The Oregonian article.

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by AuditGuy, Aug 30, 2007.

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  1. AuditGuy

    AuditGuy Member

    Does anyone have the text of the following article? Someone was talking about it, but I can't find the full article anywhere.

    "It May Take Hours, But You, Too, Can Earn A Degree"

    The Oregonian, OR - 7/04/2004
     
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

  3. Randy Miller

    Randy Miller New Member

    HEADLINE: IT MAY TAKE HOURS, BUT YOU, TOO, CAN EARN A DEGREE

    SOURCE: MARGIE BOULE - The Oregonian

    BODY:
    A funny thing happened after I wrote a column two weeks ago about the proliferation of unaccredited or fraudulent universities and diploma mills: My e-mail inbox began to fill with solicitations from "university" representatives offering to sell me advanced degrees. "Obtaining a PHD/MD/MBA/BA has never been so easy!" one trumpeted. "No required tests, classes, books or interviews!"

    Which is exactly the problem. Oregon is leading the nation -- and perhaps the world -- in the fight against "educational" institutions selling degrees with little or no educational value to people who use the diplomas to get jobs, promotions, prestige and financial gain.

    In May the administrator of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization, Alan Contreras, was a star witness at hearings conducted by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. Senators and investigators praised the work of Alan's office, investigating an industry that experts claim will take in more than $500 million this year.

    After the column ran, I heard from readers who refuted claims made by Alan and other witnesses at those hearings. Every protest came from a current student or degree recipient from an unaccredited school listed on Oregon's state Web site (www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html). In Oregon, it's illegal to use one of these degrees on a resume, job application or to incur professional gain.

    I heard from a physician who obtained his M.D. from a foreign school on the "illegal" list. He protested that he'd had to study for his degree and had passed a qualifying exam before practicing.

    "We would not use the term 'diploma mill' to describe some offshore medical schools because they actually have classes and faculty," Alan responds. "The legal definition of 'diploma mill' requires excessive use of life experience credits or no involvement by qualified faculty." But the law states that foreign institutions must have the "equivalent of U.S. accreditation." Many, especially those based in the Caribbean, don't.

    But Alan acknowledges that foreign medical and veterinary schools are "a gray area." He will soon meet with professional licensing boards to work out standards.

    Institutions whose degrees have been declared illegal in Oregon run along a continuum, from blatant check-for-degree swap houses to institutions that require some work but not enough to make them comparable to accredited universities.

    The most correspondence I got came from folks associated with a for-profit entity I had mentioned, Kennedy-Western University.

    Alan researched Kennedy-Western and came to the conclusion it is illegal for Oregonians to use degrees from that institution. This has made a lot of people angry, many of whom paid their money to KWU and have the diplomas to prove it.

    "I am a student enrolled at Kennedy-Western University," wrote one man. "I take offense. Where does the state of Oregon, or any other state, have the right to pass laws that dictate whether a degree is valid or not? This seems unconstitutional." He concludes, "As a student of Kennedy-Western, your degree is earned through many hours of hard study."

    Exactly. Many hours, not many years. In fact, Kennedy-Western makes an interesting case study of the murky field of online, for-profit education. It has no campus. To get degrees, students do no coursework; instead they read a textbook and take an open-book exam in each course and finally submit a research paper, thesis or dissertation.

    In a phone interview this week from California, Kennedy-Western's director of corporation communications, David Gering, explained that institutions such as Kennedy-Western are misunderstood because they use new technology and a new concept: distance learning. "A lot of online higher education opportunities are credible, academically rigorous and provide people what they need in their careers," he says.

    In Washington, D.C., in May a former employee of Kennedy-Western testified that its "admissions counselors" were actually telemarketers, paid a commission for students who enrolled. "I was required to call between 100 and 125 prospective students per day," he testified. "Much of our sales pitch was not true. . . . I never heard of an applicant being rejected."

    David acknowledges admissions counselors are paid commissions for students enrolled. "They have to be motivated," he says. "In a for-profit environment, that's how you motivate people. It doesn't detract from the academic integrity of the degree programs we offer."

    Let's take a look at the programs. David acknowledges that students are given credits for life experience and select their own courses. That's an advantage, he says. "It's more focused and targeted to the needs of students."

    However, a government investigator testified in Washington, D.C., that she was accepted into KWU's masters program in environmental engineering and was given half the necessary credits for life experience, after never having had any engineering training or exposure. She claimed she had easily passed the open-book tests but withdrew before getting her M.A., "as we had a good sense of Kennedy-Western's academic program. With just 16 hours of study, I completed 40 percent of the requirements for a masters degree," she testified.

    David says the tests are rigorous and cannot be passed unless students have put in long hours of study.

    It's important to remember that Kennedy-Western is only one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unaccredited institutions offering degrees whose value is being questioned in Oregon and elsewhere. All claim to be legitimate. In some cases, Oregon has investigated and agrees. (A list of legal unaccredited schools is on the Web site.)

    But far more have been designated illegal providers of degrees. In a few cases, owners have gone to jail on fraud-related charges.

    With these businesses proliferating and going unchallenged in so many places, we have reason to be proud that Oregon has a law respected across the nation. But to preserve the integrity of educational claims in our state, the Legislature would have to restore funding for the Office of Degree Authorization that was cut in the last session.

    Why is that important? Ask the educator who wrote me this week from Texas, saying a high school principal in his district had been hired because of a purchased Ph.D. that would be illegal in Oregon. "He is currently under consideration for a higher position," this man wrote. "The state and system pay a huge additional salary for this degree. . . . It just irks me that people claim degrees who have not really had to work for them." Margie Boule: 503-221-8450;
     
  4. AuditGuy

    AuditGuy Member

    Thanks much;
    Another good article to have in the archives.
     
  5. xgoddessx

    xgoddessx New Member

    Do a google search for "diploma mill" ...

    ... and look who's bidding on the term -- Warren National University! I find that incredibly amusing. I wonder what's the going rate for one of those clicks!

    Of course, your results may differ depending on when and from where you search, or what server returns your results, but right now, I see paid advertisements from Suffield University, Ashwood University, Warren National University, and Almeda University.
     

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