctrination Program”. By going through their indoctrination program, UPOX will more likely have new faculty do things the UOPX way. Interestingly, I have noticed a large number of UOPX employees that were indoctrinated simply because they were UOPX graduates then became UOPX employees themselves.

5. They want faculty members to happily and enthusiastically attend extracurricular department meetings, graduations, and other important social functions to represent the local UOPX campus. It makes for good PR in the local community and local campus cohesiveness. However, it is my understanding that many part-time faculty struggle with this and really do not like this. These extracurricular events tend to be “inconveniently” scheduled since most part-time faculty have full-time jobs and family obligations. It is already all they can do simply to meet and teach their courses much less attend additional functions with little or no pay. If you become UOPX faculty, be prepared to put on a happy face at all these extra activities and meetings especially if you want any hope of being promoted to an administrative or leadership position.

6. UOPX says they want “real-world” professionals as part of their faculty. I would say that they want the corporate employee types, not business owners or entrepreneurs as faculty. In theory, they may say they want them but the faculty recruiting process has little or no clue how to attract or deal with business owners or entrepreneurs. Time is their greatest asset and they have little patience for unnecessary bureaucracy especially from faculty recruiters who have far less experience than the people they are recruiting. Freedom and independence are also very important qualities for business owners and entrepreneurs. Too much structure discourages them. UOPX’s “faculty indoctrination process” is simply too much for most business owners and entrepreneurs to take. In any case, most students really want to be employees for a large organization. Having an entrepreneur or business owner teach them may not be appreciated nor helpful.

7. While compensation is certainly part of being a faculty member, UOPX does not want faculty to be primarily driven by compensation. They want faculty to be driven by the desire or love to teach. I think that is fine except that I thought the compensation plan is ridiculously low for the “faculty indoctrination process” they make every faculty candidate go through. It is certainly their right to do so. And it is certainly a good way to find out who the most committed people are. You have to want to teach at UOPX desperately to go through the lengthy faculty indoctrination process and work for so little pay.

There are a probably a few more items I have forgotten. If I remember them, I will come back and update this post. But for now, that is how I see University of Phoenix operates.

January 30 2012

University of Phoenix: Faculty Recruiting & Application Process

Matthew Chan University of Phoenix academic bureaucracy, courtney hopper, faculty application, faculty assessment, faculty certification, faculty recruiter, faculty selection, instructional mentorship, telephone interview, university of phoenix, university of phoenix complaints, university of phoenix faculty, uopx, written complaint, written interview 0

univ-of-phoenix My 1st experience with the University of Phoenix Faculty Recruiting & Application Process began in May 2011. A friend who was on the adjunct faculty encouraged me to apply to see if they were interested in my credentials for an adjunct instructor position. I emailed my information into a local campus contact who, in turn, contacted a faculty recruiter at University of Phoenix.

I received an email from Courtney Hopper, Faculty Recruiter for University of Phoenix, asking for a copy of my resume and unofficial transcripts. I emailed in my resume and cover letter and that was the extent of my experience. Even when I sent an email follow-up, I got no reply. I was surprised that I didn’t even receive one email reply from her even when I asked. It wouldn’t have bothered me if they didn’t need me or they didn’t have a position available. However, it would have been nice to get a reply of any kind. That was my first sour experience of the faculty recruiting selection.

During mid-December 2011, the same friend had told me that they needed additional instructors for Marketing courses. Given my professional marketing background in recent years, he felt I might be a good fit. I agreed with him. I was open to the idea but cautious. He knew I didn’t much care of overly-bureaucratic policies and procedures, nor did I care to work with traditional employers. And because of my 1st experience went nowhere by going in blind, I told my friend I needed more information and an assessment of local needs before I began. If the local campus had no immediate needs, I saw no point in making any effort to apply once again. After all, I receive no reply whatsoever back in May 2011.

My friend contacted the Head of Business at the local campus on my behalf. Later that week, after my conversation with the Head of Business, most of my questions were answered. He needed marketing instructors and it was an area I was qualified and interested in. I was encouraged enough to move forward with application process again. This time around I redesigned and reformatted my resume to one that was a bit more “friendlier” and highlighted my marketing background vs. my managerial background. I emailed him my cover letter, resume and MBA transcript. It was quickly forwarded to University of Phoenix to the Faculty Recruiter. That faculty recruiter was once again, Courtney Hopper. I later found out through her Linked in profile she is in charge of faculty recruitment for Columbus GA, Savannah GA, and Little Rock AR campuses.

In that email, includes the UOPX Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). For some reason, there seems to be secrecy surrounding the faculty recruitment and application process. Despite my own Google searches, I found very little information. Even on the University of Phoenix website itself, there really aren’t specifics like the information that I will present in this post.

I did not copy and paste the email I received because I have reason to believe that University of Phoenix patrols the Internet for such information and would attempt to have it removed. However, they cannot stop me from reporting in my own words the information I received. Why am I sharing this information? Because I would have wanted it beforehand and I could not get most of it until I was well into the faculty recruitment process. I think people need to know what they are going to get themselves into BEFORE they waste any unnecessary time like I had going through it.

The UOPX faculty recruitment process is a lengthy one with many hoops to jump through. From what I have been told, this has not always been the case. But the faculty recruiting process I outline below is what I went through. I thought I might be able to “go all the way” but I will tell you right now that I didn’t. The reasons why will be covered in another post.

1. Although not a requirement, from what I can tell, unless you have a local campus contact or know someone within University of Phoenix, to help sponsor or vouch for you, going through the “front door” using the UOPX website is going to be like applying blind to any large organization. Your information (along with thousands of other applicants) will simply be submitted into some large internal database. Unless you have a specialty field they need at the campus local to you, you will probably not get any kind of response. And even if you do, you will be in the very early stages.

2. The FAQ outlines the 4 stages to the faculty selection process. It states it could take up to 6 months to complete. This is definitely true once I reveal where the hang-ups are.

The preliminary evaluation includes: the written interview, phone interview, application materials review, and the Candidate file approval.

During my written interview, it took me well over 3 hours to complete simply because I wanted to be thorough. There were many professional experiences that I had to recall with dates and chronology. Because I did not have individual employers as most people do in their history, I had to clearly communicate and integrate the tapestry of my various experiences over the last 20+ years into paragraph format.

My telephone interview with Courtney Hopper was rushed. While she attempted to be pleasant and professional, she often sounded out of breath and blazed through her spiel. Because of the information that had already been emailed prior, it was relatively easy to follow along. But I could tell that she had conducted this interview and said her spiel at least a hundred times prior. And while she claimed to allow me to ask questions, I did not get the feeling extensive talk time was encouraged. She wanted to spend her 20-30 minutes with me and get off the phone. However, I was encouraged when she said she would likely contact me within 48-hours to let me know if I would continue to the next stage.

3. In the new faculty assessment, there are two core assessment activities during what they call the “candidacy process”. First, you have to prepare a lesson with a presentation length of 5-20 minutes. The presentation is supposed to be related to the course or field you plan on teaching in. The local campus staff evaluates your presentation and instructional skills. They call it your “facilitation skills”. They want to see how well you present and interact in front of a group. In my case, they wanted me to prepare a 10-minute lesson using a Powerpoint presentation and have it emailed in to them the Thursday prior to the Saturday morning session when this is supposed to happen. I was told that I could bring visual aids to the assessment session. Although I never completed this step, I did not see creating a 10-minute lesson with a Powerpoint presentation as being difficult to do.

The other part of the new faculty assessment is participating in a group activity that simulates a learning team exercise.

4. If you make it past the prior steps, an employment verification background check, a criminal background check, and a credit check will be done. However, the information your provide for this is completed prior to the Faculty Assessment stage during the preliminary evaluation. The online application primarily consists of several disclaimers that gives UOPX (through a 3rd-party) permission to verify the information you provide but also to seek information about you.

5. If you make it past the background check, you will continue on to the New Faculty Certification process. Although the FAQ states that New Faculty Certification is one night (one night=4 hours) per week for 4 weeks, my schedule was supposed to be 4 Saturday mornings from 9:30am to 1:30pm. As a student of the New Faculty Certification course, you are expected to do outside class work and activities (homework/teamwork) of approximately 10-20 hours per week. The homework/teamwork include outside assignments, reading, and prep work.

6. Assuming you don’t miss any of the New Faculty Certification sessions and you receive a positive recommendation by the facilitator, you should be able to continue forward.

7. At this stage, Human Resources will require you to fill out various forms. Since I have not seen these forms, I assume they will be related to agreeing to UOPX rules and policies as well as standard government and payroll forms required of all U.S. employees.

8. Going into the Instructional Mentorship stage, you are expected to spend 2 weeks with a UOPX mentor to prepare for the first course. (UOPX makes a point to say that there is no pay for this prep time.) The instructor will be shadowed by the mentor (supposedly a “seasoned faculty member”. It’s the job of the mentor to provide supervision and feedback to the instructor. One week after completion of the course and final grades are posted, the mentor gives his final recommendation. If all goes well, the faculty candidate will be invited to become a faculty member and be eligible for course solicitations.

In closing, what I have written is a generalized overview of the University of Phoenix Faculty Recruiting and Selection process. I did not go through all the stages for reasons I will cover in another blog post but the mystery of what system University of Phoenix uses to recruit new faculty instructors has finally been satisfied. It is a very time intensive and lengthy process. Personally, I did not care enough nor was I inspired enough to continue on. I have no regrets having gone through what I did. Would I recommend this to someone? I would only recommend this to the desperate or highly motivated. The rewards vs. the returns of being a UOPX faculty instructor seemed insufficient to me for what they want and ask for within a faculty candidate.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, I have added much more commentary about University of Phoenix. Unfortunately, most of it is not good. The more I learn, the more depressing it gets. Get informed by someone who signs his name to the messages he posts.