I do not understand why degreeinfo.com allows people to put down schools that are either regionally or nationally accredited (recognized by the United States Department of Education?) as diploma mills, or to ask someone whether or not it is one? There are some polls that ask whether or not a school is a diploma mill, and the school is regionally accredited. This does a disservice to the people that go to that school, and also undermines the real intention of degreeinfo.com to help people to stay away from diploma mills. Time could be more useful to help people to stay away from diploma mills and also to help others to go to accredited schools as a pose to unaccredited schools. I just don't understand why this is allowed? I guess people have the right to their opinions, but to call a school a diploma mill, when it is clearly accredited, is pushing it in my opinion.
Contrary to some other fora this one does allow the free exchange of information and does not reset itself or edit out comments that the moderators may disagree with (only those that clearly violate the TOS). This can lead to some poeple asking for positive feedback on programs that others find less than wonderfull, it can also lead to people making statments that reflect poorly on regionally accredtied schools. I, like many others, am not agaisnt all unaccrdited programs, and do not think just because a program is regionally accredited it is perfect. But if someone ask for my general opinion I will state that for most people (not everyone, but some number grater than 50%) any regionally accredited degree is better than any nationally accredited whihc is better than any unaccredited whihc is infinetly better than a true diploma mill. Now, give me a specific case and my answer may be significantly (>50%) different, or it may not. Specific example I beleicve the NTPS masters programs (http://www.ntps.edu/HTML/Masters/) are better than the Embry-Riddle programs (http://www.erau.edu/er/degrees/index.html). I believe, in this case, that an unaccredited school is better thana regionally accredited school. Now for another case, I can not think of even 1 state approved, nationally accredited, or regionally accretited program that is not better than Kennedy-Western (my opinion). So, it is my bekleif that your blanket statement is wrong. The purpose (IMO) is to provide adults with the information and opinions of others to make their own decisions.
reply To the previous post: I do think that people should be allowed to view their opinions. I also feel that if you have a problem with a regionally accredited school, that you should have the right to that view so long as you can give some difinitive arguments to support what you are saying. I would take a nationally or regionally accredited school over a non-accredited school any day of the week. At least, you have something that states that it has met certain standards and requirements. That does not mean that you have to like the school or that it is at the same level as others. There will always be in education certain biases, and that is if someone graduated from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or another ivy league school, that is most cases that person would have an upper hand in employment. However, to compare a nationally or regionally accredited school to an unaccedited school to me -- is no debate. Yes, it is true that a nationally accredited school would probably not be as well recognized as a regionally accredited school, but at least there is an accreditation there. However, unaccredited will in most cases always come down to having problems with gaining employment. If you can tell me how unaccredited degrees are better then nationally or regionally accredited schools, I would sure be fascinated. Thanks for your post.
Re: reply I did not say that unaccredited degrees are better than nationally or regionally accredited degrees (general statement). I did say that there were some (not many, probalby 1 or 2) unaccredited programs that I felt were better than the equivalent accredtied program (specific statement). Give me a specific school and I will answer about it, if I know anything.
Why do you allow this? I don't own or moderate the board but I have an idea why what bothers you is allowed. 1) People are free to make idiots of themselves. If I want to criticise MIT, Harvard or Yale as mills then I am free to do so but most people will think I am an idiot. 2) To moderate every post would take too much time. The owners don't do this for a living, they provide this as a service to us. They trust us to be adult enough to realize who are the cranks and who are incite things and avoid them. On the rare occasion they restrict someone's use it is generally because of personal attacks. So be an iditot if you want, just play nicely. If I want to criticise MIT, Harvard or Yale as mills then I am free to do so but most people will think I am an idiot.
Mike's stated it pretty well... people are free to express opinions, and DegreeInfo itself has an editorial opinion, which should be fairly obvious if you read the articles penned by DegreeInfo's management team (Nathan and Chip are the only management team members that generally write for DegreeInfo) Personally, I think that the more people share experiences -- as long as they're not unfounded "This school sucks" sort of statements -- the better others can use those comments to make decisions for themselves. For example, there's one widely advertised regionally accredited school that we've thus far chosen not to accept any advertising from because we believe they have much too high a level of complaints about both academic quality and service to students. And we've made the editorial decision not to accept DETC schools in the DegreeFinder database except on a case-by-case basis, because we've never seen any convincing evidence that DETC does anything meaningful to maintain standards once a school has achieved accreditation, and we've seen at least a couple of egregious cases (ACCIS, then known as AICS, a computer science school in Alabama, and Columbia Southern U.) where DETC accredited schools that had a long history of substandard education and fraudulent marketing practices (active during the time the schools were under consideration). To be fair, Mike Lambert has contacted us and asked us to reconsider, but we've never received satisfactory answers as to why those mistakes were made, and the study that was provided to us as "evidence" of the value of DETC accreditation was so poorly designed and implemented that its results were virtually meaningless. Now, that's not to say that RA schools are exempt -- the unnamed school above is the best example, but there are a number of other unwonderful regionally accredited schools. And it might surprise some of the regulars to know that we also believe there are a handful of exceptionally high quality unaccredited schools out there. (No, not K-W and not St. Regis!) So editorially, we don't draw any specific lines about what is and is not OK to say, and while we have our own editiorial opinions and will state and argue them, other people are free to express their own.
I didn't know that about DETC and post-accreditation maintenance of standards. Thanks for the heads-up. That's cause for concern, certainly.
The DETC has bounced a couple schools that I can think of. That would most certainly be a higher percentage than most accreditors. The schools have periodic review.
Yes, not just RA institutions but apparently respectable foreign universities too. A posting on the 2nd of February 2004 referred to Wilfred Laurier University as the "Twit Bin" I inquired why, but never received a reply. Roy Maybery
