West Coast University Ontario, My Experience

Published Jul 18, 2015

8 Posts

I have been a student for the last two years completing general education requirements required for admission to a nursing program. I work with a few nurses who attended this school a few years ago. Having a bulk of my general ed and prerequisites completed. I thought WCU would be a good option. I knew it was expensive but the prospect of finishing my education in just over two years was quite appealing.

The admissions and financial aid staff are great, as they should be. They do an excellent job of selling the programs and the school. Financial aid is a very simple process as long as you have your stuff together.

While being in school, I have been working part time. After I was admitted and cleared by financial aid, I had some trouble getting my schedule. I completed the admission process three weeks before I was supposed to start classes. I made numerous attempts to get at least an idea of what days and times I would need to be in school so that I could inform my employer. No one could give me an answer. After much headache, I finally got my schedule the week before classes were to start. Luckily my employer is very gracious and flexible. What I got from this is that the staff is in no way interested in what you do outside of school. They have no regard or respect for your time.

So after a bit of a headache, I got my schedule, which actually turned out to be perfect. I was initially impressed by the professors. One had a MA from an actual university and the other a PHD. Once in my classes I started talking with the other students and hearing their experiences from other classes and professors. The lectures were honestly pretty good. Both professors I had were experts in their fields although I could hardly understand one as she was from the Philippines. I heard a lot of bad from all of the students I talked to. Everyone I talked to felt that they had some very bad instruction from most or all of their other professors. "Watch out for Professor ...." I mostly ignored all these remarks. I figured that maybe these students just maybe aren't cut out for university level classes.

Apparently, the term that I started, the school JUST began using a program called Blackboard. I am familiar with Blackboard as most other schools use this as a portal. No problem. The problem was that all of the homework and tests were ran through a third party publisher website. You could not buy actual books for the courses, you had to buy an E-book which would connect you to this publisher website which was supposed to connect to Blackboard and populate grades. Both professors I had stated that they were in no way familiar with the use or management of these websites or systems. They informed us that they had not received training in the use of these as well and they were learning to use them just as we were. No problem, it can't be that hard for these well educated people to figure out, right? Right?

Wrong!

For each class, I spent HOURS each week completing ALL of the assigned homework. All of which was online, on Blackboard, on the McGraw Hill portal. All of which is supposed to be linked and populate appropriate grading for the completed work. The first week goes by and my grades for each class show low grades and that my homework was not completed. I heard the same thing from many other students in my classes. I am not a C student, I am an A student. I get good grades. I do my homework, study, and do well on tests. I brought this issue to the attention of both professors and the reply I got from both was "Blackboard is supposed to do the grading and I have no control over Blackboard. You need to call the tech support hotline." So I went home and contacted tech support. Tech support said that they had no clue why there were no grades being recorded. Tech support was absolutely useless. At this point, two weeks into the five week semester, I contacted the Dean. I asked him if there was anything he could do. The Dean promised me he would attempt to remedy the situation.

West Coast has five week classes. Each semester is ten weeks long with two five week terms. Each semester costs about $10,000, so each term costs about $5,000.

At this point, I was not ready pay $5,000 for two classes and get C grade because of technical issues. The school is strict with their drop policies so I had to decide to drop or stick it out and MAYBE have the technical issue resolved. The professors would not respond to emails about this issue until I cc'd the dean on my emails to them. The dean, ------------------, made several attempts to remedy this but the professors had no instruction on the use of the platform and didn't seem to care to help. I made the decision to drop so that I would not be on the hook for poor grades. I was not eligible for any refund and the amount I owed was prorated based on the time I was in class.

For the school to charge so much money you would think that they know what they're doing, right? If you pay top dollar, it is not unreasonable to expect top service and a top quality education. I made several attempts to get in contact with the campus director. She would not see me to hear my concerns. I also made several attempts to find someone at the corporate office to share my concerns with. I got the run around. I hoped that there may be some sort of quality assurance or customer experience department.

It is my impression that this company is only out for money. They have no interest in your interest except that you pay tuition. They are capitalizing on and preying on people who are desperate to get a nursing education.

If you are considering this school, I would advise you to look elsewhere.

The money is not worth the education and service that you get. A nurse that I work with told me she started from scratch at WCU. She is now a full-time nurse but she has to pull overtime shifts to be able to afford her bills and student loans. She told me her student loans are around $1,500 a month. If you go the traditional route, you can get your BSN, MSN and possibly a DNP or FNP for less than the cost of this school.

This school could be really great. Hopefully they have improved in these areas. If they have, it was at my expense. I was only enrolled for two TWO weeks and I owe the school $2,000.