Some CA-Approved Schools That I Like

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by BillDayson, May 23, 2003.

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  1. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I noticed that another thread suggested that Degreeinfo "senior members" (a truly august and prestigious group) believe that non-accredited schools uniformly suck. So I decided to update a post I made several months ago in which I responded to a question from Uncle Janko about which CA-approved schools I like. Here's an annotated list of some of them and why I like them:

    1. National Test Pilot School. This is in a category by itself. It is the only civilian test pilot school in the world recognized by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. NTPS provides contract courses for NASA and for the FAA. It is specified in USAF special operations manuals for training SOF test and evaluation aircrew. It is the only foreign member of Australia's Defense Teaming Centre, and it trains RAAF as well as Canadian Forces officers. It has a cooperation agreement with the National Research Council of Canada. It shares Mojave Airport with legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites (Rutan recently rolled out the new spaceship that he's been secretly building) as well as companies like BAe/Tracor. It operates its own airforce of several dozen aircraft, including supersonic jets. It operates a commercial flight-test branch that tests things like smart bombs. The NTPS Director was chairman of the First Flight Readiness Review Team for Lockheed Martin/Korean Aerospace's new T-50 supersonic trainer for the ROKAF. It is associated with another of the private manned spacecraft ventures and will apparently train astronauts to fly it. NTPS is also, to my knowledge, the most expensive college in the world, with a tuition of $225,000/semester for the whole package. Nevertheless, it has a waiting list. (I have heard that post-9-11, US intelligence agencies quietly vet foreign applicants before they are admitted.) No DL.

    2. Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences. This is a member of the Claremont College consortium and is obviously on a fast-track to RA. Funded by the Keck Foundation, the same people who gave us the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and a dozen Keck Institutes of this and that on prominent universities. Until it becomess RA, it's offering its degrees through the RA Claremont Graduate University. No DL.

    3. Soka University of America. This is an American spin-off of Japan's Soka University. It is building an impressive new campus in Orange county and it comes with an endowment of $250 million. It has a solid faculty including the former head of the University of Hawaii's religious studies department and a former US Ambassador to Brunei. It's associated with Sokka Gokkai, a huge Buddhist lay organization in Japan. (The head of Sokka Gokkai's American branch has an MBA from CSUDH, I believe.) SUA has recently applied for accreditation to the AALE, the new liberal arts accreditor. No DL.

    4. San Francisco Law School. This is accredited by the California Bar Association but isn't RA or ABA. It is the oldest law night-school in the West. It maintains a pass rate on the California bar exam of about 70%, which is pretty good, overlapping some ABA schools. Its alumni include former California Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown (Jerry Brown's father) and former CA Lt. Governor Leo McCarthy. A recent head of the California Bar Association is an alum, as are many Bay Area judges and attorneys. No DL.

    5. Hsi Lai University. It is associated with the Hsi Lai Temple, the largest Buddhist monastic complex outside Asia. (This is the temple where Al Gore had his fundraising embarrasment.) It is well funded with Taiwanese money and has a physical campus. It has put together one of the more impressive and comprehensive Buddhist Studies curricula in the United States. You can take classes in Pali, Sanskrit or Tibetan here, on particular sutras or nikayas, or on things like Buddhist hermeneutics. There are doctoral level courses on comparative topics and on Buddhist psychology. Its dean is a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the US, and its faculty includes luminaries such as the former head of UC Berkeley's Buddhist Studies graduate group. Scholars from places like the Claremont Graduate University moonlight as adjuncts here. It has recently been granted candidacy by WASC, so it may not remain in the CA-approved ranks for long. No DL.

    6. Expression Center for New Media. They have big-bucks backing and an eye-popping campus (their main building used to house Sybase). They offer bachelor degrees in three majors: Sound Arts; Digital Visual Media (including animation, 3D modeling and special effects); and Digital Graphic Design. The place is like art-school boot-camp: their theory is "total immersion". You go there every day and put in an average of three hours lecture and five hours required labs a day. But since there are projects, people actually spend a lot more time there than that. Facilities are open 24 hours a day, around the clock. (Sleep is not an option.) They claim that they already have a placement rate for their graduates of over 80%, which is phenomenal in this competitive industry. (What really counts isn't accreditation, it's experience, a portfolio and contacts). Needless to say, no DL.

    7. Campion College of San Francisco. This is derived from the long-established St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco, whose faculty and students were forced off that campus in a controversial series of events. Campion has some big-time backing among conservative Catholics and incorporates the director, program and much of the faculty of the old St. Ignatius Institute. It offers a very traditional Roman Catholic "great books" curriculum at the associates degree level. I'd speculate that this school would be a good candidate for the new traditionalist liberal-arts accreditor AALE. No DL.

    8. Institute for Buddhist Studies. This tiny school functions as the seminary of the Buddhist Church of America. They are too small for WASC to accredit, so they offer an RA masters degree through the Graduate Theological Union and cooperate in the GTU's Ph.D. program in Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions. They also offer a CA-approved masters degree of their own. Despite their small size they are very active: They publish their own journal, they chair meetings at American Academy of Religion conventions, and they co-sponsor symposia with the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies. Alfred Bloom, their former Dean, is past Numata Professor at Harvard. They will be hosting the 11'th Conference of the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies later this year. No DL.

    9. Dharma Realm Buddhist University. It's associated with a prominent Buddhist monastery that occupies the former Mendecino State Hospital grounds. One of my old SFSU professors Ron Epstein (Ph.D., Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley) teaches here. Their academic dean Snjezana Akpinar (Ph.D. U. Istanbul) taught a Graduate Theological Union summer course in Islam last year. (DRBU is ecumenical.) They host their Buddhist Text Translation Society and operate an Institute of World Religions in Berkeley. Steve Tainer of the IWR was recently a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. One tiny masters program and no DL.

    10. Intercultural Institute of California. This is another tiny school, operating out of a house in San Francisco. They offer one masters program, in Korean Studies. They applied for regional accreditation from WASC, and as I understand it were denied candidacy because of their small size and lack of resources. So they have subsequently entered into a cooperative arrangement with the California Institute of Integral Studies, apparently with WASC's blessing, and will be offering their degree jointly with that regionally accredited school. The IIC offers what may be the only DL degree in Korean Studies in existence.

    Moving down the food chain slightly:

    11. Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. This one offers short residency Ph.D.s in Sexology. One can laugh, but it's an important subject that we all are interested in and which probably receives too little mainstream attention. The people here actually do research and publish papers on things like bondage and discipline, fetishes and transsexualism. Public health authorities consult them on underground sex practices. Their faculty have lectured at UC San Francisco. They are active in the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and own what is said to be the largest collection of pornography on earth, housed in 8 warehouses and including 150,000 films. (This school should not be confused with Bob Jones University, despite their obvious simularities.) Low-residency degrees.

    12. University of Philosophical Research. This is an outgrowth of Manly Hall's (an old-style LA occultist) Philosophical Research Library. The library contains one of the country's best collections of obscure works on the Western occult tradition. Its dean of studies is Jeffrey Mishlove, the only man ever to earn a Ph.D. in parapsychology from UC Berkeley. (It was an interdisciplinary self-designed major.) Its faculty includes Fred Alan Wolf, a well known scientist/crank, and Phil Ellwood, a prominent religious studies scholar from USC. This is one of the few schools out there that takes things like alchemy and hermeticism seriously. UPR offers a DL M.A. in Consciousness Studies.

    There are more CA-approved schools that I like as well, including some of the law and psych schools, but this post is getting too long.
     
  2. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    The original post was cool months ago. This one is even better. Thanks again, Bill. Whatever one thinks of CA-approved schools (and I'm for 'em--with discretion), many of these schools have done wonderful things in bolstering the study of East Asian culture and religion, esp. Buddhism. The Sunderland grad degree by DL in Buddhist studies is valuable, and so are the resources shown here. I know that Soka Gakkai is pretty controversial in Japan, but their development of their own university here (despite no DL so far) is truly impressive.

    I guess you could sum up the use of CA-approved programs as either a matter of pulling something (bad) or of sparking something (perhaps remarkably good). This list shows the positive possibilities in an impressive way.
     
  3. kf5k

    kf5k member

    I hope there is always a place for CA/Approved schools. What a boring world this will be if all schools become carbon copies of each other. The sea of unaccredited schools has been really turbulent over the past 20 years and I've loved it. If you don't like them then don't use them, but allow them to exist....
    James C.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 24, 2003
  4. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Nope sorry, they must cease existing by next week. (or it means that they've ignored my proclamation)
     
  5. Guest

    Guest Guest

    Among the law/psych/business schools, which do you like and why?
     
  6. Nosborne

    Nosborne New Member

    I like the CA D/L law schools that routinely produce a batch of JDs who more or less routinely pass the CA Bar and become lawyers. For example, NW Cal, Taft, and...oh yes...Oakbrook...I guess.


    I DON'T like CA law schools that offer a Bar JD but whose graduates never seem to take, let alone pass, the CA Bar. I also don't like schools that charge a lot of money for Internet "bells and whistles" but don't seem to adequately prepare their graduates for the Baby Bar and regular Bar exams.

    The CA Bar publishes correspondence school statistics on a school-by-school basis after every Bar exam.

    Nosborne, JD
     
  7. kf5k

    kf5k member

    Sorry, I appealed your decision to a higher authority, and my wife says they can continue.....
    James
     
  8. BobC

    BobC New Member

    Re: Re: Some CA-Approved Schools That I Like

    Bill,

    I have to second Russell's question as well, your list is fine and dandy with the touchy feelie CA schools. But how about traditional educational programs which is where the debate lies.
     
  9. kf5k

    kf5k member

    Re: Re: Re: Some CA-Approved Schools That I Like

    California Coast University!!!
    James C.
     
  10. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Some CA-Approved Schools That I Like

    For CA-approved psychology schools, it might be interesting to look at the 2001 California psychology board results.

    http://www.psychboard.ca.gov/exams/200104_we.pdf.

    SCHOOL
    # TAKING EXAM
    # PASSED
    PASS PERCENT
    # FAILED
    FAIL PERCENT

    American Behavioral Studies Institute
    2
    0
    0
    2
    100

    California Coast University
    7
    0
    0
    7
    100

    California Graduate Institute, West Los Angeles
    32
    15
    46.88
    17
    53.13

    California Institute for Human Science
    1
    1
    100
    0
    0

    Center for Psychological Studies, Albany
    5
    1
    20
    4
    80

    Newport University, Newport Beach
    5
    2
    40
    3
    60

    Professional School of Psychology
    8
    4
    50
    4
    50


    Ryokan College, Los Angeles
    15
    9
    60
    6
    40

    Southern California University for Professional Studies
    1
    0
    0
    1
    100

    Western Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto
    2
    2
    100
    0
    0


    There are other CA-approved psych schools besides these, but apparently they didn't have anyone sitting for this particular exam.

    Two schools scored an impressive 100% pass-rate: California Institute for Human Science and Western Graduate School of Psychology. But between them, they only produced three test takers, so the sample size was small.

    I'm more interested in the two big LA psych schools. California Graduate Institute had 32 candidates sit for the exam, of which 15 passed (47%). Ryokan College had 15 sit, of which 9 passed (60%). Ryokan offers a DL Psy.D.

    For comparison, here's some RA schools that had more than five people sit for the exam:

    Biola University, La Mirada
    9
    8
    88.89
    1
    11.11

    California School of Professional Psychology, Berkeley
    20
    15
    75
    5
    25

    California School of Professional Psychology, Fresno
    22
    10
    45.45
    12
    54.55

    California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles
    60
    37
    61.67
    23
    38.33

    California School of Professional Psychology, San Diego
    14
    12
    85.71
    2
    14.29

    Fielding Institute, Santa Barbara
    6
    4
    66.67
    2
    33.33

    Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena
    17
    15
    88.24
    2
    11.76

    PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY
    8
    6
    75
    2
    25

    Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto
    8
    6
    75
    2
    25

    United States International University, San Diego
    17
    5
    29.41
    12
    70.59

    Wright Institute, Berkeley
    10
    4
    40
    6
    60
     
  11. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    In order to reduce abberations, I combined the 2001 results with the 1999 results. I've included all of the CA-approved schools that I recognize and some selected RA psych schools for comparison.

    They are ranked according to pass percentage. The format is: RA/CA, name, rank among CA-approved schools, number who passed the exam/number who attempted it (both years combined), pass percentage. (DL schools in bold.)

    RA UCLA (n/a) 5/5 100%
    CA Cal. Inst. Human Science (1) 1/1 100%
    CA W. Grad. Sch. Psych. (1) 2/2 100%
    RA Biola U. (n/a) 10/12 83.83%
    RA U. So. Calif. (n/a) 8/11 72.73%
    RA CSPP-San Diego (n/a) 21/29 72.41%
    RA Pac. Grad. Sch. Psych (n/a) 14/20 70%
    RA Fielding I. (n/a) 4/6 66.67%
    RA Pacifica Grad. I. (n/a) 4/7 57.14%
    CA Ryokan College (3) 14/25 56%
    RA CSPP-Berkeley (n/a) 27/49 55.1%
    RA CIIS (n/a) 6/11 54.44%
    RA CSPP-LA (n/a) 62/118 52.54%
    CA Prof. Sch. Psych. (4) 7/14 50%
    RA Wright I. Berkeley (n/a) 13/27 48.15%
    CA Cal. Grad. I. (5) 23/51 45.10%
    RA CSPP-Fresno (n/a) 14/39 35.90%
    CA Am. Beh. Sci. I. (6) 1/3 33.33%
    CA Ctr. Psych. Studies (7) 2/8 25%
    RA US Intl. U. (n/a) 8/35 22.86%
    CA Newport U. (8) 2/9 22.22%
    CA Cal. Coast U. (9) 2/12 16.67%
    CA SCUPS (10) 0/1 0%
    CA No. Cal. Grad. U. (10) 0/1 0%

    My comments: I think that Cal. Inst. Human Sciences might be a fluke, due to one individual passing the exam. I don't know what to make of Western Graduate School of Psychology and haven't been able to find a website for it.

    Ryokan has graduated enough people to insure that its results aren't statistical aberrations. It seems to be competitive with some of the RA schools in terms of preparing its graduates for the psych boards, and it offers a new DL Psy.D.

    Professional School of Psychology in Sacramento seems to be for real and it offers a specialization in philosophical counseling. I like that idea.

    California Graduate Institute is the largest of the CA-approved psych schools, it's been around for a long time and it's definitely a major player in Southern California.

    I'd caution readers not to take this little analysis too seriously. If you want truly reliable data, you will probably need to look at all the test years. But the topic of this thread is CA-approved schools that I happen to like, and there's probably enough here to justify some fondness for the schools named above.
     
  12. plumbdog10

    plumbdog10 New Member

    As an august and prestigious senior member, I would like to add a few comments.

    1) Lack of regional accreditation does not necessarily mean a school does not have good programs. It does mean that it is very difficult to determine the value of those programs if the school does not submit to outside evaluations. It places employers and college evaluators in the position of having to research each of these schools to determine the level of education provided. Thus, in many cases it is easier to simply discount a non-accredited degree then spend hours conducting research, which lowers the value of that degree in both academics and employment.

    2) In some very specialized areas, such as the test pilot school you mentioned, the reputation of the school, in a very select field, may make regional accreditation irrelevant. A person with such a degree may, however, find some difficulty if they were to attempt to use the degree in another field.

    3) Most of the debate on this board has not be about very specialized schools. It has been about students spending their time and money earning business and theological degrees from unaccredited schools, when there are many fine programs available as distance learning from good accredited programs.

    4) I have to ask the same question I have asked over and over.
    If a school provides the same quality of education that an accredited school offers, why don't they submit to the accrediting bodies? I can only conclude that they don't feel they would measure-up, which in my opion means they should not be issuing bacheolors, masters, or doctorates. Obviously I would not include a new school that is going through the accreditation process in this group.
     
  13. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    Another One Bites the Dust

    My list of favorite CA-approved schools continues to suffer attrition.

    Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences at Claremont is now regionally accredited. Interestingly, it skipped candidacy altogether and simply jumped directly from applicant to full accreditation in one step.

    http://www.wascweb.org/senior/directories.htm

    http://www.kgi.edu/news/index_wasc.shtml

    I originally predicted that KGI was on a fast-track to accreditation, but even so, this news surprises me. Apparently WASC was simply moved to tears at KGI's awesome wonderfulness.

    "The Initial Accreditation review was scheduled following approval in June 2002 of a revised Institutional Proposal, which allowed KGI to forego the Candidacy review and be evaluated directly for Initial Accreditation...

    The Commission acknowledges the remarkable growth and progress of KGI during the past six years. As a member of The Claremont Colleges...


    So one of my ten favorites immediately scrambled its way to RA. IIC and University of the West (formerly Hsi Lai) are currently candidates. NTPS and Soka seem to be applicants and both hosted site visits recently. (Soka has received its AALE accreditation as well.)

    It's hard to have favorite non-accredited schools if they all keep flaking out and getting accredited...

    Moving on to other news, I'm not sure if I'm reading things right, but it appears that WASC's hammer has fallen on two more schools:

    Monterey Institute of International Studies seems to have been put on probation, which surprises me. I've always perceived MIIS (no, not MIGS) as having excellent standards. My guess is that the problem isn't strictly academic.

    Alliant Intl. U., which besides offering DL is also the largest single source of clinical psychologists in California, appears to have been hit with an order to show cause why accreditation shouldn't be withdrawn, WASC's toughest sanction short of canning a school.

    And New College in SF remains on warning.
     
  14. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I’m all right jack keep your hands off of my stack

    Regional accreditation is expensive. A small school that has a perfectly good academic program but is on a shoestring might conclude that the opportunity cost is too high.

    -=Steve=-
     
  15. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    It pays to be chatty

    Hey cool, when I hit 100 posts, I too joined this august and prestigious group. Well then, in my obviously learned opinion, I would say that non-accredited schools merely usually suck, but that there are exceptions, and further that your list, however dwindling, is an interesting compilation of them.

    So mote it be.

    -=Steve=-
     
  16. Dave Wagner

    Dave Wagner Active Member

    Re: Re: Some CA-Approved Schools That I Like

    I did the DBA at California Pacific University (CPU) awhile back.; it's a solid practitioner-oriented, thesis-based program that was a nice update to my MBA and preparation for the Ph.D. BA at Touro University International. I'm in the dissertation stage at Touro, so it CPU didn't hurt me. Cal-Pacific now offers the Ph.D. in management, which some folks might find interesting.

    Best wishes,

    Dave
     

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