Grand Canyon University reviews

The rapid growth is handled poorly - people are maxed out and things change so quickly that no one knows what the rules are. Policies change overnight. You are held accountable regardless. The administration do not have a category for a good faculty person or good teacher. They seem to base their opinions of faculty on today's myths of the bad tenured faculty who don't do much and don't care about students. So they take as much power away from faculty, rank has no impact on compensation, tenure does not exist, they design courses in a generic way so anyone, without any qualifications in the field, could teach a class, and then overload the faculty with meaningless busy work. Moreover, administration are all from online universities or have their degrees from Grand Canyon University (!), so their only paradigm is online instructors which are more facilitators and graders of student-based learning. In fact, there is a very suspicious attitude toward traditional faculty, and if students are doing poorly, they treat it like the faculty is the problem; we are hounded by multiple staffers (reminds me of the Office Space and how everyone badgers about the TPS reports) about what we are doing to get the student back on track. The work environment is hostile and fear-based, consisting of extreme micromanagement and little employee empowerment. The people who last are "Yes-men;" making a decision for yourself or voicing an opinion contrary to upper management's is the surest way to be terminated. Faculty are constantly told not to put concerns in writing because it could be used against us. Of course, there is no faculty senate or representation to the administration. Faculty therefore have no input and no way to advocate for better circumstances to improve their job performance. We are told to watch what we say in front of students. We can't advise students to do graduate work elsewhere, even if it's best for them. Upper management motivate by fear and money: they yell and threaten termination, bullying lower managers and staff into submission. Of course, when administration start to feel heat because of this contempt for employees, they give you a bonus and say "Thank you for all you do..." Money covers their multitude of sins. It is no wonder why Ken Blanchard had his name removed from the College of Business. Faculty have little control over the curriculum: assignments are dictated by online constraints - no quizzes or tests because of cheating, textbooks are governed by profit margins and business deals with publishers (forget using academic quality texts), lectures are not factored into class material, since they are not part of online platform. Most of what we use is wildly out of date or poor, and the assignments we create are really shallow, simplistic, and absurd. Most of the faculty only have masters degrees and so we can't create courses that are cutting edge, because most can't teach that material. We create inferior courses. Everything is analytics based, and they will ride you if you are not meeting their predetermined but not communicated standards. Moreover, they have no capacity to value what can't be measured, like classroom preparation or meeting with students. There is a system for everything. This means a task takes forever as you often have to work on three different interfaces or websites to complete a simple task. Moreover, these systems are poorly integrated. For example, LoudCloud - the Learning Management System - organizes students by first name. The faculty portal - a different system - where we enter midterm and final grades organizes students by last name. Also, here's an interesting insight into GCU culture: midterm grades are never shown to the students. Midterms are about assessing the faculty, not the students. The turnover here is a great indicator of the kind of environment you're getting into: 18months. And the administration doesn't bat an eye. The bottom line is: you don't matter to them; if you leave, they'll just fill your spot with someone else, preferably someone unqualified so they'll have no choice but to take the bullying and stick around, since they would never get hired in the same position elsewhere. By way of summary I would say you are micromanaged and disempowered, and you are forced to micromanage and disempower your students. This is destructive of both the work environment and the educational environment. You have a very antagonistic experience with students and colleagues don't want to spend time with each other to build a faculty culture because everyone just wants to get out as quickly as possible.