Pennsylvania State University - World Campus Reviews

"If you decide to take the PSU World Campus route...proceed with caution. You will not graduate when you think you will, advisors give contradictory advice which will not be caught until its too late which will cost you thousands of dollars more. You must advocate for yourself and double and triple check any and all advice given from the staff. I wish all you kids the best of luck. This will not be easy for you."

"I started my classes in the Fall 2023 in the Nuclear Engineering masters program(NucEng). Right from the start getting information, support and an advisor was a problem. Although the classes were online, you're left to fend for yourself without any assistance. The IT portion of classes are seriously outdated and need a major upgrade. You get no facetime with any of the professors and attending a class via zoom is not an option. In short, your time and money would be best spent elsewhere.The choice of classes in nuclear and mechanical engineering are extremely limit. When I began, they were just hiring new staff and the department seemed to be in disarray. I really wanted this program to work, but decided to cut my losses and move on to a more established program. Look into other programs if you really want an online education."

"So far, Penn State has given me 3, no-credit classes. 2FA has me locked out, constantly, and they are too obsessed with stickers, magnets and flags to pay attention to the software issues that are effecting the students directly. If they laid off the production of "swag" the classes would be more affordable and maybe they could hire software people to maintain things. So far, I am very unhappy and I haven't even reached a credited class yet..."

"The school has not upgraded the philosophy behind its distance learning since it started in 1887. Every class I took except one was a here is your reading and homework for the week have fun teaching yourself. The one class that wasn't that way was a science class that had a game you play for the class."

"I'm mirroring what another reviewer said. I'm currently going for information science and technology. I'm taking 3 classes: math, a database class, and Spanish. For the DB class, the way to remote to a desktop is via web browser. Whatever tech they use for that is terrible. If you try to copy/paste, it freezes whatever program you're in. When writing SQL code, not being able to copy/paste makes what you're doing extremely time consuming. I'm also not surprised the Spanish course is dropped a lot. Its a Spanish 1 class and the book is 90% Spanish with no explanation of what you're looking at. The parts that do have explanations are extremely brief. The web resources you are supposed to use are incredibly outdated. They use flash, a technology that most browsers are no longer going to support shortly and flash has been phased out by virtually everyone. The web resources also amount to nothing more than glorified flash cards. There is also the group work required that is an extreme hindrance. Like the other reviewer said, you don't hear from people or they drop the class and you don't know it. I had someone in my group drop from my Spanish class (shocker) and I had no idea. I'd honestly say look elsewhere for an online education."

"With my major at Penn State World campus it did not work out for me. I studied there for 1 year part time, took two classes. The classes I took were not very interactive, and most of the classes I took were group project based, which I disliked. I would have students that would drop or not get involved and would be left doing most of the work. So if you do not like group projects, this college isn't for you. The coursework was outdated, some information from 2013. Most of my classes were just reading and quizzes, any instructions I would get for my project was very broad and not specific. If you want to get into actual computer classes, the SRA degree has no classes with working with computers. One of the degree requirements is to take a foreign language, which their classes are a joke online. I talked to one of the advisors about dropping the class, she told it me it happened often! How is that okay? Also WARNING: Be careful about transferring, I took 5 classes and only one class went through at the current college I'm attending."

"Studying at Penn State World Campus was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I worked abroad teaching English while I went to school; therefore, having set deadlines and being able to study online at any time was extremely important to me. Although it was an online learning environment, there was a lot of support from teachers and a good amount of interaction with other students through group posts. The course materials were also extremely well designed. I liked that most of the courses were not lecture based, but more about reading or finding things out for yourself, reflecting, and completing tasks that utilized that knowledge. It opened my mind to the endless capabilities of online learning, and influenced the direction I have taken with my own teaching. My degree was in Letters, Arts, & Sciences, which is similar to a liberal arts degree. I was able to choose the courses I felt were most meaningful to me (outside of the required courses for the major) and submit a proposal for that degree. The knowledge and experiences I obtained during my time at Penn State are priceless to me. It changed the way I looked at the world and how I see myself. I went back to school after many years, and the information available when I first went to college was nothing compared to what we now have available to us today. This is what showed me the importance of staying current and what ultimately propelled me into becoming a lifelong learner."

"I have taken several online courses, and was admittedly intimidated at the idea of attending Penn State, but the Professors are AMAZING and the support received from both instructors and academic counselors is second to none. Perhaps one of the greatest educational experiences I have ever had. Recommended!!!!"