I hope you find the following comical as it is ridiculous. I applied to this school to pursue an…read moreMFT degree in CA. I'm an attorney seeking a mid-life career change for health reasons. I just needed an efficient and flexible way to meet licensing requirements and prestige or name recognition wasn't that important to me because I already have that on my resume. I was accepted and spoke to an enrollment staff member Kim Strickler. I had only two conversations with her.
During those conversations, she (1) said things like, "I answered your question," when I asked for clarification because she *hadn't* answered my question; (2) interrupted me repeatedly, and, when I asked her to allow me to finish speaking, interrupted me *four more times* in quick succession; (3) told me that my questions were "unhelpful, unproductive, inefficient," and that I was "fixating" on things; and (4) proceeded to repeated *no less than six times* her opinion that my questions were unhelpful, unproductive, and inefficient and would not stop repeating that until I started recording the call, which is when she finally hung up.
Oh, before it got really bad, I asked her to transfer me to someone else or have someone else talk to me. She refused multiple times. She also said there wasn't anyone else I could talk to, said there was no way to file a grievance or escalate this matter. She also said more than once that she was the head of "this entire department," in order to intimidate me into not complaining. She obviously knew she wasn't behaving well, lol.
I found the appropriate grievance escalation channel on my own (because there obviously is one), and sent a written complaint. The school's response was, in summary, "Kim did everything professionally. We think your threat to file a complaint was escalating. This matter is closed."
I have the emails, if anyone's interested. Classic "avoid liability and accountability," which I guess isn't surprising but it is disappointing. They also included a veiled threat to sic their lawyers on me, supposedly because my signature block included the name of my law firm, which doesn't make sense since all of my correspondence has my firm in the signature block.
That part made me laugh. I'm single-handedly prosecuting my family's claims against Mercury Insurance for bad faith conduct after the Eaton fires. I'm not afraid of some online university no one's even heard of. That said, I can't associate myself with a university whose management level staff can't emulate basic maturity... Anonymity is OK; embarrassing and infantile is not. I withdrew immediately and will be seeking a doctoral degree at ********** instead. Looking forward to it very much.
Happy to discuss if you are interested in ways to protect yourself if you run into this issue and have to talk to Kim. Hopefully you've never encountered someone who is this defensive, threatened by anyone who doesn't cower from her, obsessed with dominance and control even if it means acting like a 6-year-old having a full blown tantrum, dismissive and then accusatory when that doesn't work, unable to respect reasonable boundaries whatsoever, and absolutely allergic to accountability, which is in turn reinforced by the institution. I know a few people like this, but usually they are men.
Not everyone has a lot of options, I understand, and you might be stuck with TUW. Let me know if you'd like advice on this. Happy to discuss and share info.