Walden University reviews

I. Delusional Leadership Leaders at Walden, by and large, are disconnected from reality, hold unrealistic perceptions / expectations, and behave in laughable ways. I also describe Walden is a perfect example of an over-managed institution, insofar as there are too many hands in too many pots, stirring too many things. This ranges from large arbitrary large-scale initiatives, to work culture beliefs, to day-to-day demands, to behavioral issues. I'd say leaders at Walden are more concerned with coming up with cool sounding names for things / initiatives / ideas, rather than actually forming, critiquing, editing, and implementing anything. They're also quick to pat themselves and each other on the book for their "cool" plans, while ignoring feedback / concerns from Advisors. I'll supply three vignettes that capture leadership issues. A) Survey feedback showed some small number of responders (compared to the total student body) wanted more phone interactions with Advisors, so there was an initiative to conduct additional phone calls to random students. The initiative resulted in bonus call requirements each week, on top of our other tasks. The initiative came at a time when our team was already drowning, so the thought of doing arbitrary extra calls was disturbing, offensive, and defeating. The manager overseeing the initiative joined our team meeting to essentially explain the rationale behind the additional calls, and to give advice on how to best balance the new requirement with our already existent and burdensome work lives. We provided concerns and feedback, asked questions, and tried to engage in a conversation about the initiative. What we received was re-explanation of the initiative, talking points littered with unfounded and nebulous "manager talk" language, and a patronizing response to our concerns. In fact, I think the response best captures leadership responses when Advisors raise concerns: "I don't see what the big deal is about extra calls. It's not much extra each day." This was after we explained our workflows, and our concerns with arbitrarily adding extra calls to random students each day. We were told - not in these exact words - to suck it up and deal with the new initiative. No accommodations or adjustments. B) I found an internal error in something that ended up needlessly costing a student money. The error was done by another team. I reported the error to the team's manager and asked for them to follow up with an internal cost waiver for the student. The manager tried to retroactively fix the error, and make it look like my teammate was actually the one who erred. Fortunately, I was keen enough in our systems to find evidence that proved the error was in fact perpetrated by the other team, and that the manager tried to make adjustments to hide the mistake. No reprimands or apologies ever came through. In fact, I never heard about it again after sharing the evidence with my manager. I know the cost was waived correctly, but that's it. This dishonest and dirty behavior was a fireable offense, in my opinion. C) During particularly trying times, and after several opportunities for blunt feedback and criticism of our workflow requirements, our team was close to mutiny. We had rough waters several times in my 3+ years at Walden, but this felt much more serious and defeating than anything else. Our workflow was again interrupted by another team's errors relating to false communications sent to students, and our daily tasks erupted (this happened quarterly, but this time was especially difficult and disruptive). At our wits end, we explained our frustrations, anger, and disappointment. Tears were even shed. We were met with patronizing "we stand with you" sort of language, reminders to get to our priorities, and to try our best. I honestly felt like an unskilled assembly line factory worker being told to deal with it and get back to work. Leaders at Walden often incorrectly describe tasks, people, teams, work, etc..., make rash decisions or slam initiatives down throats without correct planning, data, or expectations, and function as if they have no idea what student-facing teams actually experience. They latch on to ideas and sacrifice staff well being. You will often find yourself doubting if you're a professional employee, based on how you're treated. II. Ridiculous Workflow Workflow as a Student Success Advisor is spread over emails , calls (inbound and outbound), and internal tasks. Your queue controls your day-to-day, and lurking behind this is the specter of outreach initiatives, which include (but are not limited to) onboarding new students, registration help, struggling student outreach, and general check-ins. A typical day consists of things leaking into your queue to be handled, outreaches to make, and other internal tasks / projects to address. Where workflow becomes ridiculous is with the stacking of initiatives on top of queue management. Your week can quickly go off the rails, due to things beyond your control. For example, let's say you start your day with 30 tasks in your queue--maybe emails from students, some callback requests, and a couple internal requests. As you do these tasks, more come in throughout the day. While managing your queue, you also need to find time to try to contact your new students to onboard them. Onboards come in daily, and managers want several phone attempts / email attempts made to every single new student before their start date. You also will have perhaps one or two other initiatives requiring calls to many students. Academic Progress is a big one every quarter, wherein you must try to touch base with students who have failed courses, and/or who have low GPA issues. You are also expected to make several calls per day (it was 25 total when I left). The 25 can be composed of onboard calls, other initiatives, callbacks, or cold-calls. Whatever they are, you need to hit 25. EXAMPLE DAY: Let's say, as mentioned above, you start with 30 things in your queue. Let's say 30 more come in throughout your shift, putting you at 60 total queue tasks for the day. Let's also say you have 5 new onboards that day, and you need to do 10 Academic Progress calls to keep on schedule to finish by the deadline. If each queue task takes even only 3 minutes to "complete," you're looking at 3 hours worth of work. There will absolutely be some that take longer, and some can even end up requiring real hearty research / processes to address. If 5 of those 60 take 10 minutes instead of 3, you're looking at 3.58 hours of work. Let's say 1 of the 60 takes 30 minutes to complete for some reason. Now we're at just over 4 hours worth of work. And this is only if you rip through 54 other tasks in your queue throughout the day, taking only 3 minutes to do each of them. It's worth noting as an aside that leadership wants Advisors to call every student that shows up in their queue, instead of deferring to email. If you adhere to this request, it ends up being a giant time sink. Sure, it allows you to hit your 25 daily calls, but slogging through a busy queue and having to call every single student that shows up is not sustainable, reasonable, or sensible. Between the 5 onboards and 10 Progress, you've got 15 of 25 calls made for the day. If no students answer, the 15 will take probably 2 minutes each (assuming you barely research each student before calling). So that's 30 minutes, 15 calls done, easy. Let's say of the 10 additional calls you have to make, 5 of them don't answer (10 more minutes, putting you at 40 minutes spent). The other 5 do answer, and this is where a chaotic element enters your workflow. Calls can range from 5 minutes to 1+ hours, depending on the student and their needs. For the sake of this example, let's say all 5 that answer take 10 minutes each. That's a pretty healthy touch-and-go call. So we can add 50 minutes, so we're at 1.5 hours worth of time spent on calls. We're at 5.5 hours of solid work, and this is a lowball. Inbound calls are occurring as you do your tasks and calls. Inbound calls do not count towards your 25 for the day, so any inbound you accept directly, or any calls you allow to be transferred to you, are purely extra,and add to your workflow. There are also several meetings to attend every week, and they take away from your actual work time. I'd say 1.5 hours each day of meeting time is a fair average for a week. So now we're at 7 hours sapped. Keep in mind this is if you did not call every queue task, and took no inbound calls. And hey, you get an hour for lunch, so there you go! 8 hours is filled. Each and every day will be packed full--but where do other projects / tasks / issues fit in? They don't. Instead, you will be expected to juggle your normal tasks while also addressing any extra projects or requirements. Or how about a day your queue gets crazy? Tough. Hopefully you have teammates that have free time to help you get things under control. Covering teammates is a constant experience as a Walden Advisor, whether it's helping a struggling coworker, or covering someone out of office--typically every week there will be some sort of extra coverage needed. Meaning you can take extra tasks and stack them right on top of your already packed schedule. END EXAMPLE. It's common to have 5+ competing priorities on any given day, and literally no room for flexibility. Expressing concern to leadership results in "Can one of your teammates help you?" and rarely any other options. Flexibility and understanding are sacrificed in the name of metrics and top-down leadership expectations that have no bearing on - or connection to - the real work and student interactions going on. And don't worry, if you're struggling, you'll get weekly reminder that you're not meeting metrics. Cohort sizes are too large, so what can also happen unexpectedly is a wave of students will decide to contact you on the same day. It results in your queue workflow sometimes doubling without much warning. So, take that 4 hours worth of queue work, and double it. Good luck. You'll definitely need to ask teammates to abandon their own tasks to help you get under control. Or vice versa. III. Imbalanced Silos Teams at Walden function in their own worlds, with only brief moments of collaboration. Student Success Advisors are often left out of plans / projects, or brought in too late, resulting in missed opportunities for input and control. I cannot express how many side projects I worked on where I had to point out several errors and issues after the fact, only because they did not seek an Advisor's input earlier on. It's a constant issue. And then, getting those errors / issues addressed is another painful dance that must be done, with much ridiculous back and forth. You will feel as if people are not reading or listening to your input at all, and would rather send off a poorly completed product. Teams are rarely on the same page on policy, procedures, plans, or expectations. I would describe most collaborative efforts as battles, with constant bickering and challenges between teams / managers. Some teams will bully other teams, simply because the culture allows it to occur without any penalty. Walden would truly be a great paradigmatic case study if one was researching the silo effect in an organization, and how it negatively impacts professionals. Every manager has their own expectations and quirks, every team has its own workflow and allowances. You'll notice quickly that some teams have pretty easily managed / cakewalk workflow, while others (Student Success Advising, famously) have insane, unmanageable workflows. It was always defeating to have someone change to a different role within Walden and come back to us to brag how much better / easier it is than being an Advisor. Faculty, while usually meaning well, are totally and utterly disconnected from other student-facing departments. They have no idea what goes on day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month. IV. Conclusion I have yet to mention this, but Walden as an institution has strong academic programs, strong faculty, some unique and innovative plans, and a general desire to serve students. However, Student Success Advising at Walden is horrid. I would not recommend this role to anyone, except people looking for a "first big job" after graduate school to serve as a leaping point to get experience and peace out as soon as possible. There is a serious mistreatment of professionals that occurs, and I describe Walden's environment as unsympathetic, defeating, patronizing, disconnected, and obsessed with top-down workplace structures.