As part of the free legal assistance we provide to students, Veterans Education Success receives complaints from students using veterans’ benefits, such as the GI Bill, to attend colleges and universities around the country.  

We received 450 veteran and servicemember complaints about University of Phoenix.  We analyzed those complaints for trends, and found:

University of Phoenix

Of the 450 complaints:

  • 29% complained that University of Phoenix credits did not transfer after being promised they would.
  • 28% complained about the lack of job opportunities after being promised by University of Phoenix recruiters they would have those opportunities, many times after being promised specific jobs such as a “Registered Nurse” or “Licensed Social Worker.”
  • Nearly 28% complained about financial issues, especially the tuition being higher than they were promised.
  • Almost 22% complained about the quality of education.
  • 15% complained about recruiting practices.
  • 10% complained about student loans they didn’t expect.

Some of these complaints include:

  • “I was continually misled during my enrollment at UOP by both the enrollment team and the teachers. I feel that UOP is a sham of a school and an embarrassment to universities.” R.R.
  • “I attended the University of Phoenix for 8 years, having to change my program and take additional classes because the program changed, etc. I have had to pay multiple times for transcripts and have even had them held hostage when I threatened to attend another university. The promise of job opportunities upon completion are laughable at best as most consider the quality of education to be lacking.” H.L.
  • “I was told by University of Phoenix that they had all the accreditation that all the big schools had. I am now being told that a lot of places do not accept University of Phoenix. I am 39 years old and don’t have time or money to go back to another school. I also am over $30,000 in the hole. The quality of classes is very subpar. Most classes you don’t even take tests. You don’t really learn anything useful.” M.B.
  • “They kept taking money from me, but when it was time to get my degree, all of a sudden I owed them more money.  They would not release my transcripts unless I paid them said money but they never explained why I owed it to them. I wasted so much time.” J.S.
  • “I was not given the chance to fully read the contract. I was led through it and told where to sign. Little did I know he wasn’t explaining everything and obviously did not have my best intentions in mind. I was also misled to believe that the school’s credits were easily transferable, how the learning process worked there, quality of faculty, and how the BAH worked. I looked into transferring a couple times throughout my college career and could not transfer many, if any credits. So I was basically forced to at least finish where I was for fear of having to retake classes and have my GI Bill benefits run out before getting a degree.  Many, not all, but many of the teachers either did not care about teaching, or couldn’t. Due to this, in many cases, I had to teach a subject to myself in order to pass a class. I even filed a serious complaint about one particular teacher, but as far as I know that teacher is still employed there with no action taken against him. As for the BAH I was under the impression that I would be making just under 2200 per month. I was not told that the week in between classes was not paid even though that is technically the first week of class, with homework due at the beginning of the class. Even after I finally was told that I could double up on class to make up for the lost week, I still don’t think I was paid that much.” K.S.

Also, in 2017, Yale Law School summarized the trends in the student complaints we had received about University of Phoenix in a report available here: https://vetsedsuccess.org/student-veteran-complaints-university-of-phoenix/ 

 

Download the PDF here:

Phoenix complaints