Athabasca University — University in Athabasca

Reviews of Athabasca University

• Grace

  Added 2016.06.21

  Taxx401 was so difficult. The textbook is written by the course coordinator so the exams are extremely difficult and you can't take your books in with you. Expecting a student to memorize an entire tax textbook is ridiculous. With them not having lectures to explain the course content in an easily understood way, it takes hours and hours of reading and re-reading the text to understand it. There has to be a better way to do online university.
• Jake

  Added 2016.05.04

  I had a pretty decent time at Athabasca. If you are contemplating going to Athabasca, I would say that an acute ability to manage time and a high level of self discipline is necessary to succeed. I thought the staff was vary helpful and accommodating, but I wish that each student had one course coordinator designated to him/herself. It would be a lot easier to contact the school and ask for help.
• Dominic

  Added 2015.03.11

  Horrible experience. I asked a very specific question to my professor "I understand that 50% of my mark is on case studies, may I please get an example of a case study or case study format you'd like, so I can make sure I am writing it in the proper format?" and her response was "we don't do that here."
• Lucas

  Added 2014.07.08

  I wouldn't recommend Athabasca Online Courses unless the student wants to work harder then they would in an actual university or really need the freedom to complete their courses. I took a SOC and CMN course. The SOC course looked promising with the assigned textbooks and movie. The material was interesting but the amount of reading that had to be done was more then I do in my courses at University of Ottawa. Furthermore, the final exam wanted me to study 8 essay questions and write an essay for 3 randomly chosen ones on the day of the exam in 4 hours. Excuse me? I understand they want to show and teach excellence but they are asking too much especially when the customer service was bad and unfriendly, there were alway more things to pay for and contacting my tudor was difficult. I had a similar issue with my CMN course, again a lot of work, confusing material with no clear end goal and I'm upset to say that I've retained less then half the material. As a student whos done online courses before and prides themself doing well in university I thought my experince at Athabasca would be better.
• Alex

  Added 2014.03.20

  How on earth am I supposed to do my assignment correctly if I do not have an example of what my format is supposed to look like? So I wrote my case study in a certain format, sent it in and asked "is this the format it is supposed to be in?" and again her response was "as I stated earlier, we don't do that here". Absolutely absurd. And it took days for anyone to get back if I had questions. on average 2-5 days. Out of the 8 people I know that went to this school, only 1 passed a course.
• Wyatt

  Added 2014.01.29

  I had an amazing experience at Athabasca U! I was able to finish my graduate degree in nursing, which was fully online and keep my full-time job. I did not lose any pay from work, or any seniority at work. I only had to work around taking my vacation/stat days off, and needed to do homework in my spare time, usually on weekends. Although, it was challenging to juggle my time, I found my professors to be fair and understanding, and I could always get the support when needed. I felt that I made the best decision for my career by choosing a online degree, and it has made me a more rounded person, and it opened a lot of doors for me! I would recommend AU for any busy working professional!!!