Northcentral University Reviews

"Worst experience of my life. The rules in place for students are broken by staff when it’s convenient. I applied for a grade and never got a response. Weeks went by without review of weekly assignments. No accountability. Do not attend this money sucking university."

"Do not transfer to this school, and I almost lost an entire year by doing that. I'm supposed to start clinical, and I can't meet with an advisor for five weeks which is ridiculous. The practicum is so confusing they don't help you in any way just confuse you more by giving different information depending on which Clinical Team member you talk to. I 100% regret coming to this school halfway through my education which I would have finished if I hadn't. They lied to me about the timeline and added three courses delaying my internship and do not assist at all with finding a place."

"I have read a lot of complaints about NCU, but their experience has not been mine. The online program is for people who are self-motivated to learn. Yes, I wish I had more contact with classmates, but it's not mandatory. I get my assignments, I do them, I get my grades, and I move on to the next class. I have had at least 10 classes in my program, and my teachers are very responsive to my questions and needs. I don't know the impact of NCU having been bought by National U, but I have no complaints, thus far. I am 62 years of age with past degrees from Morehouse College, DeVry Institute and Northeastern U. for my Master's. JMTC"

"I am currently on my fifth course and it has been a great experience so far. My lecturers are accessible if I have any questions, also it has been very easy to get in touch with IT when I am having technical issues. I would recommend this program if you are motivated and can work independently for the most part."

"NCU is an exemplar of online higher education. NCU is regionally accredited by WASC, the same accreditation commission that scrutinizes degree programs at many well-known, reputable, brick and mortar universities (look it up). NCU professors are expert-scholars. Curriculum is rigorous. Standards are high for student performance. So, if you think you can skate by with mediocrity and still earn a degree think again. At NCU, you EARN your degree. Do not expect it to be handed to you without serious hard work. I am proud to be part of the NCU alumni! Thanks, NCU!"

"Northcentral University gives you seven days to drop a course, but makes it hard to do so. If you want drop a course their website states to call or email your desire to drop the course but when you call them it goes to voicemail and they don’t call you back and when they do you are told per their investigation you did not leave a voicemail, and since you did not drop in time you own us money. It’s incompetent for a university to that answer their phone, investigate themselves, and them pass judgement that you own them money:"

"I have experience with other universities and never experienced a cluster like NCU. NCU is COAMFT and has strict policies to follow APA standards and a 1:1 student/teacher ratio. None of that matters. The recruiters are great deceivers by telling people it is possible to graduate in two years. Advisors have a revolving door and students like me get a new advisor every 6-9 weeks. The advisors are incompetent and make changes to students' schedules without informing them of the impact. For example, they do not see an issue with extending a student's graduation date. If you have a disability and require accommodations, NCU will provide an advisor from the disabilities group. The disabilities group is supposed to help you with financial aid and curriculum information. The curriculum team does not communicate changes to the disabilities group or inform them of updated documents until after a student receives feedback from the teacher (usually two weeks after courses have started). In one case, a teacher was not informed of the change in curriculum. The stress of getting accommodations was causing me additional work on top of being vigilant of course information. After each course, there is a survey. It seems pointless to complete the surveys because the weekly coursework is poorly written and does not follow APA format. My friends and I run the instructions through Grammarly for laughs. Dr. Watters is the curriculum director and many clinical students in her class complain about her and request to be assigned. There are other schools that will take your $40,000, provide quality education, adhere to higher institution standards, and work hard to provide a positive experience. NCU will not. The Department of Education needs to shut down schools like NCU. National University should have done its due diligence before merging with NCU."

"The professors at Northcentral University really care about your academic success. They will mold you into the person you desire to become. There are no handouts. You must be okay with constructive criticism. If you cannot handle constructive criticism, this is not the university for you. Trust that you will not be given a degree, you will work hard to attain your doctoral degree. Northcentral University has some of the best people working together to ensure your success. However, you as a person must bring your perseverance, rest but don’t EVER give up attitude, respecting constructive criticism because you are learning, effective time management strategies while sacrificing your time to research. You will experience Imposter Syndrome. You will experience times of second guessing what you have gotten yourself into. It happens to the best of us but DON’T GIVE UP! Blessings, Dr. V. Fason"

"The absolute worst experience EVER! Don't waste your time nor money. I'm over $100,000 in debt and still no degree....on top of the fact they they target black and brown by keeping them from graduating. The professors aren't knowledgeable and they switch staff like there's no tomorrow. A HUGE WASTE OF TIME!"

"I've attended classes in an online format before but have never had so little support. This school only wants money. For the past 3 months I've been waiting for the survey for my dissertation to hit the target number and have had to stay "enrolled" in a supplemental course every 8 weeks only to tell my professor how many surveys I'm up to and have him say thanks for the update. This IS NOT worth nearly 3k every 8 weeks. I should not have to enroll in a course while my survey is collecting. Some professors have truly cared and offered useful feedback, though a majority do not. Advisors do not care to listen and do not help solve issues. The new online advisor support is worthless as they only say you need to speak with your advisor. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement!"

"Please do yourself a favor and avoid this "School" entirely. Let me recount my experiences with this school. Class structure: You are given and assignment and told to do it. That's it. If you're lucky you'll get some individual feedback but the otherwise its 100% on you to learn the material and produce work from it. No lecture time, no office hours, and in three courses I could not get a single email response from any of my professors. I met with one professor in my very first course at the very beginning. Otherwise I have never heard, seen, or met any of my other professors in any other course. Support: Like many others here, my advisors changed rapidly and often without any notice of their departure. This is handled by NCU so poorly that they actually messed up a Leave of Absence I had for a very serious medical injury and mistakenly withdrew me from the school entirely. Now they are asking me for $2,500 because they had to give back money from my federal loans. It took about 6 months of back and forth with no less than a dozen individuals to figure out what had happened only for them to tell me that the only way I can get rid of this balance is to re-enroll. Tldr; I can't possibly articulate my distain for this institution. They fail to educate & fail to provide adequate services its really as simple as that. For your own sake please go literally anywhere else."

"As a transfer, I do NOT recommend this university. Their online platform is horrible compared to Purdue and Capella. I have never had an advisor for more than a couple of months. They constantly leave. The faculty has been inconsistent. Besides Dr. Bertram, I have not enjoyed one class at this institution."

"When I opted to attend this school, the 1:1 student/professor ratio attracted me. There is a timely manner of 48 hour response to student's emails from the professors. I had that in the beginning, but soon no response at all. The feedback is not enough to help me continue to understand exactly where I went wrong. The Program Director is on the side of the professors. I keep getting warned to be respectful in my communication. I am not being disrespectful, but straightforward honesty. The classes are not cheap and yet I feel I am not getting my money's worth. I strongly do not recommend this school to anyone. I had issues with communications from my professors from the past couple classes, but no is doing anything about it. Social work is about being social. I completed my bachelor's degree completely online and never had issues with the communication with the professors. I have gone to my academic advisors and was told to submit an incomplete grade request to have the class extended then re-evaluate. That is too late. It all comes down to the money."

"My experience with northcentral was ok, if you're not motivated to work and learn on your own this school is not for you. I was motivated to change my career from social work to the I.T. field. The information I acquired from this school helped me to land my dream job. Actually, I was offered several excellent jobs and picked the one that suited me the best. For one job I had to resolve a made up scenario that had to be at least a few pages long. I used the information I obtained from northcentral to resolve the issue. The job was head of one of their departments and I was offered the job out of 25 applicants, but decided to take a different offer. Basically, it's all in how you make it!!!!!"

"This school is insulting to my intelligence. They are a for profit school that is it. I do not recommend this school to anyone in anyways for any program you will not at all get what you pay for not even close to learning anything and if you would like to learn anything at all this is not the school. I like to at least learn something anything and I did not it was a mistake going to this school and I regret it with all my heart. Please if your thinking about attending do homework first don't make the mistake I did. I RECCOMEND PLATT COLLEGE THEY ARE A GREAT ACCREDITED SCHOOL I RECIEVE MY BACHELORS DEGREE THEY HAVE ON AND OFF CAMPUS PROGRAMS AND THEY HAVE GREAT PROFESSORS AT RIVERSIDE CAMPUS. I LEARNED SO MUCH IN AND OUT OF CLASS IT LITERALLY IS SO INSULTING TO MY INTELLIGENCE GOING FROM PLATT TO NCU I SHOULD OF KNOWN BETTER I DID NOT MY SCHOOL TAUGHT ME BETTER HOWEVER I DID NOT USE THE TOOLS I WAS TAUGHT. THAT IS MY MISTAKE DON'T MAKE IT YOURS IF I CAN SAVE ONE PERSON FROM DOING SO IT IS WORTH THE LITTLE TIME I SPENT WRITING THIS. GOOD LUCK GUYS THINK 10X B4 SIGNING UP I CAN ALMOST 100% GUARANTEE U WILL REGRET IT AND U WILL NOT LEARN A THING AND WILL NOT BE SATISFIED HOWEVER I WILL BE FAIR AND GIVE U A 98% GUARANTEE INSTEAD."

"Very professional staff, great program with knowledgeable professors and doctors. The school and MSW program were awesome. It has opened lots of doors in my career path and my experience was beyond excellent with professors, counselor, classes and students. Thank you Northcentral."

"I would not recommend Northcentral University. If you are serious about your online education, do not attend NCU. The online department of this school is extremely unprofessional. They will disconnect a call if the employee cannot answer your question. They do not care about your GPA or how hard you work and take your education seriously. The school's agenda is to make money and impact the school's bottom line. You will not find the support you need to complete your program. My advisor quit and I was not notified. This school will withhold stipends for as long as possible before releasing them. I completed my first year at this school for a PhD in education I only experienced two professors that gave relevant feedback during that year. Coaches at the school need 24-48 hours before a scheduled appointment (you have been warned). There will be no support for quick questions as all correspondence takes 48-72 hours to get back to you at the least. There are no discussion areas not even in the commons area. The commons area is to push the school's agenda. The material they provide is all outdated and it is up to the student to find relevant material. Most of the material that is offered does not reflect the current course topic. I only experienced one course that provided relevant study material. You will learn at NCU if you are an independent student but be warned if any problem does come up, you will slip through the NCU's cracks. NCU's system is set up to capitalize on your failure not your success."

"I have attended multiple online schools and received multiple degrees (Bachelor and Master). I was at NCU for 4 years working on my PhD but I have since withdrawn due to their "for-profit" and unethical practices. First, throughout my courses there were a couple of red flags but all online schools have a couple of red flags. I had one instructor who refused to grade per the assignment rubric because she said she didn't create the course so she wasn't going to follow rubrics or assignment instructions. Second, the courses use free online books, TED talks, You Tube videos, or whatever they can find free for each class. The instructors are not capable of teaching and none of the TED talks or You Tube lectures are made by NCU instructors. The textbook in one of my courses was the same textbook I used to get my Master's in Education over 10 years ago!! It was from 2007 and outdated. Third, when the software updates and the free online assignments are no longer valid, the instructors will not look into it and will only grade from their answer sheet. When I went onto the school commons discussion board to ask if other students were having the same problem, my advisor told me students are not allowed to go on the commons for problems in their course. Fourth, I had an instructor who would only check into his NCU students once a week. On that day, he would respond to any email questions and grade assignments. If he could not get to your assignment or missed your email, you have to wait until the following week for him to get to your assignment or email. He is very open about this policy and it is posted right in his courses so NCU is well aware of this low quality instructor. These red flags are just in getting through the courses. I went to such a high quality, rigorous school for my Master's that I did not learn anything new in my PhD courses at NCU. Then I went into my dissertation. Everything went fine for the most part until after my study. My chair did drag her feet a bit in the first three chapters, enough to drag out the extensions but the feedback was good and my dissertation kept moving forward. The problems started after my study was completed. My chair would only review a section or a few paragraphs of a section each time. The feedback was minimal. I went into counseling because of my frustration and my counselor advised that most dissertation committees haze their dissertation students. However, mine quickly felt like it was beyond hazing and it was just so the school could make money. My final straw was when I turned in my DM and my chair gave me a 6 minute feedback about how I needed to rewrite chapter 1 because her personal experiences didn't match the research I had used in my chapter 1, this was over a year after chapter 1 had been approved. I did some extra research into this because I felt this feedback was unethical. That is when I found the prior class-action lawsuit. I went through the file for the class-action lawsuit and more then 90% of the line items had also been my experience. That is when I realized that NCU is still running as a for-profit school, even though they now claim to be a non-profit school, and they were intentionally dragging out my dissertation to maximize their money. My chairperson may have been hazing me but she also wanted all the money from putting me into extension courses. Since I have withdrawn, I owe over $3000 because I went into the second week of my course doing the extra research into the ethics of the school. I have been contacted up to 3 times a day to either pay up or reenroll and the school uses all the same phone tricks the spam calling companies use. This is one of the worst online universities. I'm sure you can find worse but there are a multitude of better universities that are completely online. Also, I have since learned that a teaching certificate is required to teach at the university level. This is something NCU does not offer and their admission advisors specifically say a teaching certificate is not required because once you receive an EdD or PhD from NCU, you will be able to teach in higher education."

"I do NOT recommend this school. The 1:1 model is an absolute joke and professors will not answer your questions other than copy and pasting the assignment into the email. Anytime I’ve asked a question via email I get a 1 sentence response. You write paper after paper with no lectures or group discussion to have your professor give you an A and tell you good work. Feedback is never more than 2-3 sentences and any constructive feedback Is only around APA formatting. The professors do not put together the course work and many times the articles are inaccessible or extremely outdated. Don’t ask for help looking for an article, they will tell you that they are there to help you develop your research skills yet do absolutely nothing for you at all. The learning platform is extremely buggy and glitchy as well as their email with Outlook. I had 3 different academic advisors over the course of my 2 years in the program. I had 1 or 2 decent professors who were friendly and offered thoughtful feedback, but overall I was highly unimpressed with the professors and frankly unsure what they are paid for. If you do the assignments you’ll get an A but get used to reading 10 journal articles a week with lengthy essays each week. Overall you get what you put in but I found it challenging to learn or retain information through this program and do not see it or any use in my professional career"

"I’m currently in an Education program. I’m two classes away from finishing and I can’t stand this place anymore. Got a warning letter because I was supposedly being “unprofessional” by standing up to a “professor” who thinks that she is better than the students and had a narcissistic attitude, but I get in trouble! I have two degrees from a different school and I was happy there. I had no issues with that school, but here? You get no help, whatsoever. Half of the professors are awesome! The other half need to be fired! The one-to-one approach doesn’t work, when they belittle the student. My current academic advisor isn’t helping either. The only department that did help was Financial Aid! I’m earning a degree that won’t help me obtain an online teaching position. If I wasn’t close to finishing the program, I’d withdraw! Don’t go here! It’s not worth the stress!"