What is NLU? It is not a university, college, or school. It is a business committing fraud. I want everyone to hear my story about "studying" at NLU, since there is absolutely no reason why it should even exist.
I ended up going to NLU, since the school I was originally going to go to, Northeastern Illinois University, dragged its feet with the final part of my application. I knew NEIU was ranked according to US News and World Report, and NLU was not ranked. I ended up going to NLU, and I ended up making one of the worst decisions during my academic life. Hear my story, and hopefully you will not make the same mistake I made by going to NLU.
My life began at NLU by going downtown to NLU's campus on Michigan Avenue. There was an orientation for all students of the College of Education. Its building was nice. The auditorium was beautiful. It had a very nice ceiling with intricate designs. I was impressed. From that point on, I never was impressed. The horror began. First, I saw the students. They were very, very poor students. Some looked like they just got out of bed, did not brush their hair, and went straight to school. Only a small minority seemed to be smart and clean. When I took classes, I learned this same fact.
The presentation began by a professor who was just hired by NLU. He came from Virginia (?). He seemed to be a terrible professor and example. He began with jokes and details about the program. He lied about how teaching jobs were in demand and that we were all making a great decision by attending NLU to become teachers. He was completely wrong. His presentation was just false advertising, since he was just an employee of a sham business that just gives away degrees and only cares about money -- not students.
The presentation's format was very similar to the presentation I observed at Primerica, a company that is accused of fraud and a pyramid scheme. After the presenter talked about the program, he began to tell us how to pay for education. He encouraged us to take loans. Loans are bad ideas, if you have the money to pay for college. They just make students slaves of debt. It was another red flag that NLU was a business scheme.
After the main presenter finished his part, we all divided up into our educational specialties. They were early childhood education, secondary education, and special education. The students in my class for secondary education were not impressive. A few looked like they were dropouts from high school. At least one looked like he just got out of bed. His hair was all over the place. One person seemed very strange. I ended up having him in class. He apparently has autism. This very fact alone sums up NLU.
The presenter talked about the program. I was not impressed. He did not seem very smart or scholarly. There was another teacher or professor at this meeting. She was a teacher at the high school I attended and hated. She was not impressive. She talked about edTPA (the test students of education have to pass to get a teaching license), and what she said was completely ignorant and wrong. She probably never took it before, since it just came out. However, the fact that she said something wrong is very important, since employees at NLU make all sorts of mistakes. They truly are some of the worst you will ever encounter in academia.
The orientation was a terrible experience to live through. I knew right away that I made a mistake by going to NLU. I should have dropped out immediately. I did not. It was my fault. It became one of my biggest regrets.
The story keeps getting worse, and we are just at the beginning. My first class was on special education. I went to the campus in Palatine. I saw the students. Many of them were not at the orientation. Most were not impressive. I learned this fact repeatedly. One student sold obese women's underwear. One went to college on a basketball scholarship and left floor trading after his brother's company bankrupted and stole millions from investors in a ponzi scheme, just like Enron's. He dressed up like a hippy woman twice around Halloween. One student apparently had autism. One student used to be a bartender. There were other bad students. There were only a few good students. Two went to UIC and graduated in honors in biology and math. A few went to UIUC.
The professor for the special education class came into the room. She seemed nice at first, but something seemed wrong with her. When she was going over the syllabus, see seemed to get confused and flustered. I was very angry. I never saw anything like it before. We ended up learning that she was probably disabled later in the semester. When some students said that disabled students should not be in regular and accelerated classes, she started crying. She really was disabled. Who else would be interested in getting a Ph.D in special education in the first place? This person ended up being the best professor I had at NLU, since the other ones were so bad. Aft read more
