Can we address this line of thinking -"We must demolish diploma factories"? The hubris and the arrogance abounds. If we can take anything away from 2020 it is this, the traditional brick and mortar school needs rethought. It no longer serves a purpose, and is not what the future holds in terms of efficiency and sustainability.
The original post below this one fails to recognize the actual problem our society faces, that being "traditional universities". These institutions no longer exist to produce a beneficial product, if this was the case we would not have thousands of people demanding loan forgiveness; if the product is sound, why would it need subsidized?
The real problem is simply this, universities are now centers to push one-sided ideologies, redistribute wealth through preferenced funding, and ultimately prop up a bankrupt government through 7% interest rate loans. Why do you think programs that could once be finished in 1.5 years, paid for by hospital systems/practices/clinics, now take upwards of 3.5 years, with tuition costs that have went beyond the moon; it makes no sense, even more so when you account for the much discussed provider shortage. These dudes are lining their pockets fraudulently, and it is at the cost of students and subsequently patients.
Imagine if banks were doing what FASFA and the universities have been doing for the last 3 decades. People would be in the streets rioting. "Fraudulent business practices" would be the term of the day. Unfortunately, these institutions get a hard pass, mainly due to people like the OP below that feel there is a certain prestige associated with given schools.
I live in Western PA, I went to a 3.5 year program that cost me roughly 27k, I would be hard pressed to go to a "respected school" that would cost someone like me +$90k. I passed my boards the same as the OP did, I and I am told, that I do a pretty good job.
Ultimately, knowledge is being decentralized at a rapid pace, we would do well to recognize this and stay with the times. I can buy lectures, given by Harvard historians, for $10 on Amazon, hours of content! If Harvard is your thing, why can't we make all these lectures available and free for all? Share the wealth so to say? In the coming future, there will likely no longer be a monopoly on knowledge, as such the current cost of tuition should no longer be defended, and we should leave arrogance of "prestigious institutions" at the door.
And the preceptor you are referencing in this post probably needs to take a course on preceptorship if he is unable to handle the given scenario.
Honestly, his post inadvertently highlights how subpar programs will not last anyway. If quality and an inability to secure preceptorship would continue to exist for these programs, then the program will ultimately fail.
My assumption is that you are referring to me. I have precepted/trained mental health providers for years. I posted to this site in search of guidance for my experience with my current NP students (please refer to my posts). However, if you are seeking specifics for the cohort I referenced, here are some examples: (1) over-reliance on rote-memorization; (2) limited time to study tasks I assigned (reading up on a new admission that will be assigned to the student, updating a treatment plan for a current patient, etc.) due to having papers to write; (3) struggling to conduct an evaluation without referring to the template in a fixed amount of time (I allot them 60-90 min for new patients and 30-45 min for follow-ups); and (4) struggling to ascertain where the appropriate parts of the patient's information go in the H&P. These are the basics; the more complex aspects are worse (differential diagnosis, risk assessments). While some improvement was shown during the limited amount of time with me, the improvement was not commensurate with mastery to my comfort level for advanced practice.
I do not research psych NP programs enough to know the differences in their curricula. I naively thought that all psych NP students would be like my prior precepting experience. I am not paid to do this. I am all for giving back to students in the form of clinical training, but it takes away from my core job when I have to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to catch them up on the basics that they should have prior to seeing patients. This has nothing to do with my ability to teach/not teach and/or precept/not precept. This is a function of what this particular program has produced, and the students to some degree. As adult learners, they are expected to be more proactive in their educations. I do not know the particulars of their program and/or what this program offered them in terms of pre-clinical education. My main concern how to address this on my end and one poster provided excellent advice that I plan to follow-up on.
However, if you are seeking specifics for the cohort I referenced...
7 minutes ago, Psychiatrist said:
However, if you are seeking specifics for the cohort I referenced...
The dialogue is appreciated, also I am glad you could find the needed advice on this forum. I by no means meant to denigrate your ability to teach. However, a review of the role of the preceptor would cover some of your scenario in all honesty, mainly the importance of honest assessments, and the use of appropriate channels for concerns.
I did find it odd that your choice to find advice on subpar students was conducted on this specific post, an obvious motive is apparent.
Your refusal to precept further students from the given program is appropriate, irrespective to co-worker status.
I approached my role preceptor based on the guidance I was given. I chose not to mention the program. I started reading through this site while I have time because of my limited knowledge about the differences in NP education so I know what I am getting into moving forward. As I mentioned, I am new to this site.
I have no motive other than what I posted and it just happens to on this forum; I respect your opinion and will agree to disagree with you.
I approached my role preceptor based on the guidance I was given. I chose not to mention the program. I started reading through this site while I have time because of my limited knowledge about the differences in NP education so I know what I am getting into moving forward. As I mentioned, I am new to this site.
I have no motive other than what I posted and it just happens to on this forum; I respect your opinion and will agree to disagree with you.
As a new PMHNP student (not beginning clinicals yet) your experience just makes me wince. It will now be that much harder for me to find a preceptor— because this sub-par group of students you’ve been dealing with has made you wary of taking on anyone else. I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t put up with that either. I blame the school that is dumping students on you when they aren’t ready to be precepted.
As a new PMHNP student (not beginning clinicals yet) your experience just makes me wince. It will now be that much harder for me to find a preceptor— because this sub-par group of students you’ve been dealing with has made you wary of taking on anyone else. I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t put up with that either. I blame the school that is dumping students on you when they aren’t ready to be precepted.
I am going to address it on my end with the site coordinator. I am also going to change my approach to how I accept students. I am considering having them apply to precept with me. I will let them and their school(s) know that my expectations may exceed what their school(s) expect of them and me. If they agree to my terms, they sign off. This way if the are meeting their schools' standards and not mine, I will cut my losses and theirs earlier. There are multiple schools in the region and I anticipate that I will receive more requests to precept since I was told by one of my students that preceptors are starting to ask for payment and some preceptors are planning to stop taking students.
I am going to address it on my end with the site coordinator. I am also going to change my approach to how I accept students. I am considering having them apply to precept with me. I will let them and their school(s) know that my expectations may exceed what their school(s) expect of them and me. If they agree to my terms, they sign off. This way if the are meeting their schools' standards and not mine, I will cut my losses and theirs earlier. There are multiple schools in the region and I anticipate that I will receive more requests to precept since I was told by one of my students that preceptors are starting to ask for payment and some preceptors are planning to stop taking students.
It might be wise to meet the potential student ahead for coffee if the time allows. A pseudo interview. I learned when I was student after choosing a truly bad preceptor to meet them ahead to ensure a good fit. Even in terms of “bad actor” schools, it might give a better prepared student from those schools the opportunity to make their case. I took that experience to every further preceptor and do that with prospective students now.
As was stated in the other thread and many other threads on this topic, online education isn't really the problem. It certainly has a place in higher education and even education in advanced practice. The problem is in content delivery, lack of rigor, few admission standards, and tuition price inflation.
B/M schools are certainly guilty of tuition price gouging but so too are many online schools. Walden, Chamberlain, Phoenix, and others have quite expensive tuition for the product they're peddling. You mention that you can buy recorded lectures off of Amazon, many of these online schools don't even provide any kind of lecture recorded or live and the student is told to read a textbook, post in a discussion board, and write a paper.
For profit online schools do nothing to further our profession, they are simply honey traps taking advantage of students.
I think online learning is excellent, I just think our standards and expectations need to be higher, and that's not a bad thing!
I think you missed the point of discussion posts. Discussion posts Are similar to listening to a lecture. But discussion posts are better in many ways. For example, in a traditional classroom not every student will ask a question during class. Whereas with discussion posts every student has to comment, read many of the other students’ posts, and respond to at least two. Then the professor will answer your posts, frequently with another question, which takes several hours to go off and research and formulate a new answer.
When I was getting my RN, we all sat in the big classroom and listened to the instructor go over the book chapters. Because I had to drive an hour each way to class, I often found myself thinking I would’ve been much better off just staying home and re-reading the chapters again. In my experience, discussion posts required a lot more work and additional research and learning that in-class lectures did not provide. And I got to read through every other student’s discussion posts and get unique perspectives.
I will say that I did not like having to write so many papers. You spend so much time worrying about APA style, and that time could be spent learning more. But the papers did require you to go off and do more research. And I think like most people, when I researched, I would find another interesting subject related to the main ideas, and go off and learn about those.
I think school is what you make of it. Whether you’re in a traditional brick and mortar school or in Walden University, you can choose to put effort into each class, be curious, and excel.
It's like people are so focused on bricks and mortar and not on the actual content of the schooling. You don't get a better education just by sitting in a different building besides your home. There is no inherent reason why getting didactic content online is inferior than the exact same content online at home. And especially in the time of coivd, you'd think more people would see the value in online education.
At the end of the day, we all are going to have to go to clinicals. We all have to take the same certification exam. We all have to be approved by the BON. If they don't like that, then they need to be rallying around the ceritifcation bodies, not the schools.
I do think that some online schools are notoriously bad. Just do a Google search about the investigation into Walden. When I was doing my ASN I had a professor with a doctorate from Walden. I already knew then that that school was a joke.
However, if it's a state school... There's no reason to doubt it. Online, for-profit? Sure. But just because it's online, that doesn't make it automatically "easy."
djmatte, ADN, MSN, RN, NP
1,248 Posts
Plenty of evidence. It maybe anecdotal but still a form of evidence. And plenty of anecdotal examples presented across this board for years.