Columbia Commonwealth U evaluation

Here is the complete text of our review letter sent to Columbia Commonwealth University on Wyoming on July 26, 2004

Dr. Naomi Lichtenberg
Columbia Commonwealth University
327 N St
Rock Springs WY 82901-5332


Dear Dr. Lichtenberg:

Thank you for your patience as we worked our way through an unusual schedule and finally were able to examine the Columbia Commonwealth materials that you sent. We understand that CCWU had two goals in mind with this application, to show that it was misclassified as a diploma mill and to achieve Oregon approval for degree use in the state. The school has succeeded in the first goal but not in the second.

Columbia Commonwealth has demonstrated that it should not be classified under Oregon law as a diploma mill, but has not shown that it can meet all of the standards required for degree validation in Oregon. If CCWU wants to pursue complete approval in Oregon, the comments below will be your starting point. If you do not want to pursue that approval, the school will be classified as a “non-standard” degree provider under Oregon law. That category is currently called “substandard,” but we will be asking the Commission to change that to a more neutral term in September.

Much of what appears in the catalog, as amended by the content of your letter of June 3, suggests that the school could meet the requirements for Oregon degree validation. It is certainly clear that the school does not meet the legal definition of a diploma mill under Oregon law because of the limitations on the use of life experience credit and the apparent use of qualified faculty to evaluate student work.

In order to obtain legalization of the school’s degrees for use in Oregon, the school must show that it has a reasonable chance to meet the academic standards that Oregon would apply were the school to apply for approval to operate here. These standards are best grouped as teacher qualifications, policies on the award of credit, content and structure of curriculum and admissions requirements. After each standard I will comment on the strengths and weaknesses that are apparent from the material you sent.

Teachers

Most faculty have appropriate academic backgrounds; many have very good credentials. A significant minority hold their highest degrees from unaccredited schools which would not be allowable in Oregon. However, this does not mean that specific degree programs would not be acceptable.

It is often unclear what fields the faculty teach in and how their work fits into the school’s program as a whole. We will discuss that further under “Curriculum.”

Credit

Policies on the award of credit are generally clear and acceptable. In most cases these policies would meet the Oregon standard. In your letter you stated that two-thirds of the program’s credit must be completed at CCWU, which is an acceptable standard not set forth in the current catalog. We understand that this will appear in the next catalog and is in fact communicated to students and applicants.

The broad-spectrum allowability of transfer credit from unaccredited institutions does not meet Oregon requirements and is a serious flaw that precludes approval. As you are aware, some state-approved schools are academically acceptable while others are diploma mills, owing to poor standards, poor enforcement or other factors. However, it may be that CCWU has a process for determining which state-approved institutions are acceptable and which are not. If there is such a process, please provide a copy. Also, if there are already lists of acceptable and unacceptable schools, please provide those. We allow schools to do case-by-case evaluations, we just don’t allow blanket acceptability of unaccredited schools.

Note that Oregon is working with some other states to develop a baseline of acceptability for state-approved schools that would allow interstate reciprocity.

The use of foreign government approval as a baseline for the acceptability of foreign credit is necessary but not sufficient to establish whether the foreign degree granter is actually a legitimate school. You are no doubt aware that in the past couple of years there have been major scandals related to false or meaningless government approvals being issued out of Liberia, Lebanon, Switzerland, the Caribbean region and elsewhere.

Oregon would require a formal evaluation and finding regarding the status of any foreign institution. We use AACRAO and occasionally NACES members as foreign degree evaluators and we recommend that CCWU develop a better process for evaluating foreign degrees. Foreign government approval by itself does not meet Oregon requirements.

Curriculum

Some of the curriculum seems pretty well put together, some does not. The curriculum is not consistently organized and we are confused about how and why it has been assembled the way it has. For example, why has HU 526, Individuality in a Cultural Context, been included in a TESL program? It seems to be designed for business executives, while TESL programs are typically highly focused. What is HE 633, a nutrition and health course, doing in a Humanities PhD program? What is HE 533, Wellness, doing in a graduate program in natural science? Why are HE 331 and 333, more health classes, part of a management program? There are other examples, mainly related to the pervasive seepage of health and nutrition courses into programs where they have no apparent logical place.

The overall impression is that the school had to figure out what to do with certain faculty who were at hand, as it were, so placed incongruous requirements into various programs in order to keep those faculty gainfully employed. This is no way to assemble a meaningful, coherent curriculum. CCWU has even intruded the Wellness and Aging course into an otherwise logical and well-conceived PhD in Administration and Management program. We cannot imagine a rationale for what appears on the surface to be the academic equivalent of placing a geode in a chef salad: the study of geodes is fine, but under “geology.”

Our concern is not that the courses are not legitimate, but that they are not well-organized into programs. It is quite likely that the courses could be organized in a sensible way, since in fact most of them are. Someone needs to go through each program and reassemble the pieces with coherence, not expedience, in mind.

If you want to pursue full approval from Oregon, we will request some sample course syllabi.

Admission

This is generally fine, assuming that the issues regarding credits from unaccredited schools and foreign schools are dealt with.

Conclusion

Columbia Commonwealth can be classified as a nonstandard provider, not a diploma mill, but cannot obtain degree validation for degree use in Oregon without making changes in its policies regarding the use of foreign and unaccredited domestic degrees. It would also need to make some adjustments to ensure that the curriculum has a rational structure. If these changes were made, approval might be achieved for programs that did not use unaccredited faculty, or for which such faculty could show that their degrees were from schools that met Oregon standards.

We look forward to hearing from CCWU regarding any additional steps that you’d like to take regarding this review. Best wishes for your success with the North Central Association.

 

Inflated Importance

I am beginning to realize that the state of Oregon has a truly inflated level of self importance. What happened to the USA being a free nation. Here you are telling them basically what should and should not be in their curriculum. Who died and made you guys GOD? You have decided that you want the world to comply with what you want, and nothing else matters. I'm sorry but that's not acceptable. If someone wants to risk their career with a substandard education then that's their business. If an employer does not check out the employees credentials when they hire them because they are either too lazy or too cheap then that's their problem. What we don't need is more government baby sitters deciding what is and is not acceptable in a schools curriculum. We also do not need the educational elite deciding for us who is educated and who's education is bogus. If tomorrow I invented a sustainable fusion reaction, I would bet money that in addition to the Nobel Prize I would have every top technology school in the country trying to give me a PHd so they could attach their name to my work. A degree that would be based on nothing more than my LIFE & WORK EXPERIENCE. I would also bet money that there would not be a single government agency (including Oregon) that would say a thing to a school (like MIT for example) claiming that the degree would be illegal in their state. Which tells me that this is just another attempt by the educational elitists to show the world that they are more important than those without the formal education. The reality is this, I would personally feel more comfortable doing business with someone who actually does something over someone that has only learned how in school. I'm sure I will hear disent from some on this board, but then I actually DO live in a free country so I don't care.

 

I think perhaps Michael 73 and I disagree on what a degree is or should be. Do you object to the idea that degrees ought to have some agreed-upon content? If states and accreditors are not to decide what that agreed-upon content is, who should?

If each college were to be entirely a freelance entity, there would be nothing remotely comparable among degrees. There would be no transfer of credits and no general acceptability of certain degrees because they would not have anything in common.

It seems to me that the question of what a degree program contains is separate from the quesion of who decides on that content.

If employers get to decide what is and is not a degree, then there is no purpose to the term "degree" because there would be no similarity in the object from one employer to another.

I decide these issues for Oregon not because I set myself up as the degree god but because the state legislature, elected by the people, chose to set a standard for what a degree is and is not. I am the paper carrier, not the scribe. Almost every state has a college and degree approval office. This is not rare or unusual, it is the norm in society, established by almost 50 state legislatures.

 

Needs to be fair

I agree with you that there need to be standards, but those standards need to be uniform accross the nation. For a degree to be legal or acceptable in Georgia but not legal or acceptable in your state, in essence you have made a decision that could negatively impact someone in another state. That is not fair, and I think it is probably a violation of the "Good faith and credit" clause of the constitution. You have summarily decided for this person that they cannot come work in your state if they intend to list their degree on their resume. You also created a list of unnacceptable schools that includes legitimate state approved schools, side by side with degree mills. A list that could be viewed by a potential employer in a state where the school IS acceptable thereby causing harm to the person that listed the school on their resume. Because what you decide is acceptable or not DOES IMPACT OTHERS, these types of decisions need to be made at the Federal level. By making these decisions Federal my vote counts too...

 

I agree that colleges ought to be approved at the federal level. There should be a basic set of standards that apply to all degree providers.

The same might be said of certain professions in which the knowledge base is largely nationalized, e.g. law.

I disagree that state approval makes a school legitimate, in the sense that legitimate means academically genuine. Alabama, Mississippi and, sadly, California in recent months have shown this pretty well.

Yes, our web site has effects beyond our state. However, it is by far the easiest way for us to reach people inside the state. It is also fair notice to people elsewhere that laws do differ from state to state. Is it better to have people move here and then discover that their credential is not good?

 

I neglected to answer the question about the "full faith and credit" clause in the constitution and its effect on interstate portability of degrees.

Our legal counsel advises us that this is not an issue because it is not the state that is issuing the degrees. The FF&C clause apparently does not extend to credentials issued by private entities.

 

Re: Inflated Importance

May I suggest that you present your arguments without the irrelevant patriotic rhetoric and the insulting tone?

It is well within the scope of good laws to protect the good citizens and businesses of our nation from substandard degree holders. Just like it is well within the scope of good law to protect people against other items like posionous food, dangerous toys, and dangerous trucks.

 

Michael73

Fine post.

 

Thank you, Alan. We now know that CCWU IS NOT a diploma mill.

 

Re: Inflated Importance

This rational applies fairly well when a large employer who has a great deal of expertise in a certain area hires someone to work in that area of expertise. But the rational does not work as well for a small business that needs to hire an employee to do something that the owner or manager does not know how to do. Example: an auto service shop decides to hire a bookkeeper with an associate's degree from a business college. The rational also does not apply to the private individual who pays a free-lance expert for advice in an area the individual does not understand.

Reasonable people could disagree about whether it is better for the government to step in, or whether it is better for the private sector to work out some kind of certification system, but the result so far is that every state in the union regulates some experts; it's just that Oregon takes the regulation further than most states in the area of claiming degrees.

 

Re: Re: Columbia Commonwealth U evaluation

That may not be entirely accurate, Russell. What we do know now is that CCWU "does not meet the legal definition of a diploma mill under Oregon law." I thought Alan was (characteristically) very precise in his wording.

 

pompous CCWU, the Harvard of Wyoming

You can't find more inflated importance than in the hallowed halls of CCWU. I made inquiries there about resuming my interrupted doctorate. I was accused of fraud by Dean Lichtenberg and of trying to buy a degree. She also lectured me that what I was trying to pull*, in her phrase, couldn't be done at Harvard. (Shows what CCWU thinks of itself.) There were other insults and sneering, too. I had spelled out and documented my situation exactly--and somewhat self-deprecatingly, hardly otherwise--and met with a snotty, somewhat defamatory, and frankly unprofessional response tinged with a bit of religious bigotry, too.

Yes, Michael, it's a free nation. I was free to take my business to Kinsel's, and Alan is free to enforce such standards as the State of Oregon requires. Alan's response to them was specific, temperate, and above all, doable if CCWU really cares to improve itself. I have no quarrel with anybody who holds a degree from CCWU. I'm pleased that the finding on CCWU was "substandard" rather than "mill," and I hope that CCWU can lift itself up to the level desired by the state of Oregon, if not to the level CCWU believes itself to occupy.

After all, one Harvard is enough.


*What I was trying to "pull" was resuming work on my diss. I was forced by family circumstance and departmental strife to break off work on my diss after completing all coursework, comps, orals, etc in a doc program at a major RA university, at which it was impossible for various reasons (chiefly distance) to resume work.

 

Re: pompous CCWU, the Harvard of Wyoming

Thanks for the post Alan. Personally, I like what Oregon does in the way of consumer protection. Note folks.....it does not ban all unaccredited schools.

Michael73, I also like the idea of uniformity among states but in the present system it is not going to happen. Frankly, it could not. When you have states that issue diploma mills a business license and others that only allow unaccredited schools to operate as long as they meet stricter guidelines and are seriously pursuing recognized accreditation there will be a vast difference.

There is an immense qualitative difference between BJU and many of the other unaccredited schools here. Oregon takes that into account.

I think the closest we might comes is if each state took over the regulatory process like they do with RTC's etc...... and states were to get together and agree on some sorts of standards. This process would be cheaper for the schools themselves. But.....I do not think that proponents of some unaccredited schools would like this because it would put their alma maters out of business.

North

 

Re: Re: Re: Columbia Commonwealth U evaluation

Indeed, Alan was very precise. Placed with equivalent precision was the smiling emoticon at the end of my post, suggesting--with a bit of wry humor--that the ODA's decision would not immediately change CCWU's public image.......

 

Someone mentioned Bob jones University as a point of comparison for unaccredited schools. They have applied for accreditation via TRACS and I would expect them to achieve approval.

One of the things I asked the Commission to do last year was to adopt a specific definition of "diploma mill" so that we would have a legal enclosure into which we could herd such beasts.

In most discussions the term has no agreed-upon meaning. Our definition may change over time, but at least everyone can tell what we mean by the term, which is not true elsewhere.

 

Dear Mr. Contreras,

Would you be so kind as to let us know your educational background, acheivements, and accomplishments?

Thank you,

James W. Clifton

 

In response to an inquiry, I hold a BS (political science) and JD from the University of Oregon.

I have spent 8 years as an academic program reviewer for the states of Oregon and Missouri, 8 years in legislative relations for community colleges and the U of Oregon, and a few other odd items including working the graveyard shift at a 7-11 store the night before a nearby Grateful Dead concert, which was a culturally broadening experience.

As to my achievements and accomplishments, these are largely in the eye of the beholder, but they include a couple of bird books issued by Oregon State University Press and a variety of smaller publications. My new poetry collection "Night Crossing" is available for a modest $16 postpaid.

And I have shaken hands with John Bear, John Ashcroft, Ursula LeGuin, Walter Mondale and, most memorable (sorry JB), Rosa Parks.

My favorite movie star is Howard Shore. I have seen him at a distance (at the live performance of the Saint Frodo Passion in Seattle) but have never shaken hands with him.

 

I fear that the ODA may be getting into some difficulty.

Somehow the ODA is becoming a new accreditor not only for Oregon, but for the United States and internationally.

The question is whether the Oregon evaluations are robust enough to carry that load.

I think that perhaps this whole thing should be presented in a less ambitious manner. It should be made clear to everyone that OR-approval is consumer protection for Oregonians, that it's intended to skim out the obvious mills, but it doesn't necessarily mean that an approved school has academic or professional legitimacy.

To reliably determine that, one would need to perform site visits and undertake a full-scale accreditation process.

Don't let schools brag about your approvals or use your office inappropriately. And don't put yourself in a position where people can discredit you by showing that you lack an accreditor's staff and resources.

 

I look forward to TRACS accrediting BJU. Then the diploma mill hacks won't be able to point to their lack of accreditation as a demonstration of legitimacy for unaccredited schools (and, thus, for the diploma mills they're touting).

 

Thank you, Mr. Contreras.