Liberty University A Religious Distant Learning Rip Off University Lynchburg Virginia

All colleges have a transfer course database that gives you a mapping for any given tracked college or university to the equivalent credit you will receive at the college.  Checking Virginia Tech, for example, shows a long list of transferrable credits from Liberty to VA Tech.  The list is shorter for UVA, but the courses accepted would constitute a fairly common Freshman and Sophomore year of a Liberal Arts degree.

Don't fear attending Liberty U, just do your homework if you have a specific school in mond and a specific program you wantto transfer in to... but then that is good advice no matter what school you are choosing to begin your college career.

Alsom the refund policy described by the report above is spelled out clearly on the LIberty U website and isn't all that different than any other college.  I do't think any school will give a full refund if you withdraw after school has started.  THis is for good reason since the seats for classes are finite, and you have cost the school hundreds or thousands of dollars by taking a seat away from another student and then withdrawing after class starts.

Granted, Liberty Online should be more lenient in refunding than a in-person university since you really aren't drawing from a limited number of seats, but based on their policy they do seem more lenient.

 In your post, you state Liberty University credits are not accepted by most schools; this is not true, per se.  Liberty University does have regional accreditation, and other regionally accredited universities can and do accept their credits.  However, this fact is precluded by specific program accreditation requirements, typically for graduate programs.  For instance, if you are seeking to attain either an Associates or Bachelor's, your credits should not only be recevied by other regionally accredited bodies, but you should also have no problem being accepted into graduate programs at other schools.  Yet, if you are pursuing a graduate degree from Liberty University, it is your responsibility to ensure whatever program you are pursuing possesses not only regional accreditation, but also has program specific accreditation.  For example, in order to pastor in most churches, it is required one has earned a seminary degree (graduate) through an ATS accredited school.  Liberty University is not ATS accredited; therefore, Liberty's seminary degree would not be sufficient for acquiring gainful employment in the ministry, in many cases (not all).  Likewise, if you were in a graduate program that was regionally accredited but not program specific accredited, your graduate credits would not be transferable to another graduate school.  It is the student's responsibility to ensure whatever school they are interested in possess the proper accreditation.  I know of a handful of state schools (secular) that do not even possess program specific accreditation, yet, they are at the same time, regionally accredited.  So, yes . . . If you are an undergraduate degree seeking student, you should have no problems transferring your regionally accredited Liberty University credits, or using your Liberty University undergraduate degree to get accepted into other schools' graduate programs.  Whether or not you are accepted into another school is a different story altogether, but denial of acceptance cannot legally be based off of what institution you attended, as long as that institution is regionally accredited.

I'm a current Liberty University online student in my second semester and have never had any problems with Liberty in fact they have helped me and answered my question in a respectful way and also the professors are helpful as well You can read LUO full academic policies including withdraw info at www.luonline.com/index.cfm?PID=14240. It isn't the schools fault if you didn't follow the withdrawl procedures, so stop blaming the school as it is not their fault and I find liberty to be a great school and have learned so much.

To me Liberty University 's DLP (Distance Learning Program) is a rip-off and they use religion to lure people in.

I have had multiple issues with them. I will not go into all the issues or everyone reading this would be bored out of their minds with the endless paragraphs I could write.

Without going into too much detail I have had a problem billing wise. I enrolled with Liberty's DLP in 2007 for fall classes. I took a full time course load up until the summer of 2008. At this time I finished my summer courses and told them I would no longer be taking courses there due to my second pregnancy and how sick I had been.

Well I thought all was well, and I went about my life.

I get a call in December 2009 saying that I owed Liberty $200 and I needed to pay the debt in full immediately. I was shocked. The lady who called told me they had been trying to contact me through multiple e-mails sent to my Liberty e-mail account, which if I was no longer a student, why would I check my Liberty e-mail?!? She gave me a number to file an appeal and dispute the debt, which I immediately did. They would not budge or even look into it, they just denied me off the bat and a week later I find myself in a lawyers collection agency! And on top of the $200 I now have an $85 fee for having it go to another agency! I am now going to have to come up with an extra $285 that I do not have to pay for this invalid debt just to keep my credit from being harmed.

To those who do not have prolems please check over your financial history on ASSIST and make sure all the information is valid. I'm not saying every person will have an issue or Liberty would not still be in business, but please be careful and keep detailed records.

Those who are considering Liberty, please please think of going somewhere else! I thought I may have been an exception, but after looking at the multiple reports on this site and other sites I now feel this type of thing happens pretty often.

Thank you all for reading and thank you to the original reporter for filing a report here.

I signed up for classes with Liberty Univeristy after being told that there would be no problem getting FA to pay for classes in the upcoming term. I received an award letter before the classes started and a voucher to get books everything was lined up and all would be paid in full. The second week of class I decided to call and make sure that my loans were in and everything was paid for to only find out that I did not qualify for the loan amounts that I was given. I had attended another school and the academic years of the both schools were not the same and I was not able to get money until the next year. Well one class I had already signed in to and turned in an assignment as I was suppose to, since this was week 2. Which meant that I would only get 75% of the tutition back and I would owe the school a balance. The issues is that the school did not take the time to look at my other loan periods before they told me that I qualified for the money, and most FA funds are not posted until the 2nd week which means if anything does not come through and you have participated in the class then you will owe the full tution plus any books that you put on a book voucher. I don't know about anyone else if I could afford to pay out of pocket for school then I would not be applying for loans. I dropped the class thinking that I would just have a withdraw fee and that I could pay that balance at a later date. I received an email from student accounts only to find out that I owe over $700 to the school and they are threatening to send me to collections. If I would have known that they were not able to give me the money I never would have taken the classes because there are many other schools that I could have attended that I would not have had this problem. So do not waste your time if they do not know what they are doing.

I am also a student at this University, and have been for the past few years. I attended my freshman year at Liberty (where I met my husband). After that, I went to a wonderful university in Chicago (which I TRANSFERRED to with nearly all my credits, which is pretty customary-you usually lose a few). After I got married and got pregnant, I changed back to Liberty's DLP program, where I finished my Bachelor's. I have not as of yet had any problems that you are referring to.
And as for the withdrawal policy, I believe that Liberty's policy is typical and perhaps even better than others-I know several people, including family members, who had similar and even worse situations at other schools. With online schools, that is pretty typical. And I know every time I call Liberty they remind me of the drop/withdrawal policy, so you probably did hear what would happen if your withdrew from your classes.