Why UMGC?
When I entered school, my life was not at a stage suitable for studying. The work schedule is irregular, there are people in need of care at home, and commuting consumes the best energy of the day. It is almost impossible for me to have a fixed schedule on the traditional campus. The choice of UMGC was purely pragmatic at first: it is a state university, which belongs to the University of Maryland system and has the formal institution certification of Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The courses are all online and asynchronous, and there is no need to sit in a specific place at a specific time. I don’t expect any “college experience”, but I just want a way to get my University of Maryland Global Campus Document Degree without quitting my job or moving.
Later, I learned that this kind of “learning on the move” was originally the gene of UMGC. Founded in 1947, it was originally designed to serve working adults and members of the US Armed Forces. For 70 years, its classes have been held in military bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam and Germany. Students may start their classes in South Korea, transfer to Japan to continue, and finally graduate in Germany or Maryland. I was deeply impressed by President UMGC’s words: “Our students are already on the move. That’s not a loss, just a change of address.
Who is suitable to come here?
If you ask me what kind of person UMGC is suitable for, I will say: it is suitable for those who have enough things in their lives but still want a degree. It doesn’t provide the immersion of traditional campus, and it doesn’t have the romance of ivory tower. It provides a pragmatic structure: certified courses, a credit transfer mechanism that recognizes your existing experience, asynchronous classes that can be crammed into fragmented time, and a group of students who are also struggling to move forward in life and professors who are willing to give you a hand.
I didn’t attend the ceremony on graduation day. I had work that day and couldn’t leave. I sat in my office, refreshed the grade page, confirmed that the last course showed “Pass”, then closed the browser and continued to do what I was doing. But I know something is different. That “reading” state is over, replaced by a quieter certainty: I can finish something that takes several years in a chaotic life.
