P.S.: Your M.A. or Ph.D. may be B.S.

P.S.: Your M.A. or Ph.D. may be B.S.
Some Floridians with top jobs hold degrees from questionable academic institutions.

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
Published December 6, 2007

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/06/State/PS__Your_MA_or_PhD_ma.shtml

More Almeda, Kennedy-Western University, and Kensington folks in the news.

Pannone (Doctorate from KWU) refused to e-mail a copy of his dissertation to the Times, or allow the Times to pay for a printed copy. "I don't know what you'd do with it," he said. "Come up here, and I'd be glad to review it with you."

 

Some of the comments from readers really scare me- they are really ignorant.

 

I was going to make a similar observation.

 

All these problems are completely avoidable if people would just state that the degrees are not accredited as RA or NA, so that employers know they need to be evaluated separately (or discounted outright) and don't mistake them for RA or NA degrees. I suppose that is what a federal law should require. Outlawing unaccredited degrees doesn't seem to be headed anywhere, but there could be a federal law to require disclosure of unaccredited status. That could also screen degrees from foreign institutions that don't meet RA or NA standards.

Dave

 

First, good luck getting people to do that.

Second, even telling an employer that your degree comes from a state licensed school won't change anything. My research clearly demonstrated that employers conflated state licensure with accreditation. It is their ignorance, not the lack of information available, that needs to be addressed.

 

OK, but wouldn't a competent HR department know the difference between accredited and something else today? I don't know anything specific about your research, but it seems that a randomly-drawn sample might be slightly different today; still, that's a guess.

Dave

 

Not necessarily; I think we sometimes take it for granted that we (board members) know the minutiae of accreditation, backwards and forwards. When I've attempted to explain it to the uninitiated, I usually get the glazed look from them.