Ranking Accreditation

I've tried to find this by searching and can't. Most times the threads seem to dissolve into polite insults and go off track.

Please help me understand the order (as you see it) of these.

RA = the best available, most versitile, gold standard

DETC = national approval but considered 2nd class, not accepted by some private employers - I see this mentioned often but have never seen which employers or which industries (other than teaching) that won't accept the degree.

State approval = possibly illegal to use in some states, but considered legit in some states i.e. California schools okay to use in Cal. but not in most other states, very confused about this.

Foreign = UK, Austrailia, Ireland, South Africa, etc, etc. Don't know where these fit, can't understand why these are more desirable than US nationally accredited schools, or do I misunderstand?

Unaccredited but not degree mills = Don't know who these are but see them mentioned, no school starts out with accreditation so maybe some are legit, just gathering steam, money and students until they get a seal of approval.

I'm just trying to better understand everything I read. Examples of why one is better than others would be helpful. Would appreciate insight about this. Thank you.

 

Someone posted this question about a year ago - after much debate, I think this is what the board came up with, or what I remember:

Lowest - No Accreditation and no intent to do so.
Honorable Mention - Those newer schools looking to get accreditation, but too new to do so.
Bronze - State accreditation
Silver - National accreditation (i.e. DETC)
Gold - Regional (i.e. WASC)
Platinum - Professional (i.e. AACSB)

 

Bear did a study of acceptability of degrees with (or without) various types of accreditation in academia.

Douglas did a study of acceptability by employers.

Everyone else pontificates without basis.

 

and......

 

I disagree on your pontification statement. Without doing the research of Dr. Bear or Dr. Douglas many in this forum have either been involved in accreditation processes or are knowledgeable enough about accreditation to provide meaningful comments without coming across as pontificating.

John

 

As a general rule, states don't accredit programs (I seem to recall that NY state might be a recognized accreditor), they approve, authorize, or simply grant a business license.

 

I understand that certain professional licenses require a specific type of educational status, such as my nursing license, the criteria to sit for must have come from a program certified by the NLN and an regionally accredited college. I'm sure there are many like that. I'm asking for more information in terms of general degrees, such as business (that could be used in an average mid sized employer), healthcare administration, or a communications degree, or a plain vanilla liberal arts.

After Thursday, when I take two cleps, I will be 6-7 tests away from a bachelor's degree and I'm already looking at masters programs and trying to find something I can afford, requires no residency, and preferably no huge thesis (my apologies to those who love research), and will teach me something useful .

I'm having a difficult time determining what is necessary and what is stated as necessary but may simply be a personal preference listed by various contributing posters. While I'd like to have an RA masters, I can't go into debt 15,000+ to have one, I just can't, it's not a matter of will, it's a matter of personal finances and paying for a child's degree while I'm going for one myself. Confounding my confusion is all the talk about AIU, Touro, and NCU being RA but either subpar or in trouble.

I continue to search these issues on my own but help from here would be most useful as well.

 

There are no professional accreditations for non-professional programs such as History, Economics, Philosophy, Physics, Biology, etc. For these programs, RA is still the Platinum standard and the highest accreditation.

Ike Okonkwo, PhD.

 

I forgot to mention that a recognition/approval by the state of New York measures up to a regional accreditation and it should be regarded as a Gold standard. For non-professional degrees, it is the highest form of accreditation.

Ike Okonkwo, PhD

 

Oxpecker: "Bear did a study of acceptability of degrees with (or without) various types of accreditation in academia.

Douglas did a study of acceptability by employers.

Everyone else pontificates without basis."



Cehi: I agree with oxpecker in this regard. It is true from what I have read from this newsgroup that both Drs. Bear and Douglas have actually completed researches on these subjects (I admit that I have read neither of them, but seems okay). Ofcourse, their research can be accepted or rejected by dissenting views.

The fact is they (Bear and Douglas) have the data to support the evidentiary stipulations of their researches. What a whole lot of others have provided are opinions, comments, views, which I normally consider as sensible, but not powerful enough to be accepted beyond what they are...opinions (pontification), etc. The problem is most people have now become experts with the views they have on an issue and not on the research they have completed. I continue to enjoy all data sources. Thank you.

 

Can anybody summarize the findings?

 

WARNING: Pontification following -

I believe a better way to look at it is that the schools are all placed in a hierarchy or spectrum of respectability. This hierarchy will differ some from region to region as well as from person to person. DETC accredited schools are below RA schools, at least within academia. Within commercial that is less true. Anyway, when evaluating the academic portion of a resume it is placed in this hierarchy or spectrum. Different businesses will handle it differently. Suffice it to say that a person should want their own degree to be pegged as high as possible on this hierarchy or spectrum.

Many businesses will draw a line in this hierarchy or spectrum and say that they will not accept new grads below that level, sometimes not even restricting it to new grads. Some firms will hire only from what they perceive to be the top one or two schools. I would guess that most businesses that draw a line like this would not accept DETC new graduates. For example, where I work is such a place, we will hire from the University of California system but not from the California State University system.

Misc- most foreign would be considered equivalent to RA. Unaccredited is generally not accepted except by mistake. Unaccredited includes so called state approved.

 

Re: Re: Ranking Accreditation

Really? So no matter the other qualitifcations, the resume hits the trash if from a state university? What about other states?

 

Business Week Online's

boards also have the UoC CSU bias. People on the board who hail from California constantly remark that the University of California system is superior to the California State system. As an outsider looking in I would have been unaware of this as we have no similar dual system in Illinois. Our universities are stand alone entities, some with more campuses than others. The University of Illinois at Champaign is the premier state school. However, its luster does not necessarily rub off onto its satellite schools in Chicago and Springfield.

 

With the caveat that I'm only pontificating and the assumption that you are more interested in finding a useful degree program than you are in entering into endless (albeit interesting) debate about the ranking of accreditation:

Were I in your shoes, I would focus my attention on RA programs. There are a lot of them and I believe they offer the widest acceptance (ie. I would hire someone possessing the required degree from an RA school and I would feel confident listing such a degree on my own resume).

Below this, (in MY-OWN-PERSONAL-ranking-of-value) I might look at foreign accredited programs and those accredited by DETC. But before enrolling in anything other than RA, I would interview at least a couple of employers in my intended field and see if said degree meets their requirements.

Beyond these, I (PERSONALLY) would not spend a dime or minute of my time pursuing a degree with the other accreditations -- or with none at all.

I empathize with feeling like you can't afford a $15,000 RA degree (neither could I), but even more expensive is a $5,000 degree that does nothing to further your career.

-end of pontification-
Dan

 

Oxpecker's own a-priori dismissal of everyone else seems to be self-negating.

 

OxPecker wrote:

> Bear did a study of acceptability of degrees with (or without)
> various types of accreditation in academia.
> Douglas did a study of acceptability by employers.
> Everyone else pontificates without basis.

Valuable as these studies are, you wouldn't want to be like the scholar who starved to death because he could find only anecdotal evidence that food helps sustain life, would you?

 

I would hardly consider a school an accredited university unless it has a "Royal Charter" or "Papal Bull". Anything less would be uncivilized!

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I'm not sure where you'd put chemistry and computer science - but these both do have accreditation.

Regards - Andy

 

Each of us has, many times.

John found that, with admissions officials, GAAP really held. RA was most acceptable, followed by foreign degrees with evaluations, then foreign degrees listed in one of several reference books (with the IHU being least accepted), then national accreditation.

After a huge gap came all the non-GAAP forms of recognition--fake accreditation, state approval, state licensure, etc. But the line could easily be drawn as being between GAAP and non-GAAP. This makes sense since "GAAP" was just a term coined to describe what was being practiced.

My research--with HR managers--showed that they don't often understand accreditation and they don't look. They tend to accept a school's degrees based on the name, which is why Columbia State scored higher than all of the accredited schools on the list I gave them. Also, they placed a very high level of acceptability on state licensure and approval. Finally, there wasn't much difference between NA and unrecognized accreditation.

My research also gave them an opportunity to read about each form of institutional recognition, then rate them again. All 11 moved significantly, and each in the direction expected. GAAP forms moved up, non-GAAP down. Interestingly, state approval remained a little higher than expected, even though I made it clear in the description that it did not equate to recognized accreditation. This goes a long way in explaining the successful use of state approved and state licensed degrees in the workplace.

Hope this helps.....