Grand Canyon University: 200 BBB Complaints and Counting

[Dickie Billericay]

Congratulations to regionally accredited Grand Canyon University on reaching the magic 200 complaint mark with their local Better Business Bureau. In the last three years 200 people had to get help from the BBB to get a square deal from GCU. No telling how many others got screwed over and didn't bother to seek help.

Remember, regional accreditation is the "Gold Standard." Yeah, right. Your assurance of "quality," based on no objectively measurable standard other than they say so.

[Albert Hidel]

School must have started. They are up to 203 as of today. Should we start a new pool on 300?

[Harrison J Bounel]

School must have started. They are up to 203 as of today. Should we start a new pool on 300?

As badly as Northcentral sucks, they "only" have 51 BBB complaints in the last three years. Is GCU 4 times as crappy as NCU?

[WilliamW]

Is GCU 4 times as crappy as NCU?

According to NCACS, NCU has only 9,252 total students currently enrolled, while GCU has 48,790.

So on a per student basis, NCU is the crappier school, with one complaint for every 181.41 students, or 0.00551 complaints per student. GCU has one complaint for every 240.34 students, or 0.00416 complaints per student.

Or to put it another way, GCU has 5.27 times as many students as NCU but only 3.98 times as many complaints.

As others have noted, these are just the students who got pissed off enough to complain to the BBB, not all the students who actually got screwed over by the respective schools in some way. Also, NCU is strictly online while GCU has a B&M campus too, so there's no telling from these numbers which group is getting shafted the worst. GCU might be a little nicer to students who can personally confront administrators who are trying to bend them over.

But any way you slice it both these "Gold Standard" jokes suck when it comes to customer service, and NCACS isn't doing a thing about it.

[jamesc1]

Hardly appears to be a gold standard. I would imagine that for every complaint that was made to the BBB there would have been 10 more who were unhappy but unwilling to take it to the next level. In fact, I believe, that people should complain when they get screwed. If they don't, others get the same treatment.

RA gold, sometimes, but often barely brass.

[WilliamW]

School must have started. They are up to 203 as of today. Should we start a new pool on 300?

Onward and upward! As of today GCU has 205 complaints in the last three years.

[Howie Felterbush]

Sorry to spoil the fun, but here we are in October 2014 and the total of BBB complaints in the last three years is down to "only" 169. They still seem to have a steady stream of new complaints, so my guess is that there were so many old complaints they are falling off the three year calendar at a faster rate than the new complaints are coming in. Has GCU turned over a new leaf, or are they just experiencing a temporary relative calm before the next storm?

[GeorgeBushFan68]

Sad. I took classes at GCU years ago, and had a good experience. I wonder if things have slid downhill since then, or what.

[The Bison]

Just a footnote here about the better business bureau. I am starting to believe that the BBB is essentially of little value. They can assist you in some circumstances but I had a major dispute with one company and they could only convey my complaint and it was ignored.

I did find that Ripoff Report was a good way to register complaints since the complaints posted are made public.

Of course the best way to avoid getting swindled is simple, research any company, read the contracts closely and get a lawyer's opinion if necessary and finally, only do business with reputable businesses.

[The Bison]

Sad. I took classes at GCU years ago, and had a good experience. I wonder if things have slid downhill since then, or what.

It is possible that you did. I believe that a lot of these complaints might be from students who wanted to withdraw from classes and wanted their money back.

I said before that I did speak to a GCU rep and found him to be well versed. It sounded appealing to me though they did not have a masters program in my major so i decided against it. It was, at that time one of the few schools accepting credits from Kennedy-Western.

That was before David Featherly and the accreditation Mafia extorted them into denying credit to KWU-WNU Alumni. Again, that is their stated position but I wonder if this was only done to divert attention.