M.S. at UMGC is… yikes
If you’re considering getting your Masters at UMGC… maybe reconsider.
I’ve done several semesters in the Environmental Management, and I am truly blown away by how bad this program is.
The learning materials are very frequently Youtube videos and (no, I’m not joking) class materials from other universities. Its ironic that the highest quality resources come from other universities, but expect 10+ year old digital books, loosely relevant websites, and 100+ page PDFs found off government websites. Its also really annoying that they dont provide their own materials because basically everything is a link, and over time, more and more of them become broken.
There are no tests. I haven’t learned crap because the learning materials are garbage, and Im not actually required to learn anything. Most of your grade is based off discussions and assignments. There are quizzes, but laughably, these are open book/note.
The teachers usually have full time jobs outside of UMGC. Meaning they don’t dedicate a whole lot of time towards the class, and can go days without responding to you.
The teachers dont provide the learning materials. In fact, they don’t even set up the online classrooms. Basically all they do is grade. You can also tell that the classrooms are not updated because some quizzes are based off reading materials that have been removed due to broken links.
This program is advertised as asynchronous, and yet you have to do a group presentation for every class. It is very difficult to do this is you work full time, and especially difficult if you live overseas.
AI is becoming an issue. At this point, the majority of discussion posts/responses from other students are copy and pasted from ChatGPT. But the real problem is teachers using AI to grade your assignments. Thats literally their entire job, and some of them cant even do that. Not all of them, but Ive already seen a couple examples and I’m not that far into my degree.
TLDR: if you just need a degree to check a box, this will suffice. But if you actually want to progress in your career and you want to use your degree to do that, definitely reconsider.