Why DPU Is One Of The Worst Universities For Undergrads: A Parent’s Firsthand Experience
I hauled a 50-pound duffel up three flights of unairconditioned stairs last August, my 19-year-old son Jake trailing behind me with a dented mini fridge we picked up at a Walmart on the 2-hour drive to campus. The RA who was supposed to meet us never showed. When we finally tracked down a custodian with a spare key, the lock was jammed, and the 12×16 dorm room smelled like old moldy carpet and leftover pizza from the previous semester’s final week. That was my first introduction to DPU, and it only went downhill from there.
Jake graduated high school with a 3.2 GPA, not bad, but not high enough to get into the in-state state university’s communications program he originally wanted. We couldn’t afford out-of-state tuition, and every other four-year school he applied to offered him next to no aid. Then DPU sent him an offer for a half-tuition scholarship, promised 100% job placement for comm grads, and had a pretty website full of smiling students and new-looking buildings. We jumped at it, figuring it was our only shot at a four-year degree for him.
First semester, his intro to communications class had 120 students crammed into a lecture hall built for 80. Half the kids sat on the floor or stood in the back for the first month until the university finally added an extra section, which meant Jake had to rearrange his entire schedule halfway through the term. Three of his eight classes had professors that never showed up for the first two weeks; they were replaced by grad students or part-time adjuncts who didn’t even have access to the syllabus or the online learning portal. When Jake tried to switch his major to secondary education after he realized comm wasn’t what he wanted, his advisor’s office was closed for 12 straight days. When he finally got a 10-minute meeting, the advisor shrugged and told him the education department had filled all its seats for the year, so he’d have to wait another 12 months to switch.
The half scholarship sounded great on paper, but DPU piled on hundreds in unlisted mandatory fees we never saw in the acceptance packet. There was a $250 student activity fee, a $180 technology fee, a $300 facility maintenance fee, even a $50 “graduation prep fee” for freshmen. When I called the bursar’s office to ask for a breakdown, the woman on the line told me fees were non-negotiable and mandatory for all enrolled students, and couldn’t give me any details on what the money was actually used for. By the end of the first month, we were paying almost as much per semester at DPU with the scholarship as we would have paid for full price at our local community college.
Jake got norovirus from the dining hall halfway through the semester, which is only open six hours a day on weekends even though all freshmen are required to buy a full meal plan. When he went to the campus health center, they didn’t have any prescription meds on hand, told him to drink Gatorade and go back to his dorm. He ended up having to Uber to an urgent care 20 minutes off campus, which cost us another $150 out of pocket. By mid-November, Jake was calling me every other night saying he wanted to come home. We let him drop out at the end of the semester.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about what went wrong since Jake left, and there are three concrete things I wish I’d done before we sent him there, things any parent can do when looking at lesser-known colleges. First, don’t just take the campus preview tour at face value. Preview days are curated: they show you the new science building, not the moldy freshman dorms, and introduce you to full-time tenured profs, not the adjuncts that actually teach most undergrads. If you can’t visit on a random unannounced weekday, find a current student in your kid’s intended major on Reddit or the university’s public student Facebook group, send them a $10 coffee gift card, and ask them 10 specific questions about class sizes, advisor access, and hidden fees. I didn’t do that, I trusted the marketing, and that was my biggest mistake.
Second, get a full written breakdown of all costs before you accept any offer. Don’t just take the advertised tuition price. Ask for every mandatory fee, ask if they go up each year, get it in writing. A lot of lower-tier private universities like DPU lure students in with big scholarships and low sticker prices, then make up the difference in hidden fees that add up to thousands over four years.
Third, check how many full-time professors teach undergrads in your kid’s intended major. Go to the department website, count how many full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty there are. If there are less than one full-time prof for every 20 undergrads, walk away. At DPU, 70% of Jake’s classes were taught by part-time adjuncts who only came to campus one day a week to teach. When Jake needed a letter of recommendation for a summer internship, three different instructors said they couldn’t write it because they didn’t know him well enough.
Jake’s now at our local community college, taking general ed classes, and planning to apply to the state university’s comm program next fall. His largest class has 35 students, his professors reply to emails within 24 hours, and he just got a part-time internship at a local marketing firm that one of his profs connected him to. We lost the $4,000 non-refundable deposit we put down at DPU, plus another $3,000 for the half semester Jake was enrolled, and that money’s gone for good. We still don’t know if he’ll get accepted to the state school next year, and we’re still paying off that extra debt. But I stopped thinking of community college as a consolation prize a long time ago. Jake’s happier, he’s learning more, and he’s on a path that works for him. I get emails from DPU every month asking for donations, and I just delete them. There are a lot of good affordable college options out there for kids who don’t get into top-tier schools, but DPU isn’t one of them. I just hope other parents don’t have to learn that the hard way like I did.
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