Colorado Technical University - Online Reviews of Bachelor's in Computer Science

Not sure why there are so many complaints about this school. The instruction is great, they use Zybooks and intellipath for most classes. So far, this has been a great school to learn programming as well as basic software engineering concepts. Instructors are professional, many of them with years of experience in the industry, being employers and retirees. With any college, you don’t learn everything inside the classroom. It’s up to you to go outside and learn the things you need to relating to your... Read More field of study. This isn’t a school for lazy, unmotivated people. As far as price goes, it’s no more expensive than other state or Ivy League type schools. A lot of employers will even pay for you to go here while working. Overall, it’s been a great experience, and I’m confident that the education I’ve gained here will benefit me in my future career.

Kinda scummy that If you need a transcript or decide to move schools and you owe money- they will not send your transcripts to your new school until you pay off any or all school fees. You cannot get your diploma until you finish paying off school. Withholding your transcripts means you can't get financial aid at your new school. The first 5 week class you spend over $1,000 on, is about their website and how to use it. Meanwhile, in that 5 weeks you could have been taking a core curriculum class.... Read More

I've got a year and a half left for my undergrad at CTU. The only value it provides (And yes, I literally mean ONLY value) is the piece of paper at the end. Want to make connections? Forget it. Want to learn - literally anything? Learn it yourself. You'll get an easy A by doing work that I've literally scripted out to do automatically. It's a diploma mill. - But I can work 40 hours a week and get my schoolwork done at the same time - and have all the time in the world to learn software engineering... Read More on my own. I would say only a few colleges are actually any good, but even then their price tag isn't worth it. If you're capable of learning things on your own (or if you're actually braindead and need an easy degree) This school is perfect. However, it's starting to churn out lesser qualified individuals - who negatively impact the school's brand. Most work professionals don't hold their CTU peers in high regard based on the literature I've read. - have yet to see this first hand, but from my experience can confirm this school is a facade for a diploma mill.

I am going to try to be a frank and practical in this review without going on a tangent about each and every little element of the school that I did or did not like. What first needs to be strongly scrutinized is the fact that the courses here are only 5 weeks long in comparison to a standard university's length of 12 weeks--this typically means that students are rushed through the courses while retaining very little valuable information. Realistically, how much do you think you would remember after... Read More studying 7 chapters of material in one week? Adding to this fact, the university requires more credits per class and more courses to complete a degree than your traditional university--resulting in higher tuition rates guaranteed to slurp up your financial aid in a record amount of time. This is coming from an institution that claims to put the student first, mind you. As for the classes themselves, most of the students participate at the bare minimum in the discussion forums, thus gleaning any information from the forums will often prove futile. Instructor quality is a hit or miss--some will go the distance to help you, others will simply throw you an A for turning in something. Would that be something to be expected from an accredited university in which a student is paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend? I would beg to differ. In closing, I would like to point out something rather interesting--there are literally dozens of pages of angry students who are sharing their experience with the school, and that is followed by 4 or 5 reports of people claiming to be "students" who magnify the school as having been an "invigorating" experience that landed them top quality jobs. Please take these latter posts with a grain of salt, as it is extremely likely that they are actually staff from CTU desperately trying to conduct damage control--and quite frankly this sort of deception I find incredibly disgusting. While it is true that you get what you put into CTU--what is not said is that what you will be putting into this school is about 5 times more than you will ever need to at any other institution, and it is simply not worth it. In summary: Don't buy the hype. This school is for profit, not for you. Take that however you will.

IntelliPath is the online software used by CTU. IntelliPath is frustrating and requires many times the hours needed for any given subject due to the wrong answers and required answer entry formats that result in answers being scored as wrong. IntelliPath has been reported many times over many quarters by many students, yet, the incorrect material is not corrected. IntelliPath requires textual entry of material that can be misconstrued such that correct answers are scored wrong. IntelliPath has wrong... Read More answers, yet, after being reported many times as wrong, the incorrect answers remain. Students do not learn from IntelliPath. Instead, they are instructed to merely record the correct answers provided by IntelliPath after a wrong answer is scored and repeat the modules for a better grade by giving the memorized answers. (IntelliPath allows modules to repeated for better grades). Since the question pool is comprised of only a few questions, it is easier to record the correct answers and repeat them back when repeating a module. The use of the fraudulent IntelliPath leads to the conclusion that CTU is not interested in being a quality school but is interested in making money as a Diploma Mill.

After completing my Associates degree with another university earlier this year, I wanted to look at different universities to try and complete my Bachelor's degree as fast as possible while still learning all the necessities in the programming world. After reviewing CTU's fast track program and career pace courses, it looked like an obvious choice to apply. After several phone calls with admissions I discovered that the online courses required group projects that could not be described, except that... Read More a large portion of your grade still depended on other people in the group. For an online course, for working people, this automatically requires a larger portion of time to be dedicated to the program. After explaining my concern(time), with my admissions representative, I respectfully informed her that I was going to withdraw and move forward with another university. The following week a different admissions representative called me and had to point out that the other rep had only worked there for two weeks and she was more experienced(15 years). After explaining all the details to the "new" admissions rep she responded with false information about the university I planned on attending and repeatedly questioned there integrity to try and persuade me to go to CTU. Not knowing that I had graduated from the other university earlier this year, and had a working knowledge of how the university operated, I immediately began to question how CTU allows admissions reps to lie to future students about other universities, and repeatedly question there integrity to convince students to attend Colorado Tech. Even after finally convincing the rep that I was not going to CTU, and was supposedly labeled as "cancelled", emails and text messages were still sent. VERY BAD business ethics.

At first this was a great school, took an English class and the instructor was great, (apparently this school does not use professors, she was a great teacher but no professor). When I took the first math class I was very disappointed. I ended up using YouTube to figure out how to do the math. The instructor stood in front of the class reading the book and could not figure out how to answer the math problem, un-prepared, unprofessional, I did not learn a thing. Not entirely the instructors fault,... Read More the book had a lot of errors and that confused the instructor. I ended up showing the instructor the errors and helping her move the class along. I feel bad for some of other students because they should have failed but was given a passing grade since the instructor couldn’t figure it out either. They will go on to harder math classes and fail. I also took the science class and realized this school does not have a lab. The instructor was a very good teacher but the science was 10th or 11th grade material, didn’t learn anything. I also tool a basic networking class, this was an online class, again there were problems and I learned nothing. Most of the online discussion boards were basic and my 10 year old sister could come up with more intelligent things to discuss in a college level class. The instructor didn’t read my last paper and gave me a missing grade, even after I appealed this with evidence from the online submissions they did not change my grade. Luckily this only happened once and with my easy 100% on everything else it did not make that much of a difference. I stuck with the school for a year and all I have to show for it is a few transfer credits to use at a real school.

CTU Online has been a positive experience for me so far. I have been enrolled for a total of 1 year and 6 months. After discovering a certain grant that would assist in my education, I transferred to Capella University Online, however, the experience was completely absurd and appalling. I proudly came back to CTU and decided to decline the grant on the contingency of a more conducive educational environment for me. I have "tried" the on campus experience with almost impossible admissions of visiting... Read More virtually every classroom adjacent in a specific order to get accepted, to carrying large text books, to sitting in lectures so boring I fall asleep. CTU is consistent in curriculum. All interactions with the IT Department, Library, Student Services, Financial Aide and Professors are wholly informative, concise, and is motivated in facilitating the students success. I enjoy all the facets of learning styles it appeals to and the sense of community it brings. I wholly fancy MUSE which brings education to the learning curve of your choice and the free online books, which cannot be saved, but can be printed. I participate in a handful of clubs which are constantly active in chats, webinars, and events. In addition, ongoing guest speakers and career tips/seminars expedite the ideal platform for career success. They have a career team readily available to assist in building a resume, and coaching through job/interview process, and a great LinkedIn community for those who are already in the work force - Every student is assigned a career coach to help facilitate their success. It is a fast paced school, but it is designed to cater to their exact habitual pattern of acquiring and processing information to ascertain the course immediately, instead of spending week after week trying to figure it out before the light bulb appears. It also focuses quality courses that are advantageous to your degree program. My courses are rich, in depth, and current because everything is virtually HANDS ON. Many of my courses are relevant and have assisted in the experience I require for my specific degree program because I built something or was introduced to a reputable organization that can further expedite my career trajectory and success. I will graduate in 2015 and this school has been exceptional. Once I obtain my bachelors degree, I will pursue my masters and doctorates from CTU Online. With edification at a single click of a button and knowledge at my finger tips, for me, it was the best decision I ever made.