Originally Posted by TheBigDog

(School President)

I am writing to inform you of my intention to sever my relationship with Anonymous University at the conclusion of my current course. I enrolled with Anonymous in November of 2006 with no college credit and the intention of working with Anonymous through the completion of my MBA at some time in 2010. During my process of selecting an online college Anonymous stood out to me in its flexibility to schedules, and dedication to the adult student. I am not a young adult who needs to face harsh lessons to prepare me to enter the real world. I am an adult, seasoned and experienced in the real world, with a bounty of duties vying for my time concurrently with my academic responsibilities.

In my dealings with Anonymous I felt that I had a partner in my educational process. Each of us has tasks and responsibilities for reaching the goal of my degree, and we work together as a team to accomplish that goal. The partnership is really a trio, with my employer paying for my education in exchange for the added value I will bring as an employee bearing the increased knowledge and experience of an Organizational Management degree, a Business Administration degree (what I intended to get with my electives), and an MBA (following the successful completion of my undergraduate degree).

During my tenure at Anonymous I have enjoyed great academic success. In my first eleven classes I carried a GPA of 3.9. This was not always easy; there were many late nights in hotel rooms and at home cramming to meet deadlines, and not always getting things done to the minute. In each of these cases I was met with enthusiasm and encouragement from my instructors. They all seemed very eager to help with my success, and they developed in me an understanding of a value system that I came to associate with Anonymous university. Even when I was penalized for late work, it was done so with an attitude of concern. This essentially recognized that the core purpose of my attending Anonymous is my education; Anonymous had a vested interest in my success as a student, faith in my personal dedication to my education, and compassion/understanding of the complex circumstances that are associated with an adult professional life.

All of this changed with my MGT 330 class that commenced on January 15th of this year. That week my direct supervisor at work left the company. As a result my duties at work got radically shifted and caused a huge imbalance in my schedule. I was faced with project deadlines for work that I had passing familiarity with, and a compelling amount of pressure to deliver. During the first two weeks of my class I pushed back class work as I strove to meet professional commitments. The unbalance in time priority hurt my participation in group discussions, and I was rightfully penalized for my near lack of participation at Anonymous in weeks one and two. At this time I queried my professor about the availability of extra credit as I was trying to find a way of maintaining my GPA. I was simply told that none was available. With an A mathematically impossible I set my goal on getting a B for the course, and completed the balance of the 3 weeks with near perfect numbers. This was an incredible load. I did several all-nighters on work duties after spending evenings completing class work to insure that it was done on time. The final weekend of the class I had a database corruption issue with my project, and I spent the whole weekend working to resolve that for a user release on Monday. This occupied my time instead of working on my reflective paper, and this was a conscious choice of priority that I made; I had faith in my ability to get my paper done under pressure if needed. On Monday I left work early (after releasing the new software to the users) to focus on completing my paper, and I worked on it through the evening and into the night.

I live in the eastern time zone, so I am lucky enough to have a late deadline. At 2:45 AM I figured that I was out of time for rewrites and edits and I focused on making sure that my citations were properly formatted. This exercise brought me past the 2:59 AM deadline. I ended up posting my paper at 3:18 AM, nineteen minutes past the end of the class. I was honestly not worried about that, figuring there would be a percentage penalty for being late, but that it would probably be less than a penalty for improper citations on a reflective paper (this requirement is well drilled by the staff at Anonymous). I knew at that point that I had 59 points for the class, so I needed 21 points on my paper to still manage a B; I was not certain that I would get that if I turned in a paper without proper citation formatting. On Wednesday I checked online and saw a zero entered for my grade, but there were no comments from the professor, and the average score for the class was zero, so I thought that maybe she had put it in as some sort of placeholder. By Friday the average score was up to 9.48 (out of 25) and I was starting to worry. On Sunday I wrote to the professor and inquired about the zero and was told very plainly that it was a zero, and that the late policy had been the same for the whole course. After exchanging a couple emails the conversation ended. Tuesday I had begun my grade appeal. Today I received the final verdict on that appeal, and it has been denied.

I am troubled by the outcome of this case on many levels. The faith I had in Anonymous as a partner in my education is completely gone. The fact that a nineteen minute span of time in the middle of the night can be assigned such high consequence is mind boggling. Unlike my late work in the first two weeks of the class this nineteen minutes had no impact on my fellow students, or on availability of the work for the grading process. The nineteen minutes was only even identifiable as existing by reading a timestamp that was by then hours or days old, yet is more meaningful to my grade (and my education) than the content of the paper submitted. 25% of my grade was not even taken into consideration for the sake of a stand on principle about the significance of nineteen minutes at three in the morning. The consequence of this principled stand is that I failed the course. The consequence of that for me is that I will not be reimbursed for the course by my employer, so that stand on principle is costing me $1068.71. That stand on the principle of the meaning of nineteen minutes late is setting back my education by five weeks. That stand on principle is hardly encouraging nor does it inspire me to want to continue working with this institution to complete my degree. That stand on principle is in utter contrast to the values of Anonymous that were demonstrated to me in all of my previous experience with school. And that asinine stand on principle is going to cost Anonymous the tuition I was going to reliably pay through the completion of my MBA along with the positive word of mouth advertising that was resulting from a previously successful partnership between myself and the university.

I do not seek the complication of changing schools, and I am otherwise very happy with the education I am receiving at Anonymous. But I cannot continue to partner with an institution that can endorse the decision of (MGT 330 Instructor) in awarding a zero on this paper in total disregard of circumstance or consequence. I don't think that it is in line with the mission of Anonymous University Online in their pursuit of adult students. I know it is not in line with the encouraging attitudes exhibited by the other staff members that I have worked with. Still, it is a reality that in being upheld by the university, this decision is in fact the value system that the university endorses and embodies. Is this the value system that you want Anonymous University to be know for, (School President)?

Bill Benton