University of South Africa [UNISA] review: UNISA Experience

I have been at UNISA for almost a year now and I must say that it has been the most frustrating anger-inducing experience I have had. Below are just a handful of frustrations:

1. The websites are badly designed, hard to use and confusing to navigate. Nothing is clear or direct and it feels more like maze.

2. I had one and only one good lecturer who was easy to contact, replied to messages, did online lessons and just generally did their job effectively. The vast majority of lecturers and TA's are rude, lazy, unavailable and dismissive.

3. Some lecturers do not understand the concept of "Part-time" and insist on scheduling things during working hours or they will dump an unreasonable workload on you all in a short period of time. For instance, for one of my modules I have 52 Assignments due in December, there is on average 5 assignments a day that are due the same day they open. I would have to take the entirety of December off on leave in order to complete it, so I dropped the subject.

4. I have had multiple instances where I have been locked out of my account due to payment errors on the Universities side, yet I am punished for it and I was unable to complete a couple assignments until the issue was resolved.

5. There are a number of assignments I handed in in my first semester, which I am still waiting for marks for. I have been waiting on some marks for 8 months now.

6. Complaints are either ignored or dismissed and they have ensured that escalating a complaint is difficult as possible, requiring you to jump through hoops to only be ignored.

7. I recently read that UNISA degrees are not taken seriously by employers and other universities because of how easy it is to cheat your way through it or pay someone to complete your degree for you, therefore the validity of your degree is put into question due to the lack of preventative measures from the university to curb cheating and plagiarism.

If there is anyone reading this who is looking to apply at UNISA, I was strongly advise against it as it has become what amounts to a long term scam and if it was at all possible, I would request a refund for the entirety of my course.