Washington DC summit on dubious degrees

"Federal and state officials plan to meet Jan. 15 in Washington to brainstorm approaches for dealing with government employees who claim educational degrees from unaccredited institutions or diploma mills. Sources at several agencies said the meeting would include officials from the Education Department, the General Accounting Office, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget, and congressional committees engaged in the credentials issue."
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/22489-1.html

 

It would be a significant achievement if the Fed Govt. clearly stated what a degree/diploma mill actually is and who they are. In addition they should publish and maintain a list and pursue said badness through the FBI rather than the innuendo, "dubious" insinuations, and lack of clear policy that currently exists. They could enact a policy that says all degrees must be US DOE recognized in order to meet job requisition thresholds, if they haven't already. I suppose this would permit some latitude for other forms of legitimate education beyond the minimums as long as we know what "legitimate" is. Another way to deal with postsecondary education is to make accreditation mandatory and Federally controlled rather than voluntary and leaving it to the States to regulate. So, if the Feds are going to get tough then they should be clear and put some teeth into it and stop dallying around the issue.

 

"The Education Department is considering the creation of a master list of accredited colleges and universities in the United States, as a way to protect prospective students and employers from diploma mills. [...] The issue of federal employees claiming degrees from unaccredited schools came to the forefront last June, when Washington Technology and Government Computer News discovered that a high-ranking official at the Homeland Security Department had acquired all three of her degrees, including a Ph.D., from a diploma mill in Wyoming, followed by revelations that dozens of federal IT professionals also included degrees from unaccredited schools on their resumes."
http://www.wtonline.com/news/1_1/daily_news/22528-1.html

"All three of her degrees" should be "three of her four degrees." I guess the reporter didn't know about Laura Callahan's Associate's degree from TESC.

 

"Self-styled"? I prefer the other news report that said "court-certified".

 

it depends...

Maybe they meant that they believe John cuts his own hair?

G

 

And the irony of it all is....

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1894209,00.html

Check out the advertisments at the foot of the story.

Cheers,

George

 

Education Department enlisted to help unmask diploma mills

 

I would like the US DOE to go farther than this. A Peterson Guide would show the same info these folks are proposing. Their solution doesn't actually identify diploma mills leaving the innuendo problem in place (if you're not on the list, you're bad). This also disenfranchises by inference all of the legitimate and legal State recognized schools that are not accredited. They need to specifically list those schools that are diploma mills and define what that means.

 

Kirkland writes:

> Their solution doesn't actually identify diploma mills leaving
> the innuendo problem in place (if you're not on the list, you're
> bad).

The burden of proof has to be on schools to show that they're "good". Why? Because mill owners can invent new school names faster than anyone else can possibly show that they're "bad".

> This also disenfranchises by inference all of the legitimate
> and legal State recognized schools that are not accredited.

And it doesn't matter how lax the laws are that they're "legal" under?

 

The U.S. government needs to be specific. Their approach, as it is today, leaves out too many legitimate schools while not exposing the frauds or what makes a school a fraud. I agree with you that the little buggers are wily and change places/create names often, so the feds should define "diploma mill" so that everyone can stay ahead of the pack. My usage was "legitimate and legal State recognized schools" this assumes an approval and standards process. And yes it matters.

 

Oregon is ahead of them. The Feds should look at their Office of Degree Authorization - it's a starting point.

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/

 

Education Department undecided on creating list of non-'diploma mills'

 

Yes, now the confusion starts. The GAO report in March will be interesting and hopefully helpful. While a list of accredited schools has merit...those lists already exist and as said before are not comprehensive in identifying legitimate education. What doesn't exist is a specific definition of what a "degree mill" is. Even a fact sheet at CHEA says there's no definition. So maybe taxpayer moneys would be better served if the Fed defined the term so that we could have a frame of reference to make up our own minds. It would save the time and flaws of list maintenance and would permit us the ability to stay ahead conceptually.

 

From my perspective it makes more sense to educate the HR folks and the application screening folks on where to find the appropriate validation for educational entries on an applicant. Under the current hiring practices only the top three candidates come across the hiring officials desk. There are thoughts on broadening this list to include a larger pool of finalists. Doesn't it make sense to have the hiring official (or the final HR person) trained to recognize or verify the credentials. Additionally, since most positions do not have a positive education requirement how many of your tax dollars are you willing to expend on keeping an ever fluctuating institution list updated for just that sake. I believe training the HR folks is a better approach. Heck, post the school here, I bet you guys could answer faster than I could research its validity.

 

If I were in charge...

While I consider myself an RA nazi, I really wish we had some sort of national or centralized accreditation that would acredit all worthy institutions and abolish the RA authorities. I understand how things are and I'm willing to play by those rules, but I really think a central authority would be better. With central or one-stop accreditation, it should be an easy matter to weed out the pretenders.

 

Re: If I were in charge...

I totally agree. I spent a good deal of ink on this last year, proposing the same approach. The current U.S. system(s) resemble a quilt made up of patches that have been built since the 20s. Our system of voluntary accreditation, State regulation, and Federal recognition is unique and not the best we can do. Could it be that it was put together by the same folks who designed our income tax system?

 

Folks,

Take a look at:

http://www.chea.org/pdf/chea_glance_2003.pdf

under "Advocacy".

Apparently CHEA either doesn't share the opinion that the current system is broke or is ignorant of the actual state mentioned in this forum. Since CHEA is the "Primary national voice" you may want to vent your concerns to them.

Under "Service" you will find quality assurance issues.

More government oversight is not a resolution. Additionally, the President's management agenda calls for a smaller government footprint (to the loss of 845,000 government jobs) I doubt that trying to increase this number to oversee education would merit a lot of additional positions to provide adequate governance. Therefore your government oversight would be poor or inadequate. But at least allow this forum to have another area to discuss.

Keep in mind that RA/NA or other accreditation is voluntary at this point. Which begs the question what law would allow the government to perform the accreditation function. The government discussions to this point only address government employees. Any other use of a national database would be voluntary until a law is passed to effect otherwise.

I believe that a good topic for a thesis would be how to revamp the accreditation process, including oversight.

As for the IRS, they are losing thousands of jobs to technology and consolidation. Time will tell if this decision is sound. Keep in mind that the public drives the government train's direction. We just wreck it.

 

I'd love to know what happened between the time when the president of the then-brand-new CHEA made, in the fall, that this was a serious agency, that would not be dealing with the likes of agencies like DETC, and the spring when she gave the luncheon speech at the DETC nation convention and praised them to the skies and welcomed them as members.

 

Dr. Bear,

money and politics would probably factor in the equation.

Unless CHEA has some authority to direct change, my assumption would be that there will always be a wide variance in not only the accrediting bodies but within the schools in those bodies. As evidenced in this forum several DETC schools are spoken with regard. What places them in this regard would be something to note and emulate by other DETC schools.

For all practicality even the RA accreditors have mixed application. Hence the ability of a school to move to another location to attain accreditation. Essentially, there is no consistent standard among the accreditors. CHEA should assess and promote consistency. Without this consistency of application there will always be questions of program adequacy.