ECPI University Online Reviews of Bachelor's in Cybersecurity

"All of the classes were cookie-cutter curriculums that were taken straight from other schools. Nothing was unique to the college and you could find all of the classes on course hero Etc. Professors complain that they only had six weeks to teach classes that they weren’t qualified to teach or had no previous experience with such as the AI and coding classes. The externship that I was given was a helpdesk externship, which provided no cyber security experience. The school also doesn’t seem to have connections with any professional employers."

"Terrible school, Professors that teach the classes sometimes have no experience or knowledge on the subject. Labs are broken and directions vague, not even the tutors can help. Do not make the mistake of going to this school. The only good about it is that you graduate in two years as opposed to four. Do not waste your money on this school, I'm currently trying to transfer."

"If you are going into the IT field I would highly suggest to find the requirements for the job your are seeking. Many jobs in the IT field do not require a degree, a certification will get you much further in the field than a degree ever will. You can find many of the same free study guides and videos ECPI uses on youtube and google. If you would like to spend 60k to obtain a job making 15-16 an hour then this place is for you. If college is what you seek, find a college that will provide you with certifications upon completion. I blindly thought a degree would mean something more than it actually does today. So in order for me to find a job with a better starting pay, I need to obtain certifications which now require more studying. Don't be like me, research what is required and the skill needed for the job or career field you are seeking. I graduated in 2019, majored in Network and CyberSecurity with a 3.5 GPA and I was not even qualified for a CyberSecurity Internship at my place of employment. Moral of the story... don't waste money with ECPI's CyberSecurity or IT program. Research the requirements needed for the particular job you seek and focus on those."

"The school was focused on people who are trying to start a career than people who are trying to advance their career. And the reason is because they don’t have an understanding on how to handle people who are have already chosen a field or who are professionals seeking ways to advance. While the teaching staff are good at what they do the Dean is feeding dreams instead of reality to the naive and vulnerable people. The staff that are teaching really care about you doing well in school. The ones that don’t teach care more about getting your money."

"I have been attending this school for almost two years but that is because I have taken several breaks whenever life became too overwhelming. ECPI staff has shown me more grace and understanding than any university and the counsellors have always reached out to contact me whenever I had started to show a decline in my attendance or academics and for that I truly appreciate. As far as the content is concerned, I have learned a lot in my network engineering program granted it took a lot of self-effort and hard work for me to research and learn the material needed to graduate. I started the program sitting in classes and ended up converting to online courses whenever I felt comfortable enough with my own progress and I still have a difficult time managing my life to complete the accelerated two classes/5 week terms but I have managed to be proficient throughout the past two years. The instructors are guides who give you the resources and materials to learn, which is just like any other professor I have had in my pre-graduate educational career. They don’t spoon feed you material they give you resources to read and assignments to complete and it’s up to me to spend the time to figure out how to complete them. I am far from being a perfect student, I work full time while in school full time and have a hectic personal life and ECPI has shown me that they understand what I am going through. There are plenty of extracurricular clubs you can attend and resources onsite and online that you can use such as; libraries, tutoring, and counseling. My professors have always taken the initiative to reach out to me whenever I have entered a red zone and I have never received a zero for an assignment that I have completed. ECPI offers an externship career service programs for all graduates, and they offer a certificate voucher program for students. With an ECPI student email you have access to all the Microsoft resources that you need like Office, Outlook, and OneDrive. ECPI also offers education on how to learn to use these resources. Finally, I would like to conclude with the fact that I am going to graduate from this program, most of you whom have left hate trash mail probably never bothered to complete your program and that is no ones fault but your own. Once I complete my program I will be placed with a job and have five vouchers for certificates within my program of my choice. ECPI has successfully prepared me for what I should expect in my profession as far as tasks that I should be able to perform and terminology and information that I will be expected to know. Nothing is free, but I am confident that I will not have to spend the money on my AAA certificate course or test, my COMPTIA certificate course or test, or my CCNA certificate course or test because I have all of the resources I need to prepare and study plus the five vouchers included with my program. If you are going to spend the money to attend ANY program, at least have the responsibility to finish it. Don’t give up and then complain and blame the institution for doing what they have been doing successfully for over several decades, have the responsibility to blame yourselves. Thanks for reading."

"This "school" and organization is laughable at best. Based upon my own personal experience the overall goal of this school is one thing, and you alone can guess what it is. From the start, the admissions staff at this school will say what needs to be said to get you to attend. I personally was told that the program I was signing up for was going to have elements of the course that were designed by the program director to depict the needs of the industry. This was blatantly false. When this was brought up to the program director, they apologized that the program "wasn't what I expected." You can log into Canvas and copy and paste part of any assignment from the courses I have attended and find countless other schools using the exact same materials and questions. While we are on the subject of the content of classes, two of them alone have largely consisted of watching illegal copies of videos on YouTube. This school constantly grades on "mechanics" such as grammar and spelling. You will find in every single class I have attended assignments and modules that have misspelled words or don't even have the right supporting documents that they refer to in the directions. When you bring this up to an instructor, the go to response is that they don't make the courses or supply the documents or books to go with it, they have to contact Virginia to get it fixed. They have a select handful of professors in the program I was attending that have the ability to teach. Others will out right tell you they don't know something about the topic being lectured and try to act like it's a funny joke that you're paying thousands of dollars to be taught something by someone who doesn't even know what they're teaching. Faculty and staff at this school will respond to what they want to when it comes to emails or questions you present. On multiple occasions I have had to go back and forth with them to answer a question that was in an original email or that was brought up during a conversation. Pretty hilarious coming from a "school" that is supposedly preparing you to be an industry professional in the real world. Do yourself a favor and attend a realistic school that actually puts the needs of students in the form of classes actually designed for the real world."

"Are you reading this ECPI? If so, PLEASE, take note! I am currently a student with a 4.0 average in the Cyber Security Bachelors Degree and very close to the end. It is regrettable that this school cannot find any footing in its own technology program. The technology classes can't decide if they are trying to teach to a subject, a certification, or a sponsors specific need. Because of this, a student will have extremely out of date material "because it could show up on a cert exam" or because a sponsor still has out of date networks that they cant seem to hire for. Most courses appear to be 10 years out of date and this is really bad for technology courses (I.E pictures of iPhone 3's as "new phone technology" or "30 years ago, in the early 70's" and "the cloud could soon emerge as a useful tool but for now is just for big companies"{paraphrased}). Tests are usually given before the material is taught. Assignments are explained after they are due (if explained at all). Workloads are unbalanced in that one week could look like the next but needs five times the required effort. Assignments are not ordered sequentially for learning purposes, so you may end up learning the foundation material after the advanced tasks are given. Teachers have no idea what the curriculum looks like until after the first week (they don't read ahead just like the students don't read the whole book they are given between the hours of noon Sunday and class-start on Monday morning), by then it is a little too late to figure out they were supposed to assign missing information. ECPI touts teachers that are "in the field" but doesn't account for this and simply lets them flounder from course to course. Teachers don't have backup plans. Teachers release the students then change the requirements for assignments or give hybrid days without notice to the students who left. Emails may be provided but when would you have time to check that, why would you and why cant these things be planned? Poor grammar throughout (Not kidding, really really bad) and poorly written tests. Tests are written to make it hard to look up the answers on google (even for in seat students) but are sometimes so convoluted that they miss the point. Sometimes the teachers cant tell what the question is supposed to be. Identifying incomplete or inaccurate material only leads to being told that "It is for your benefit to identify mistakes Several course types are mixed POORLY. Some In-seat classes are entirely online which wastes the time of the person who drives there. Some online course work can only be completed in a specifically designed lab on campus which negates the online part. Most coursework looks like it has been crammed together from several different course types without review, so you cant actually complete the work because parts are missing or mixed in with other assignments. I'm afraid that the degree I will earn will be worthless because I personally will never hire anyone with credentials from here unless they can prove themselves otherwise. The teachers are okay but are not given the tools to help students learn. The curriculum is so poorly written that even the teachers have a hard time helping the students complete the work and often slap "A"'s on their problems rather than fix them. Why would they, the school does not give a teacher (nor a student) any incentive to improve the courses. I thought that the faculty would listen to an "A" student, as it turns out, they do, but they only listen and are not prepared to act. When you point out the mistakes in the course (many, both technical and grammatical) the teachers tell you to put it in a review. Students are not allowed to miss classes or assignments without penalty, but if the course is bad or the teacher misses a week or is late, the students are rewarded with a bad grade and no chance of refund or retake. I could go on but Im currently trying to correct mistakes in my assignments so that I can complete them."

"ECPI's schedule worked for me . The 2.5 years to Bachelors degree is true. I finished in less than 24 months because of previous credits. Lots of hands on and good instruction. Now working at defense contractor and looking to get Masters. Best decision."