re: LSUS Online MBA Reviews

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That’s a horrid review

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I wish it wasn't my experience.

There is very little response on Dr. Shi on this board, because I believe he has only been offering the course for a very short time. Most of the lecture videos were produced in November 2019. However on page 430 is one review that lines up very similar to my experience.

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Han Shi is the worst. He is extremely unrealistic with his FIN 701 course. The average grade is an F. He will burn you out and then you take the practice problems and its on concepts that wasn't clear or he didn't teach. His tests are even worse. If you see he's teaching the class don't take it. Wait for a better teacher.

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I sent an email last week, Apr-6, to the the office of the Dean of Business. Admittedly, it was a little raw given I was very frustrated with the class. I wanted to save the draft to filter the frustration a bit better, but accidentally hit send instead. I sent a companion email with a proper salutation and apologized for the admittedly raw content.

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Hello (Dean's Administrative Assistant),

I'm wondering if I could schedule some time to talk with the Dean about my concerns with the online MBA program.

Background
I am an undergraduate LSUS alumni from 2012, receiving my B.S. in Computer Science with a Business Administration minor, in preparation for an MBA, graduating Summa Cum Laude. My current role is a (Removing PII), where I work directly with Fortune 500 CTOs to develop their technology solutions to meet business objectives. Some of my customers are (Removing PII). Due to my education from LSUS, I am able to operate at a very level helping these very large organizations through their technology journey.

My Concerns
I was very excited to continue my education through LSUS with a quite affordable online MBA program. To start, I went to RateMyProfessor.com to get a feel for the professors for the classes available during the Spring AP2 session, selecting Dr. Han Shi for Finance 701. My choice in concentration is Finance as I want to better understand and communicate in financial and business terms technical solutions for my customers.

However, my disappointment was very quickly established. Although many of these issues were in Week 1 of the course, they are persistent to now, starting Week 5.

1) Their is little to no discussion on the hows and whys of a concept. The lecture consists of 3 videos with companion slide decks. Each video is approximately 20 to 40 minutes long and follows very closely to the number of pages in the slide deck. This means a fairly consistent rate of 1 minute per slide. If there are 3 concepts on a slide, the discussion per topic is about 20 seconds. Thus we have enough time to mention a point, but not reason the point. Only that it is important along with dozens of other factoids.

2) The lecture videos are produced with an apple headset inside of an office. Echo, low recording device quality, and a very thick accent makes for a truly frustrating video experience.

3) Many of the practice problems utilize intermediate terms or barely discussed points. One is left to perform their own research for much of the work. The lecture and notes, several times, have not covered a topic, and one must infer their own conclusion. So too with many of the conceptual questions, which do have answers provided eventually, have many concepts that were never covered. The questions would be great if they had a foundation upon which to build, however, many times the answers provided are the foundation for the concept. It's a classic chicken and egg scenario, but with structured learning.

4) Dr. Shi has said he cannot discuss any quiz question due to the class being nonrefundable. This means when we're wrong, and by the distribution of grades, many are wrong a lot, we have no avenue to figure out why. Coupled with the above makes for a very frustrating experience if you learn by figuring out why you were wrong.

5) ProctorU has repeatedly been very unprofessional. Their systems continually report a false positive on my laptop, which causes 30 to 60 minutes of additional technical troubleshooting before I can take a test. Each time I am eventually let through with an apology, but yet it occurs with every test. They have no escalation team to actually solve the problem. Every proctor has had a different experience of questions, pre-checks, and escalations. Again, without any escalation, or team to work through a problem with their system (I had one supervisor say this was a known false positive), I'm left to spend the first 30 to 60 minutes of each test frustrated trying to take a test on material I quite frustrated with in the first place with. Imagine if you walk into take an exam, you've spent the last 6 hours studying, trying to figure out what the professor wants, only to walk in and troubleshoot your pencil for 30 minutes. The same pencil you've used for every exam before and troubleshoot, and then after that 30 minutes somebody says "ok, go ahead". That was me yesterday. And Saturday. And last week. And two times the week before.

After 4 weeks, I am not learning. I'm spending 15 hours a week memorizing factoids through a virtual fog with little to no recourse to figure out when I'm wrong, and thereby correct my mistakes. I have been a troubleshooter for most of my career, and in many ways still am. So being unable to troubleshoot why I'm wrong, which is where the majority of my learning occurs, is unavailable to me. The math is the math, and I learn enough of it to pass most of the exam and quiz questions, but the conceptual questions I am guessing most of the time. I'm not here to recite bullet points, I'm here to learn, and not learning has my frustration level at nearly an all time high as I consider myself an academic when it comes to knowledge. The ProctorU frustration is beyond the pale at this point.

I am no stranger to the concept online learning is not for me, however, in the technology field, that is the majority of learning. I have spent 20+ years learning online, watched MIT and University of Washington online learning libraries, especially in Computer Science, and learned much. Youtube videos over many topics, from electrical wiring to plumbing and soldering. Yet I am not learning, spending 15+ hours a week, and increasingly becoming frustrated.

My fear is, when combined with the RateMyProfessor.com site, I am in for an even worse experience with other professors and other topics. As of right now, I do not expect to continue my education through LSUS MBA program. I am reaching out as an alum, knowing the level of education LSUS provides, and being very disappointed.

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My apologies, I guess I did mention the accent in the original email. Regardless, I still stand by criticizing production quality, which makes understanding a thick accent very difficult. The critique was one of production quality with the accent adding additional context.

My companion email after receiving a response from the MBA Coordinator.

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Thank you.

My apologies, I hit send on accident and thereby way too early. There were too many grammatical errors, which does not reflect my typical level of professionalism. I also let my frustrations speak a little bit too much and wanted to dial it back on a second read. Alas, we get the raw version, which may or may not be better for the discussion anyway.

Again, thank you, and I look forward to discussing the issue with [s]Associate Dean of Business[/s].

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The response I received was very canned. I will not copy it here as I do not believe in violating the trust of correspondence, however I will provide a summary in a short while.