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UoPeople (University of the People) is an extremely non-expensive (because it is a non-profit organization and is run mainly on donations and volunteer work) online university offering several Associate, Bachelor, and Masters degrees in several fields of study.

For example, I recently started a study for a degree. I paid $60 admission fee and $20 (it would be $100 or $120 - I don't remember for sure, if there were no scholarship for me) per course plus $17 per a proctored exam when an exam is proctored, with no other fees if I recall correctly (well, I think there is also a small graduation fee).

Are there (many of?) known cases when degrees or credits of UoPeople were not accepted (e.g. by employees, other universities, etc.) where degrees or credits of most other online university courses are accepted? Or are there rumors of it being not legit or not competitive enough degrees?

If you can mention any such cases, what were the reasons of valuing UoPeople students not well?

In my opinion, UoPeople is a quite legit university by the following criterions that I consider the only valid criteria of a legit university:

  • It provides hard enough and relevant enough courses.
  • Rating well is not easy (as I know now - I studied in another university in the past and there it was easier to get good grades).

In other word, in my opinion it means that the degrees are not at all fake. (Just like as Linux is gratis but it's not a fake or bad software but could compete well with Windows if it were advertised enough.)

porton
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  • https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8681/what-is-a-diploma-mill – Anonymous Physicist Dec 29 '20 at 12:16
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    Note: the UoPeople web site says "US degrees are accredited". In that case, US students with those degrees should be in the same position as US students with in-person accredited degrees. This is the purpose of accreditation: to distinguish legitimate institutions from diploma mills. – GEdgar Dec 29 '20 at 13:38
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    UoPeople isn't really accredited. It's accreditor is the Distance Education Accrediting Commission, which is not one of the eight traditional regional accrediting bodies that accredits colleges and universities in their geographic area. Generally, only regional accreditation - meaning accreditation by one of these 8 accreditors - count. Although exceptions are made on a case by case basis, only credits and degrees from regionally accredited universities are automatically accepted as legitimate by most universities. – Alexander Woo Dec 29 '20 at 16:59
  • @AlexanderWoo okay... so what's the difference between the regional accrediting bodies and this other thing that they have "accreditation" from? Is the DEAC accreditation worth anything at all? – Ben Barden Jan 13 '21 at 14:24
  • See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_Education_Accrediting_Commission – Buffy Jan 13 '21 at 14:56

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