cybersecurity masters degree -- whats the go too?

I am looking for an online cybersecurity possibly in operations or in IR -- what is the go to? Is WGU still reputable now a days? SANS still good? I am also considering price..

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jeremywatts2005

@aspiringsoul I hate to tell you I was a Dean for ITT Tech and worked in the community college "NonProfit" segment. I know all about the numbers and I know all about what different colleges do and don't do. Your numbers on ITT Tech are skewed at best. Even community colleges market and send out marketing materials. Second, each ITT campus was its own unique school or a school within a school. There was a parent campus with child campuses attached to the accreditation of that school which was divided into regions.

Each region was unique in how it took care of its students. For instance, did you know that community and "non-profit" colleges do not need to adhere to the job placement regulations? Those are only required for the for-profit schools. We had to place 80% or more of the students into an in the field placement at a set salary to justify the tuition. If you didn't then your school could be and most likely was placed on probation and could have its accreditation yanked.

I know we had a lot of vets sign up for college. Why they are looking for technical hands on training which is not always found in the community college system. You also have to take into consideration like at my campus I paid for students A+, N+ and S+ plus paid for the instructor to teach it at no charge to them. Why? Because it made them employable. I know of other campuses who did the same thing. I also had unemployed students who needed jobs. I helped them to find work or I employed them at work studies. At one point I had 30 lab techs on a 600 person campus. There were some shiny mouse balls. No degree is totally worthless it had some value whether you transferred credits from the degree to another college or some of the knowledge benefited you elsewhere it does have some value.

Now to the assess in classes comment that is strictly forbidden by the DOE. There are certain requirements students have to meet to be even counted present for a class and there are a number of classes you have to attend to be charged tuition. So just because someone sat once does not mean they are paying for the whole quarter. You have seen a few youtube videos and read a few online articles, but in no way does that make your point. It gives a biased view of one section of people who are likely not all the educated about education as I am. I worked in administration and was even a professor for over 10 yrs. I know there is good for-profit and bad and there are bad non-profits and good non-profits. Just look at all the sides. I have both non-profit and for-profit education. My for-profit Champlain degree has me making more than my non-profit degree ever did. I make over 150K and still climbing in McKinney TX of all places.

aspiringsoul

Jeremy,

I'm going to respond to each of your comments from earlier.

First off, I've never worked in Academia. I'm glad that you can offer us your perspective as a Dean from one of the institutions that you worked for, but I'm confident that my numbers are not skewed.

Secondly, they are not my numbers. They are the numbers of the Senate HELP Committee. I have read "more than a few online articles" and I am very familiar with the deceptive and abusive practices within the industry.

I would hope that there would be some type of "gainful employment" rule for such institutions when they charge twice as much for a Bachelor Degree and several times as much for an Associate Degree than Non-Profits while selling their prospective students private loans with High Interest Rates, spending as much or less on instruction than Community Colleges, and dedicating 37% of their revenue to Profit.

I'm aware that community colleges spend money on Marketing (as does pretty much any institution of higher learning) but do they spend nearly 20% of their revenue on Marketing?

In 2009, ITT allocated 37.1 percent of its revenue, $489 million, to profit, and 19.1 percent, $252 million, to marketing and recruiting. ITT’s 37.1 percent profit margin is the highest amongst the 30 companies the committee examined.

ITT Tech allocated 37% of its revenue to Profit. That's an insane profit margin!!! Do you really wish to suggest that dedicating this much revenue to "Profit" is a common practice in the Non-Profit sector?

ITT Tech also charged TWICE as much for a Bachelor degree and several times as much for an Associate Degrees than Non-Profit Colleges. The CEO of ITT Tech was given 7 million dollars in compensation in one year alone.

Documents indicated that, at least during the period reviewed, ITT recruiters were trained to mislead prospective students about the cost of attending the school. When potential students inquire about the cost of tuition at ITT, recruiters are trained to answer with responses like doyou want a discount education, or a valuable one that will give you a return in the future? Education is an investment in you and an investment in yourself is never a bad investment. Could you share with me your thoughts or ideas as to why you think it might be too expensive?

Enrollment growth is critical to the business success of for-profit education companies,particularly for publicly traded companies that are closely watched by Wall Street analysts. In order to meet revenue and profit expectations, for-profit colleges must recruit as many students as possible to sign up for their programs.Internal company documents make clear that recruiters employed by ITT are expected to pursue prospective students aggressively. During the period examined by the committee, recruiters are instructed that they are to make 140 calls a day if they have no appointments, and 100 if they have one (do Community colleges do this?)

Are you familiar with the "Pain Funnel" that was used by some recruiters from ITT Tech?

How ITT Tech Screwed Students and Made Millions

Are you familiar with the PEAKS loan program at ITT Tech (for which they were sued for predatory lending by the CFPB and the SEC)?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/13/sec-charges-itt-fraud-over-student-loan-programs

Are you familiar with the fact that 47% of students that have defaulted on their loans attended for-profit colleges (which is much higher than those who attend Non-Profits, because of the egregiously high tuition rates?

See below for where I pulled my "Asses from Classes" comment.

Laura Brozek worked for ITT Technical Institute for over seven years as a recruiter in southern California. She started as an entry-level recruiter, enticing prospective students, including parolees and those with felony records who were interested in criminal justice jobs they likely could never obtain, to enroll at the school with promises of future success in high-paying jobs.

Brozek described how she easily climbed the corporate ladder at ITT Tech, eventually becoming promoted to director of recruitment in her region. She and her colleagues who met their goals — measured primarily on the number of students enrolled or “asses in classes” and “kiss ’em and sit ’em,” according to Brozek — were rewarded with salary increases. Those who failed to meet their goals were demoted and sometimes even terminated.

That wasn’t Brozek’s problem. She was really good at recruiting, receiving awards and accolades, thanks to mastering recruitment techniques including the “pain funnel.” The pain funnel was used to “demoralize potential applicants by discussing their life’s shortcomings in order to have them enroll, where their life would improve.” Such techniques are both “predatory” and “very successful,” she said. Students would enroll with the “expectation that if they spend enough money, whether through savings or students loans, their problems would be solved,” Brozek said. “For a large percentage of students who enrolled, this was simply not the case.”

She and other recruiters skimmed over statistics on poor retention and job placement rates for ITT Tech graduates, instead emphasizing potential success.

Are you familiar with this whistleblower lawsuit?

A recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit against for-profit college chain ITT Technical Institute accuses the school of operating a “systematic scheme” to defraud the government by using a litany of abusive, deceptive practices to enroll students.

The lawsuit URL="https://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/lipscomb-v-itt.pdf"]PDF[/URL, filed last April by a former dean of academic affairs at ITT’s Tallahassee campus who says he was fired after reporting abuses to higher-ups, was unsealed this week after the Department of Justice declined to join the complaint.

The former employee claims, among other things, that ITT purposefully recruited students who were not qualified to attend the school – including one specific incident where a student who could barely write a coherent sentence was enrolled – in order to secure more federal financial aid dollars.
ITT Tech recruiters were also allegedly encouraged by the director of recruitment, the college director, and other officials to “probe” potential students about “what causes pain in their lives” and to “dig in” to that pain to get them to enroll, MarketWatch reports.

Additionally, the suit claims ITT unlawfully pays sales commissions to recruiters and provides false information to students about their financial obligations, the transferability of ITT credits to other schools, and about their employment opportunities after graduation.

In once case, the suit claims that an ITT graduate was told they could get jobs as forensic scientists similar to those in the television show CSI Miami if they enrolled in the school’s criminal justice program. However, according to the suit, ITT’s program didn’t offer the science training necessary to work as a forensic scientist.

The former dean says that when he and another employee found out what recruiters had promised the criminal justice students, they went to classrooms to inform students about the false information. At that point, he says many students “became upset…and dropped out.”
The Tallahassee campus subsequently shut down the criminal justice program. The director of recruiting told his staff that prospective students interested in criminal justice “should be steered to the business management program and told that they will be able to open their own private investigation business, even though that is not what the Business Management program is designed to train students to do.”
The suit also claims that ITT promised prospective students that if they enrolled they would receive “free laptops.” In reality, the laptops were far from free. Instead, they replaced the textbooks whose $800 cost had been built into student tuition.
A spokesperson for ITT Technical tells MarketWatch that the company doesn’t comment on litigation, but noted that the company denied the allegations and intends to “vigorously” defend itself.

This isn’t the first time accusations of abuse and deceptive practices have been levied against ITT Tech.

In May 2015, the SEC filed fraud charges against current and former executives with the company for their part in concealing problems with company-run student loan programs.

The charges against the company, former CEO Kevin Monday and current CFO Daniel Fitzpatrick stem from their alleged fraudulent concealment of the poor performance and looming negative financial impact of two student loan programs the company financially guaranteed to investors.
According to the SEC complaint URL="http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2015/comp-pr2015-86.pdf"]PDF[/URL, the loans performed so poorly by 2012 that the company’s guarantee obligations were triggered. However, instead of disclosing the issue to investors, the SEC alleges that ITT and the executives engaged in a fraudulent scheme and made a number of false and misleading statements to hide the magnitude of ITT’s guaranteed obligations to the loan programs.
Before that, in February 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued ITT for allegedly pressuring students into predatory loans and misleading students on future job prospects and salaries.

Source: https://consumerist.com/2016/01/21/whistleblower-lawsuit-accuses-itt-tech-of-defrauding-government-using-deceptive-recruitment-practices/

If you wish to dispute any of the numbers or data that I have cited, please feel free to do so...

jeremywatts2005 wrote: »

@aspiringsoul I hate to tell you I was a Dean for ITT Tech and worked in the community college "NonProfit" segment. I know all about the numbers and I know all about what different colleges do and don't do. Your numbers on ITT Tech are skewed at best. Even community colleges market and send out marketing materials. Second, each ITT campus was its own unique school or a school within a school. There was a parent campus with child campuses attached to the accreditation of that school which was divided into regions.

Each region was unique in how it took care of its students. For instance, did you know that community and "non-profit" colleges do not need to adhere to the job placement regulations? Those are only required for the for-profit schools. We had to place 80% or more of the students into an in the field placement at a set salary to justify the tuition. If you didn't then your school could be and most likely was placed on probation and could have its accreditation yanked.

I know we had a lot of vets sign up for college. Why they are looking for technical hands on training which is not always found in the community college system. You also have to take into consideration like at my campus I paid for students A+, N+ and S+ plus paid for the instructor to teach it at no charge to them. Why? Because it made them employable. I know of other campuses who did the same thing. I also had unemployed students who needed jobs. I helped them to find work or I employed them at work studies. At one point I had 30 lab techs on a 600 person campus. There were some shiny mouse balls. No degree is totally worthless it had some value whether you transferred credits from the degree to another college or some of the knowledge benefited you elsewhere it does have some value.

Now to the assess in classes comment that is strictly forbidden by the DOE. There are certain requirements students have to meet to be even counted present for a class and there are a number of classes you have to attend to be charged tuition. So just because someone sat once does not mean they are paying for the whole quarter. You have seen a few youtube videos and read a few online articles, but in no way does that make your point. It gives a biased view of one section of people who are likely not all the educated about education as I am. I worked in administration and was even a professor for over 10 yrs. I know there is good for-profit and bad and there are bad non-profits and good non-profits. Just look at all the sides. I have both non-profit and for-profit education. My for-profit Champlain degree has me making more than my non-profit degree ever did. I make over 150K and still climbing in McKinney TX of all places.

Cisco Inferno

Rocket Impossible wrote: »

I'm taking an MS in Information Systems Engineering at Regis University in Denver. They also have a pretty well regarded Information Assurance program. My classes are full of high ranking people in large enterprises, government, and the military. It's online and there are people involved from all over the country. Various 3 letter agencies are all over the Information Assurance graduates, if that's what you are looking for. Not cheap by any means though.

Hey Rocket, Glad to see youre at Regis. I was originally looking at Telecommunications Technology or IS Security for University of Denver.

How often do you report to class? It seems like those are very good contacts to make. It also is cheaper than DU.

What made you choose Regis over DU? I know UC-Boulder has a telcom program but you need a near perfect GRE and a 3.6+ gpa, that and its in Boulder. UC-Denver has more tech management programs.