Zeppo S.
Yelp
My experience with UVU was mostly terrible.
The majority of my professors were adjuncts. The best were folks who (a) worked full-time in non-academics jobs, or (b) were retired. Either (a) or (b) taught a class or two as a part-time job. They were great, without exception. The rest of the adjuncts were people with Masters or PhDs who complained openly about how they believed they were under-compensated and deserved benefits and job security because they'd paid their dues, man, and did you know the groundskeepers earn more than me? But at least they tried. That my worst professors were full-time academics should have been a major red flag. The tenure-track professors mostly had massive egos because they earned degrees from Elite National University and/or their doctoral advisor was was Professor Superstar who won the 1982 Whatever Prize for discovering that the chicken came before the egg. Tenured professors tended to believe they possessed supernatural insight and wisdom. "I studied under the leading professor in subject x, therefore I am special not only in understanding subject x but also special in general and definitely smarter than all of you plebes". (See also Sayre's law: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.")
Liberal arts professors were by far the worst. Armchair radicals who are completely detached from reality as they rail against the system from the comfort of six-figure taxpayer-funded sinecures after which they earn taxpayer-funded pensions for the remainder of their natural lives. For reasons no one can articulate, you will learn to study literature through different "lenses." You will study Marxist economics, even though the economics department doesn't mention Marx because all his ideas were completely wrong. You will be expected to analyze literature via the lens of Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics from the early 1900s, despite the fact that his methods are outdated and barely mentioned in linguistics except as a founding father of the discipline whose work is now part of the distant past. And so forth, until you'll want to puke. All of this misinformation is taught as if it were holy writ beyond criticism. And none of the professors could write worth a d-a-m-n. To quote what Andrew DelBanco wrote in the New York Review of Books: "...if you want to locate the laughingstock on your local campus these days, your best bet is to stop by the English department."
The majority of professors, liberal arts or not, clearly didn't bother to read the textbooks they assigned to us. I don't know if if this a sign of laziness, being overworked, contempt (for their students or jobs), or something else. But it was disheartening in the extreme and made it difficult to take them seriously. Often in discussions I'd make a comment and the professors would say, "how interesting, where did you learn that fact?" Uh, it's in chapter 4, professor. One memorably awful English professor (a) had an MFA; (b) had a PhD; (c) proclaimed himself a feminist, then (d) referred to a textbook's female author as a man: "...we don't have time to go into the subject deeply today but read the section in the textbook, because he really explains it very well." Gag.
Typical giant bureaucracy. Getting an answer to the simplest of questions could require trekking from one end of campus to the other, and then back because Person A told you to visit Person B, but B is only in their office on every other Tuesday assuming there's also a full moon that night. Seemed as if nobody practiced accountability and they're just going through the motions and passing off the problems to other departments. As one of Parkinson's laws of bureaucracies states: "Officials make work for each other."
The counselors were ridiculous. "I've known you for 30 seconds and barely listened to your question, but here's a pamphlet that will answer all the questions you could possibly ask - next!"
Over a decade ago UVU tried to monopolize or cartelize their textbook sales. They attempted to shut down the companies near campus that buy and sell used books. It was not a success, but it was a telling moment. They had no shame, and their money-grubbing greed was exposed. It was never about education. It was never about learning. It was always about money money money.
The best thing about the school, pre 2008-ish, was the old library near the LDS Institute building. Lots of nooks and crannies, quiet places to read and study. The new library is a monstrosity, designed by some show-off architect. Coffee shop on the ground floor (because it's all about money). Sound echoes EVERYWHERE and it was impossible for me to get any work done.
In short, I didn't like UVU very much and the places still makes me irritable a decade later. Maybe your experiences will be different. Maybe it's gotten better. I sure hope so, for your sake.
