Capella University Reviews of Doctorates in Education

"Many professors did not read or review papers. I attended a residency and watched a professor receive a paper within 20 seconds, returned with an A and no comments. No one was on the same page. I had no support and had no preparation for my dissertation. I was pushed though having to complete a qualitative study and could not change the research or topic at any time. Husband cannot get a full time professor position from capella with a PhD and feels like a failure. It’s a paper mill. I left during my dissertation phase on my own and moved on to another school to start over. I did start over! I found I was taught nothing at cappella. My husband and I paid too much to be failed by the school. We earned nothing but pieces of paper that mean nothing to prospective employers."

"Capella University is a school of opportunity! Capella has afforded me access to a great online education as well as most of my instructors. The education and knowledge that I have gained in pursuing my degree is directly related to the internship expectations of the site and school. Time management is your best friend. "If I can change the way you think, I can change your mind. If I can change your mind, I can change the way you think, Kees, 2014." Be sure to set short- term, intermediate and long-term goals!!!"

"I spent 10 years pursuing my doctoral degree in Education. Once the federal financial loan was exhausted I was abandoned. The school refused to work with me in order to enroll for the next semester; I had completed the comp exams and 2 of the 5 chapters of my dissertation. The issues I had with the school are too numerous to mention. Do your own research on this school's graduation rate before getting stuck with a debt you can never recover from in your lifetime."

"I started my Ed.D with a focus on Adult Ed in January, and so far so good. I have found that if you keep on top of assignments, and manage your time appropriately, you're golden. On the other hand, I have seen students drop off from the roster who I previously noticed during discussions were sorely lacking in writing and analysis skills, not to mention the basic skill of doing what the instructions tell you to do. I suspect that is what happened to many of the negative reviewers on this site (although certainly not all). The professors are pretty decent, although like any school they have their pluses and minuses. A lot of busy work early on and catering to the lowest common denominator, but as I said, that LCD has already started disappearing from classes and I am seeing rigor increase accordingly. I am a self-pay, so I can't comment on the student loan process or financial aid. They are a regionally accredited school so I have already been able to apply credits earned at Capella toward salary advancement at my work."

"I started my Ed.D with a focus on Adult Ed in January, and so far so good. I have found that if you keep on top of assignments, and manage your time appropriately, you're golden. On the other hand, I have seen students drop off from the roster who I previously noticed during discussions were sorely lacking in writing and analysis skills, not to mention the basic skill of doing what the instructions tell you to do. I suspect that is what happened to many of the negative reviewers on this site (although certainly not all). The professors are pretty decent, although like any school they have their pluses and minuses. A lot of busy work early on and catering to the lowest common denominator, but as I said, that LCD has already started disappearing from classes and I am seeing rigor increase accordingly. I am a self-pay, so I can't comment on the student loan process or financial aid. They are a regionally accredited school so I have already been able to apply credits earned at Capella toward salary advancement at my work."

"Capella SCAM Complaint After four years and over $80K in expenses, I have realized that it would be folly to continue with the doctorate program in education at Capella University. I've never ever left a program before, but I am doing it now. I really wanted to believe that the school was organized to help students succeed, but I have experienced and realized it is set up more to take money than to support its students. Fact one: the constant changes of the program require constant adaptation on the student's part and resubmission of materials. Fact two: contact information for complaints is not readily available. Good luck trying to contact the president or top deans, they simply don't want to be bothered. Fact three: the tremendous amount of complaints and lawsuits documented online suggest the problems at the school are systemic. Fact four: After you have completed two years of course work, you will have five years to complete your doctorate. It took two years to gain approval for my research, leaving me only three years to complete the dissertation. When it became obvious after multiple attempts to obtain participants that the project was not going to work, the adviser, help desk and mentor could not offer any help other than to suggest to "try harder" or graduate with a masters, which I already have. To resubmit a new topic and finish within three years, given the timelines simply was not doable. Fact five: In my experience, the majority of the mentors are not full time employees and have side jobs. The quality of the mentorship is severely lacking. It would have been helpful to have a mentor to counsel me on the appropriateness of the topic rather than to allow me to stumble along wasting time and money. The reality I learned was that when you are doing a doctorate, you need access to participants. Go easy and find support for this outside the university, because Capella won't do anything, except provide you with matrix and outlines for your $5,000 per quarter. In sum, Capella has been one of the most frustrating and incompetent educational programs I have ever experienced in my forty years of education and I would warn anyone who is considering it to reconsider and find a program that has support to get you to your goal. If you are in the program and experiencing the same frustrations, you may want to cut your loses and move on."

"I just completed my doctorate in Education at Capella University. I have two Bachelor degrees and a Master's degree from traditional schools, and Capella was just as rigorous as my traditional schools. Course work was challenging, and most instructors were engaging. Some instructors were not present as much as they could have, but I have had similar instructors in my traditional programs as well. I have never had a problem navigating the library, getting help from financial aid or technical services, and even from disability services. I require ASL interpreters for required colloquia and committee meetings, and disability services were quick to get top notch interpreters for me. The only thing is that the pre-dissertation phase dragged on and I felt I could have gotten feedback sooner (or some of these parts could have been done during the last few classes). They also made changes to this process while I was working on it, which dragged it out as well. The drag-out was also partially my fault, since by the time I got to this point, I was burnt out both academically and in my personal life (move, new job, etc). Such is life. The Research Plan was actually the longest part than even the dissertation itself, but it was very helpful because once I got to the dissertation, I already had a lot of my information that I could pull from the RP. In writing the dissertation, I have referred to other dissertations including ones by non-Capella students and my process was comparable to other doctorate programs and dissertation writing. My mentor was excellent, with a rich academic background. I know people who have graduated from Capella, and are now working principals, administrators, and as tenure-track professors at good universities. Even though my student loans are now pretty high, which could have been lower if I didn't drag out 2 years I could've completed before, I am glad I finished my degree and I look forward to the next phase in my life."