Berne University, St Kitts

A question for Dr Bear...

In your opinion, is Berne University, St Kitts, a properly recognized and accredited university?

The reason I asked is that although they are recognized and accredited by the government of St Kitts and listed in the UNESCO Handbook, there still seems to be doubts about their status.

 

St Kitts and Nevis' accreditation is not recognized as being comparable to U.S. accreditation or recognition by foreign governments.

Berne University operates in New Hampshire without that state's permission. It also fails to be accredited by the New England Association, the regional accreditor with responsibility over New Hampshire.

The UNESCO listing, IIRC, has been rescinded. Berne will not appear in the next edition of the IHU.

 

Thank you for this information, Rich.

What value then does accreditation by the St Kitt's government have for Berne and the other institutions on St Kitts, including a school of medicine?

I am still wondering whether the level of accreditation that Berne has - recognition by a sovereign country- is sufficent to say that Berne does enjoy 'recognition' of its degrees, but perhaps not in all countries?

 

Except NACES Member IERF said otherwise and the Oregon University where Dr. Darris is teaching with his Berne Ph.d and Berne Phds teaching at Touro, and Dept. Head @ Devry and Ashworth on and on...

Berne has an administrative office in New Hampshire it's not illegal for a foreign school to have an office in the USA. It's not accredited by NEASC because it's a St. Kitts School and doesn't need to be.

This is not confirmed anywhere, but the rumor is that they have been delisted as Rich states. The new WHED is due out in April though and the matter should be put to rest then.

I'm not affiliated with Berne at all but I always felt Berne got a bum rap here. The problem is people changed the rules as they see fit.

1. "It must meet GAAP by being accredited by the Ministry of Education of the home state..."

Answer: Well St. Kitts is just some pigeon island they don't count.

2. "Well it must be listed under the IHU to meet GAP..."

Answer: Well people don't use the IHU anymore for GAAP.

3. "Must have a NACES Eval to mean anything..."

Answer: Well I'll forget that NACES member IERF evals Berne and they are member of AACRAO, NAFSA, EEIE, ACE, and publishes their own data used by the industry but I know more than them.

4. "The are illegal, just ask the Oregon ODA..."

Answer: I'll forget that Dr. Darris is teaching at an Oregon college and they didn't have an issue with the Berne PhD infact a school administrator recommended Berne to Dr. Darris. Even though the ODA hasn't made a decision in almost 2yrs about this situation, I'll still cite it's illegal.

Please.

 

More to the point, it wouldn't be likely to meet NEASC's accreditation standards. So it acquires off-shore accreditation and an island address and then claims that it's "RA-equivalent" because the island is politically a nation state.

The problem is that citing nationhood as a guarantor of academic credibility is confusing academic and political issues.

Decide whether your purpose is to defend Berne or to criticize Degreeinfo.

If your intention is to defend Berne, then please make a case for it. Point to some cool Berne facts and talk up some impressive Berne accomplishments.

I've done that for a number of CA-approved schools that I like, all of which I think are academically superior to Berne. If you believe that Berne merits our acceptance, then you can do it too.

If you don't, but just continue insist that Berne's off-shore accreditation means that everyone is obligated to accept it as academically sound, you won't be very successful at making Berne convincing.

 

I don't have to decide either, if you feel compelled to defend CA Approved schools, go for it. I commented on Berne and so be it, you can agree or disagree or comment as such, such as I choosed to comment on this thread.

I personally would never enroll @ Berne for 2 reasons, A. I'm not a grad student. B. I hear they are near bankrupt.

You don't like and are suspicious of international GAAP as stated in other threads, fine, but excuse me if I take a NACES member eval over your opinion.

 

You can do whatever you like, Bob. But if you believe that Berne deserves more respect than it gets on Degreeinfo, then you need to make a case for Berne.

I think that you are confusing credential evaluators with accreditors. They have two distinct functions. Credental evaluators compare syllabi. They can tell you whether a Mexican licenciate is equivalent to an American bachelors. But evaluators don't make international site visits all over the planet and they don't subject universities to the kind of scrutiny that the accreditors perform. They trust the local authorities to do that.

Hence the temptation for schools unlikely to be accepted at home to go jurisdiction shopping off-shore.

My suggestion is that an academically sound school is probably going to have something more going for it than the mere fact of it's being accredited by a nation state. So if Berne really is "RA-equivalent", then presumably there's some additional evidence out there that it is.

If a convincing case can be made for Berne, then the doubts about it will lift.

 

The information contained in this interesting exchange is useful, but I am still puzzled as to the answer to my original question!

Like Bob C, I thought that if a university is accredited and recognized by a sovereign state, then it is internationally recognized, not withstanding that some countries will not recognise the qualifications to be as being equivalent to theirs. But then again, there always appear to be confusion as to what that actually means, especially when seeking credit from a university - some may give it and some may not!

So could someone who knows - and that I why I originally directed the question to Dr Bear- and someone who is willing to answer objectively, answer this puzzling question - is Berne recognised?

And let's forget the issue of US recognition as well. There are other continents and countries in the civilized world!

 

Oh and the other point I would make is that looking at the St Kitts web site, they do seem to have a thorough process of assessing a university for accreditation, with an extensive self-assessment task and a subsequent site visit. The format of the assessment looks very similar to that used in other Commonwealth countries

 

Information about Berne that has come to light in this forum reflects negatively on Berne. If Bob has other information then I would be interested in hearing it. An nation with no higher education system of its own approving a "foreign" school is a questionable practice at best. Basing one's opinion on nothing else but this is wrought with peril.

 

Actually NACES member's do make international site visits, that's what the PIER series provides in conjunction with AACRAO. I am however, ignorant to the processes and I have no clue what scrutiny they provide while onsite.

Yes, in the USA, the de-facto standard is a NACES member evaluation that states it is US-RA + National equivalent. Do you see Saint Regis or Concordia getting NACES evals ? Why do you ignore this? Why does your opinion mean more than them?

Do you have 20yrs experience in credential evaluations like them?
Hire a staff of 10+ Evaluators most of them from foreign countries and with many publications?
Member of AACRAO, NAFSA,CACCRAO,AMIDEAST,EAIE,IIE?
Publish a Country Series used by the industry ? (On Ten Speed Press no less)

One can also look at acceptance in academia and employment. Employment is hard to find, but there is a college professor in Oregon teaching, I found a Dept head @ Devry (RA), Ashworth (NA) Dept head with a Berne Degree.

Why is this not good enough? Because someone got out of the residency requirement? Dr. Bear has a whole section in his books for years that have special case scenarios, even one where a Grad student didn't even have to take the class because she moved or something.

Berne, because it is not a USA degree, will never be "100%" RA Equivalent. Even ECE, probabaly the top respected evaluator in the USA won't even eval a Herriot Watt MBA degree and there few if any here that probably think that way. But the utilitity is greater than zero and people have had legitimate success with a Berne degree. And they've probably had legitimate failures as well.

 

First of all, I never said your first sentence. As far as being recognized, it's not a black and white matter. It will be somewhere greater than zero and less than 100% and lean towards either end depending on the situation. I would think it would have greater acceptance in other parts of the world than the USA (pure opinion though). I don't know if a Berne holder got an eval from the UK Authority or South African Qualifaction (SAQA?). I don't believe St. Kitts signed the Lisbon convention either. I would be interested to know these things if a Berne grad reading this has had their degree evaluated by these authorities.

 

Wrong.

Some evaluation services might drop the ball with Heriot-Watt because it's 100% exam-based, not because of the school's reputation (which is impeccable).

Berne will never be considered RA-equivalent because they tried an (almost successful) end-run around legitimate accreditation, but now the wheels are starting to come off.

 

"Drop the ball", "wrong", call it what you want, doesn't change anything does it? The most respected US Evaluator does not eval Herriot Watt. Obvisouly the school's reputation as impeccable as it might be cannot overcome their definition of "US-RA Equivalent".

 

I will correct myself on one part here since I missed the edit time-allowance. It's the Herriot Watt - MBA by Exam they do not evaluate. I have no knowledge on HW's other graduate and undergraduate programs residence or distance learning programs.

 

Who decided what is the "most respected" evaluator? Bears' Guide lists over 20 evaluation services. You're trying to tell me that all of them would decide that the Heriot-Watt exam-based MBA wasn't equal to RA?

Back to the original point....Berne tried to pull a fast one, and it almost worked. Almost.

 

I don't believe that's accurate. The references explain the educational system of each country, provide a flowchart through the system, outline the qualifications that the country's system grants, explains grading systems and so on. The evaluators don't pretend to be international accreditors or to independently examine each and every secondary school, college and university on earth. They generally defer to the locals for that stuff.

If a widely respected and highly credible organization subjected Berne to the kind of accreditation evaluation that NEASC would have applied to them back home in New Hampshire, and if Berne passed, then that would certainly be a strong point in its favor.

I don't believe that an evaluator has done that. And St. Kitts' own procedure is what's being questioned.

I'm not saying that Berne is a degree mill or that its degrees are totally worthless. I am saying that the claim that it's RA-equivalent needs to be treated skeptically and requires significant corroborating evidence.

 

As Bruce pointed out Berne attempted to pull a fast one. It didn't pan out. The ODA, http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html, considers them unacceptable and the information brought to light on this forum would seem to indicate that Berne is not up to snuff and that the ODA got it right.

 

Recent postings have indicated that using the Oregon list as the 'benchmark' for what is an 'acceptable' school is flawed. For example, some of the schools that they list as 'diploma mills' is clearly wrong.

So to use Oregon as the final authority is open to question. In fact, some of the information on the Oregon list is inaccurate and out of date, not to mention, incomplete.

 

Pigeon island? Actually, it's two islands and one wee little one named Sombrero (why? why on earth?), and it used to include Anguilla, but they got p.o.'d and reverted to being a Brit colony or something. At least it didn't blow up like Montserrat.

Trivia question: which famous Nevisian is on the US $10 bill?