In Aug. of 09 I ran out of money and had to stay with friends in Las Vegas and take online classes through UNO. It was only going to be a temporary thing, at first just for a month and then just for a semester, but eventually, I was in Vegas for approximately sixteen months. I was able to complete some necessary math and English classes and also took a class through Harvard Extension School, Health, Culture, and Community: Case Studies in Global Health, so academically I moved forward, just not as fast as I’d liked.
During the Global Medicine course, I got a wake up call. I got on the academic scales and found out two things; that I didn’t measure up, and I’ve been spending my money at the wrong school. I received a B+ for my Harvard class, my biggest issue was the writing. My TA is a working physician, his standards weren’t academic highbrow, they simply were working standards at the professional level. Personally I feel his B+ was generous. I worked harder in that class than I had ever worked before, and most of the other students were working on their 2nd advanced degree. Technically, I was still a Freshman undergraduate at the time…so I don’t feel bad about the B+. It just brought to light my short comings with academic writing. It just put me in a quandary.
My goal is to be an MD or OD in family practice in remote rural clinical work. I’d also like to be able to do field and trial research, which requires a high standard of writing. I took the Harvard Extension School writing assessment and couldn’t pass into their required course. I have to take their remedial course first. This was upsetting. I had already completed and passed my English composition requirements for UNO. It was a blow to the ego. The quandary isn’t wether to take the Harvard courses, but how?
I can’t use MY financial aid to take the courses because they are classes that my current university offers and I’ve already passed with an A and a B, respectively. However they are necessary so I can actually perform well academically in the field I wish to study and work?
What I also learned is that Harvard isn’t that much more expensive than UNO and far cheaper than the Community College of Southern Nevada. I had lived in Las Vegas for three years, a home owner and wage earner from 2000 to 2003, and I also had lived there from Aug 2009 to Aug 2010 when I wanted to switch from UNO to the massage program at CSN (Thinking massage would allow me to work on the human body while studying the physical body). Because I hadn’t switched my drivers license over in Aug when I moved there, I was ineligible for consideration of instate tuition. However, I did find out that without any paper work, as long as I had attended a high school for three years in the state of NV, I’d be granted resident tuition. For those not in the know, think illegal alien. Took me a minute to figure it out too!
Here is the break down on the costs.
Harvard charges two prices depending on the class, $925 or $1,125, both are for four credit classes. A full time student must take twelve credits per semester so we’ll look at how a semester breaks down financially for twelve credits, with two expensive classes and one cheaper one for a total of $3,175. Now a semester at UNO at resident intuition costs, is roughly $2,300 and the first semester of out of state tuition for College of Southern Nevada was going to be $4,100 (in defense of CSN it was for 16 credits, and in the defense of UNO you can take more than 12 credits for that amount, however no one ever seems too).
Harvard Extension School $3175
University of New Orleans $2300
College of Southern Nevada $4100
So to switch from UNO to Harvard Extension school is only going to run me an extra $3,000 per year (counting summers). But how do I make the jump? I can’t transfer into Harvard Extension until I have taken at least three classes with a 3.0 or higher GPA (two will have to be E15 and E25 due to my low writing score). I can’t use my student loans & Pell grant to pay for the classes because I’m not matriculated at that University? Well Miracles happen to me all the time, I’m sure another one is working it’s way through right now. But what about all the other students out there trapped in University systems and they can’t transfer out of them?
Most universities allow up to 60 transfer credits and yet obtaining any credits from an outside school that isn’t in a direct financial relationship with the students current school system is almost impossible when tuition is based on grants and loans. My major question is why? The university isn’t doing them or me any favors. We have to pay that loan back, and that grant is federal not state. We need an endemic shift in how financial aid is distributed to student’s. It really needs to be paid directly to the university through a separate third party who is more concerned with the academic health of the student than the welfare of the university. After all it’s my contention healthy students create a healthy school. Not the other way around.