Accreditation

Collegues

I beg to differ from most of you, on the issues of recogized accreditation.

It is obvious that recognized accreditation is the best to go on current and future needs for most of us.

My concern is, that some of us seem to be carried away. My elementary observation notes that many of us do not plan to work in big corporate giants. Yet, we're bothering too much with issues such as unaccredited degrees being screened by HR personel. I'm not talking about fraudulent credentials. I'm speaking of degrees from California Coast University, SCUPS, NCU or California Pacific University. (I'm not here to defend their state approval staus, which IMO, are legal and aren't scams). I believe that these credentials are legitimate. What I'm saying is, that many of us are not working for big corporate giants (in my experience only a few are checking these credentials), and that some of us don't even plan to. So there's no need to get "worked-up" so badly and worry that the HR guys screened you out. As a sidenote, Dr. Bear's recent research shows that even RA-degrees, when learned that they are learned from distance-learning, are not accepted by admission officers by a big margin when compared to traditionally earned degrees. When the same applied to DETC, a recognized accreditor, almost not even half of the DETC degrees were accepted by the admission officers. Remember, experience and aptitude are important as well. I will argue that given that 2 applicants at an interview are generally alike, a Detc degree candidate would not have any advantages over a State-approved degree candidate. Think of Harcourt-Learning, and a grad from Western Institute of Social Research. Also, remember, small and medium companies offer good jobs too. So, don' put so much emphasis thinking that "what If I work for American Express one day or things like that." Actually, even AE don't do credential checks, at least not on the issues of accreditation. Of course, buying a piece of worthless paper from a phony is putting yourself and your reputation at your own risk.

Sam Xavier
Ph.D, Boston University
D.B.A., California Pacific University

 

Sam makes some good points... there are a few California-approved schools that seem to provide reasonably decent education, and as John says, if one is absolutely, positively certain that an unaccredited degree will meet his or her needs, then a degree from SCUPS or Cal Coast might be a reasonable choice.

HOWEVER, the logic on the HR issue is flawed. Credential checking is not at all limited to large corporations; there are many, many small corporations (50 employees and under) that do credential checks as a routine part of a background check in the hiring process. The majority of these companies "farm out" the credential checking to one of many organizations that now offer this service. And while the choice as to what is acceptable (stste-approved, regionally accredited, DETC, etc) is always the employer, some of the credential checking services routinely notate unaccredited degrees, degrees from questionable schools, etc.

And it should go without saying that schools like Earlscroft, Trinity, Capitol, Columbia State, Columbus and various other scams are already in the databases of these credential checking services... so it's no longer safe to assume that your time bomb won't explode simply becuase you're applying to a small company.

Once again, in my eyes, it all comes down to options. Going with an RA degree, you have very few, if any, options that aren't open to you. Going with anything else, including State approved and DETC, and you will have some options that aren't open to you.

So, assuming you have the choice of RA versus anything else, why limit your options?

 

I've been saying for years that these degrees (DETC-accredited and/or California-approved) are useful to some people in some situations. But because I'm the one who analyzed the data in Bear's research project with the admissions officials, I want to clear up two mis-stated points.

First, the difference between RA degrees with some residency component and 100% non-resident RA programs was statistically signficant. However, very few admissions officials rejected them outright. And when John talked to some of them about this difference, they essentially said, "But how would we know?" that the degree was 100% non-residential.

Second, the DETC figure is routinely mis-stated when quoted by people who didn't see the results. I've corrected it several times, and will do so again. It isn't that half of DETC degrees were rejected. Nor did half of the respondents indicate they would reject applicants with DETC degrees. Rather, the relative level of acceptance of nationally accredited degrees (i.e. DETC) when compared to RA degrees with some residency was 47%. However, 80% of respondents indicated at least some acceptance of themv (the other 20% rejected these degrees outright). And as I've said before, we don't really know how those figures drawn from a survey will hold up in real life. It's one thing to reject a type of degree when answering a questionnaire; it's another thing entirely to reject an otherwise qualified, tuition-paying candidate because his/her degree was from a DETC-accredited school. This is one of the built-in limitations of conducting a survey.

Rich Douglas, who can't wait for the 15th edition.