I've had a great experience with my classes, instructors and peers. I've attended two Big 10 schools and one private university and I much prefer small classes offered at JIU.

I enjoyed this school a great deal. The course work was well thought out, and all my instructors were easy to get a hold of in case I needed them. I personally found this university to suit my needs and therefore found success in the program. I would recommend this school to anyone as I found its overall performance very satisfactory. Also, being a spouse of a military husband I found added benefits the school provided because this.

The professors are good, and I did learn a few things in the courses. The classes get very redundant as the format is the SAME for each class--abstract critique and review, papers, papers, papers. It'd be cool to have some more innovative ideas for projects and real world applications. The ability to choose your own topics is good, and I eventually started presenting my own project ideas, and the professors were great.

The student services / advising is TERRIBLE. Besides crazy turnover, people are always on vacation or on medical leave... and no one takes accountability for anything. They basically tell you to read the handbook (which changes every 6 months or so as they add new requirements). This would be fine if I were paying $10,000 instead of over $50,000. I also lost time based on "glitches" 3 times... unacceptable.

The mentoring program is also a joke. They put you with random people who have no idea about your interests.... I wasted SO MUCH TIME with about 3 mentors who had no idea about my topic / field of interest. I finally ended up (in year 3) with a decent mentor and now I'm playing catch up.

On the up side, my peers were nice and dedicated, and I met some great professors. It's too bad that the people who "sign up" for JIU (professors and students) are awesome... and JIU's management is not.

I've been a student at brick and mortar institutions as well as JIU. At JIU my experience has been wonderful. While I cant say that every professor I've had has been great, the classes are legit as well as the curriculum and the degree overall.

I graduated from JIU with a Masters of Education. It was a very good experience overall. The professors and degrees are legit, and I feel that I learned a lot. It's true that financial aid has a bit of a turnaround delay, but if you budget ahead for the delay (about a month), it's not an issue, and the payment is reliable. I don't think the school is "keeping" the money for any sinister reasons.

I had mostly good professors, with a few patchy performances, in terms of grading turnaround and feedback. My classmates were wonderful and supportive.

I see a lot of reviews that appear to be written by people who expected JIU to be a diploma mill. It isn't...I worked hard for my degree. As with any other university, you have to commit. Do your work and take care of business and you will learn a lot and be successful.