Diverse Issues in Higher Education reports that the University of Phoenix has surpassed FAMU as the top producer of blacks with baccalaureate degrees. FAMU had held the top spot for 12 years.
The publication did not provide a numerical breakdown of degrees awarded, but simply noted that Phoenix Online's Class of 2008 out-produced FAMU. However, last year’s numbers already made it clear that FAMU was in danger of losing its crown.
For the Class of 2007, FAMU came in first by graduating 1256 blacks with baccalaureates. North Carolina A&T University was second with 1239. Although Phoenix Online came in third with 1220, it experienced the sharpest increase by awarding 69 percent more than the previous year.
Phoenix’s victory is another indicator that FAMU must catch up in providing distance education programs to nontraditional students.
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Online colleges nipping at FAMU’s heels
The publication did not provide a numerical breakdown of degrees awarded, but simply noted that Phoenix Online's Class of 2008 out-produced FAMU. However, last year’s numbers already made it clear that FAMU was in danger of losing its crown.
For the Class of 2007, FAMU came in first by graduating 1256 blacks with baccalaureates. North Carolina A&T University was second with 1239. Although Phoenix Online came in third with 1220, it experienced the sharpest increase by awarding 69 percent more than the previous year.
Phoenix’s victory is another indicator that FAMU must catch up in providing distance education programs to nontraditional students.
You might also be interested in: FAMU could lose coveted title by 2011
Online colleges nipping at FAMU’s heels
FAMU should focus more on quality than quantitiy. We have to get back in the habit of recruiting National Merit Scholars and top HS students around the country
ReplyDeleteAdrian, I agree with you. However, I do think online courses are a necessity in today's environment. To succeed, FAMU must have an efficient, high quality, reliable IT infrastructure. FAMU currently does not have a quality IT infrastructure and it is not for lack of funding. The personnel running FAMU IT are just not up to the job. They are wasting large sums of money by purchasing decisions that are at best ill-advised, and at worst--well I won't go there. Their major concern is security, which is important, but delivery of IT services is the objective. If left to FAMU IT, they would shut everyone out of the IT system so as to have nearly perfect security. Ammons needs to reject the historical FAMU hiring model of giving priority to FAMU graduates and their friends and relatives. Let FAMU step into the modern world of efficiency and quality by hiring people based on the ability to perform. In doing so, he might rely for a change on some of the professional competence that resides in FAMU faculty, which he constantly gives lip-service to, but never acts on.
ReplyDelete10:20 AM, so Dr. Ammons should rely on professional competent faculty members like you, right?
ReplyDeleteYou ever thought that maybe he doesn't feel that he can rely on you?
@10:46
ReplyDeleteI agree with 10:20 why don't you list the achievements of this IT department since Ammons has become president. And please explain why FAMU still don't have a main FAMU Active Directory, Campus wide Exchange server (to share calendars), why we so behind in offering online degrees/classes (practically free money), unreliable WiFI that don't cover all FAMU, or why for the first two weeks of Spring 2009 the registration system was down. Most of those things are standard at other schools. In a time where you have to cut personnel and classes offered this is when you need these technologies to pick up the slack and help FAMU be more efficient and effective. Technology can also hold staff more accountable for things they don't finish or do. Right now you can get away doing whatever you like and half-assing cause really what proof you have to say otherwise. If FAMU going to be competitive in the years to come it can't continue to be lagging behind in technology.
I also agree with student quality as mentioned above. I had to take calculus 2 years ago and was in a class off Freshmen and sophomores. These students didn't even know basic algebra or Trig and the teacher had to practically go back over the basics before he could even teach the class. Technically that whole class should have failed but he knew how that would affect FAMU and some of these students was trying to be engineers and pharmacist. I mean getting are number up is important but what the point if a number of these students be lucky to pass their first year?
And before some of you go off on the Ammons saved us stuff let me make this clear I appreciate what he did but that not going to keep us safe. There is a lot of talk about HBCU being obsolete and need to be done away with and that talk not going to go away. If FAMU going to survive another 20 years it has to be come more than just a HBCU we need to be up there with UF, MIT's, Harvard's, etc.. Ammons is one man and cant watch everybody or do everything so all some of us is doing is offering suggestions and pointing out weaknesses. You don't have to agree with folks but at least give them the respect of hearing them out and not get nasty and childish with your responses.
I am a FAMU graduate, and it is so sad that FAMU is still at best stuck in the 1980's and at the very worst still stuck in the 60's and early 70's! FAMU could have been and should have been online 10 if not 15 years ago. In addition, you can have quality and quantity for example can we say Mercedes Benz and if one cant not understand that then can we say UF?
ReplyDeleteFAMU should not strive to be UF because FAMU is FAMU. Yet, FAMU should strive to be greater than UF as an HBCU! HBCU does not equal subpar or at least it does not have to. When we have people with no vision for the future we get left behind and left out of that future and we have no one to blame for that but ourselves. ONLINE education is the wave of the future and a mix of online and brick and morter give FAMU an edge because those same Blacks that went to Phoenix would surely have come to FAMU instead. Yet, FAMU has to be willing to grow. I spoke to several professors at FAMU who were talking about how online classes dont work and proceeded to waste my time talking all period it is time for change at FAMU and u cant get rid of the "old" people and bring in "young" people with the same mentality of the Old, ie. interim Dean of SBI.....
Like I said in my 10:46 AM post, something is wrong with everybody else "except me".
ReplyDelete11:25 AM, were you the smartest student in that Calculus class? If so, that's scary.
As a faculty member, I can tell you first-hand what kind of "progress" the University has been slow to make: In 2004, we were still "bubbling" in final grades by hand on computer print-out sheets (in quadruple). One copy was for the professor, one for the department file, one for registrar's office, and one for the dean's office. In 2005, I believe, we -- well, those of us who were lucky enough to have computers in our respective offices -- finally engageed online grade inputs. Those w/o office computers had to do this stuff at home. Plus, before we did the online grade inputs, faculty didn't even get an official attendance roster until perhaps the fourth week of school, if then. Up to that 4th week, we didn't know who was supposed to be enrolled inclass or not. We just had to rely on the presence and honesty of students of came everyday and said they were in fact "suppose to be in the class." I have many more horr stories, but RN doesn't have that kind of space. Suffice it to say that progress for the University is slow in coming.
ReplyDeleteIn all fairness, not all Phoenix programs are accepted nationwide. Therefore, they have a higher quantity, many of the graduates will suffer in the area of job placement and mobility. FAMU should offer some distant learning, but we do not want to become a t-shirt factory for degrees. I am proud of my alma mater and I want our name to continue to represent quality.
ReplyDelete12:20 PM, Look in the mirror. As a FAMU parent, I have some horror stories to about "some of you faculty members". It doesn't matter the university, company, or hospital, you will always find some employees with a horror story. At the end of the day, it's not as bad as some of us chronic complainers would like it to be.
ReplyDeleteI'm very proud of FAMU & will continue to support it and continue to recommend it to top students & athletes.
@12:42
ReplyDeleteReally what do you know about FAMU you a outsider looking in. Work for FAMU before you come on here blasting the Faculty. I be the first to say yes there a a few faculty and staff that need to go. However the rest faulty and staff where the only things keeping FAMU together during those years of hell. They the ones who was fighting to keeping a certain President from dismantling FAMU piece by piece. I ask where was you during these times. What was you doing to keep FAMU afloat. Now these same Staff and Faculty being asked to do more with less much less. All the 12:20 was trying to do was tell you some of the things that need to be change and improved upon at FAM.
It's bad, even community colleges are offering online courses. The technological infrastructure at FAMU is extremely antiquated. The truth may be ugly, but that's the way it is. They need people in administrative roles who can think outside of the box and are innovators
ReplyDeleteGet in the room before you draw conclusions. I know these things need fixing but going back and forth without suggestions is more destructive.
ReplyDelete"Phoenix dethrones FAMU as #1 producer of black baccalaureate graduates".
ReplyDeleteSO WHAT
@4:07
ReplyDeleteThey have gave solutions but just in case here a small recap. Tell adinistrators to get off there high paid collective butts and get Famu ready for the future or bring people. In who can. We already list a few I deals in earlier post
11:34 PM, I want you to go find your first grade teacher, slap her, then tell her to give you an Alice & Jerry Textbook.
ReplyDelete@12:45
ReplyDeleteWell sorry I'm still getting use to typing on this Iphone it has lot of auto this and that features when it comes to typing. So in the future I be sure to be more careful. I keep forgetting when people have no counter to something being said they go the grammar route.