Gunner said:
Most universities offer distance education opportunities and some, like Athabaska University in Alberta offering exclusively distance education. We have come a long way since 1974 and perhaps a change is long overdue.
While this may be true, the service offered by CFUP went "above and beyond";
1) On the bus to Wainwright, after an early morning bugout "Hello, this is GO!!!, I need to push my final exam date back two weeks - I have to fight the Grenobians" CFUP: "No problem, we will arrange a new date with your PSO's office"
2) After a tasking was unexpectedly extended "Hello, I'm Mrs. GO!!!, My husband wants an extension on assignment number three due to unforseen military circumstances" CFUP: "We'll put in the request for him to his professor, and send you a note authorising a fourteen day extension, which he can send in with his cover sheet"
3) Sitting in a trench on the south side of Kandahar AF in 2002 "Hey GO!!!, you got a letter!" Me: "Sweet! a refund cheque for the full amount of my tuition for the semester I had to pull out of, and a mark of "W", even though I was within two weeks of writing the exam!"
Athabaska and RMC are significantly more expensive than U of M, and there is a certain stigma attached to such narrow institutions. My U of M degree will say nothing but my program and BA, while Athabaska's would say Distance learning, and RMC's would be, well, an RMC degree.
Service like this does not exist anywhere else, and university Dist. Ed. departments will not sympathise with the above scenarios the way CFUP did.
Also, you may have noticed that the letter I posted was from the U of M. The military side of CFUP and the CF has not seen fit to inform anyone of this change, and no replacement has been named, less than three weeks from the end of CFUP's tenure.
There is no replacement for CFUP yet, and I have no reason to believe that there will be in the near future. The U of M will undoubtedly maintain a high level of service, but the DND's lack of support for this program is appalling. We are now the only military in the western world without a university program for enlisted men. Yay for us.
Now prospective troops get to find out that the claims made in the recruiting commercials are not quite false, but definately misleading!
