UMUC

Any thoughts, comments or concerns???

 

I assume you mean the University of Maryland University College. In this case I've a piece of information from a German public authority. The UMUC has a campus in Germany, Schwaebisch-Gmuend, also. Now, believe it or not a German administrative court ruled that a bachelor degree that was earned from UMUC has a less value than the German high-school diploma. Is that really the way UMUC degrees considered elsewhere?

Dennis Siemens

 

Do you have a link to an article regarding this issue?

Thanks!

North

 

No, actually, I'm unaware of an article about this issue.
I've the information from an answer to an inquiry I made to the Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen(head office for foreign education) in Bonn. But you could ask the UMUC in Germany. Just follow the link: http://www.sg.umuc.edu/

If you do, tell us about their answer.

Dennis Siemens

 

Vielen Dank!

Actually, the reason I was curious is that when my wife worked in Germany in an office with other civil servants, one of her bossess mentioned the University of Maryland with disdain. Said he would not hire a graduate. Of course the U of M serves a great many service people over there.

I have no doubt that the German office made a very complete and detailed assessment.

Incidentally, I spent alomost 3 years near Nuernberg and loved it. I miss the the architecture, the beer, the pommes frites, and those massive cordon bleu. I need to go back and figure out that Sonne Spiel (?) .... game that hung on the wall of a number of local restaurants. I put some marks in and managed to get a couple out. I have no idea what I was doing.

Spater!

North

 

Are you sure this is a UMUC issue and not a American vs. German issue?

 

Vielen Dank!

Actually, the reason I was curious is that when my wife worked in Germany (US base) in an office with other civil servants, one of her bosses mentioned the University of Maryland with disdain. Said he would not hire a graduate. Of course the U of M serves a great many service people over there.

I have no doubt that the German office made a very complete and detailed assessment. Especially since my wife is a third generation American of German extraction (but that issue is another story).

Incidentally, I spent alomost 3 years near Nuernberg and loved it. I miss the architecture, the beer, the pommes frites, and those massive cordon bleu. I need to go back and figure out that Sonne Spiel (?) .... game that hung on the wall of a number of local restaurants. I put some Marks in and managed to get a couple out. I have no idea what I was doing.

Spater!

North

 

It appears to me that there are very few distance learning degrees/schools in the US that can stand intense scrutiny.

However, this does not appear to be the case with the British schools.

Any thoughts, comments, etc.

 

I think it is partially perception and partially reality.

The European education system is or used to be much more stringent than your average American higher education institutions. 60 Minutes once did a program on this situation and pointed out (IIRC) that where in the US we have a belief that everyone must have a diploma in Europe (France) it is expected that some will not even graduate from High School. In Eastern Europe the education system was more stringent than the US. Aside from party affiliation you had to be tops academically to go to college (I had a prof from Lithuania who wanted us to know that).

I think part of the problem for US DL schools is that the perception of them in terms of situations like TESC (credit for CLEPS, etc). I know that coming from Canada I thought that was a joke (not a real degree).

As for British degrees, I think whether fair or accurate, "British" is almost synonymous with quality. So I think even a DL degree carries that positive aura. After all the University of London is the University of London. I think this connection helps the Australian and South African degrees in terms of perceived quality.

A guess it is another study for someone to do. Hey, John (Bear) maybe in your spare time you could whip out another survey.

North

 

No. UMUC certainly isn't perceived that way here in the United States.

I'm a little skeptical of this story, frankly. While there may be real issues with the UMUC satellite branch in Schwaebisch-Gmuend, I think it is more likely that this illustrates either confusion or ignorance.

A degree granting university operating inside Germany needs German government approvals, right? Well, I'd guess that this UMUC branch doesn't have them and operates for the benefit of American military personnel and dependents stationed in Germany. If UMUC were recognized by the German government as a German university, would a German court have dismissed it so arrogantly? So my guess is that this is just a very garbled rendition of the fact that the German UMUC campus isn't authorized to offer degrees to German students.

 

I doubt if they did any kind of assessment at all. They were probably just ruling on UMUC's status under German education law. That's the kind of thing that you would expect an 'adminstrative court' to do, right? Courts aren't academic accreditors.

 

I think that's bullshit. That's my comment.

 

Hello North,

I can understand your yearning. Germany and especially the southern part of it together with the adjacent Austria and Switzerland are a beautiful spot. The mountainous lanscape has many breathtaking vantage points and is a popular vacation resort(given the current Euro low it should be an attractive destination for Americans too). In the winter you can go skiing and in the summer hike the Alps. The only drawback is the weather. In the last years we didn't exactly get much sunshine around here.

By the way, didn't your wife tell you something as to the reasons her boss so despised the UMUC?

Dennis Siemens

 

Den

I guess it's more of the former. The problem is, there is no mutual settlement between Germany and the US about the recognition of academic degrees. So each degree is being evaluated on an individual basis. In case of the UMUC it was obviously determined by a German evaluation athority that an UMUC bachelor is inferior to the German high school diploma. What has an administrative court to do with the issue? I surmise that somebody wasn't content with such a decision(maybe it was the UMUC itself?) and so he went to court about it. Thus, we have the rulement of the administrative court of Braunschweig. Perhaps it is worth to note that Braunschweig is located in the northern part of Germany while the UMUC, Schwaebisch Gmuend, in the south.

Though, there is not an official mutual agreement there are many German schools that entered into cooperations with individual American colleges/universities and that often contain an agreement on mutual recognition of academic study. So I think it could serve as a rough guide to US schools that can be recognized in Germany. Here is a link(click for the English version and on "International Cooperations" at the top): http://www.hochschulkompass.hrk.de

Incidentally, the UMUC is not there but the University of Maryland at College Park is listed as well as SUNY, George Washington University and many more.

Dennis Siemens

 

Bill, I admit it is suspicious, indeed. You sit twelve years of high school go for another four years to college and make plans on your master only to find out that in Germany you are not even considered elligible to start studyind at the undergraduate level. But I don't have any background information for what reasons the court decided this way.
By the way, you'll probably allowed to hold and list the UMUC bachelor on your resume. And to accept you degree for the purpose of employment is up to the personnel manager.
But then it may be a drawback again if he finds out that your degree is worth less then a high school diploma...

As for governmental approvement/recognition, one prerequisite that an educational institution must fullfill is to offer an education comparable to German academic standards and an evaluation always precedes the process.

Dennis Siemens

 

In AED parlance, I had a less-than-wonderful experience with UMUC. The infrastructure in terms of things like registering for courses and telephone support was great. On the other hand, I encountered a frustrating curriculum gap and the response of persons in authority was positively maddening.

To summarize, I enrolled in the second BS in CIS program to update computing skills acquired during my doctoral program. The C, C++ language is a core component of the CIS degree and I aced the prerequisite courses: discrete math and introductory programming. The second programming course began with the assumption that the student was familiar with classes, a key aspect of the C++ language for object oriented programming, which wasn’t covered in my prequel course. I absolutely floundered as did many of my classmates. The instructor was extremely responsive but he was an adjunct and he had no control over the situation. I approached the department chair who assured me that contrary to my contention there was no gap in curriculum design. Try though I might, I could not get the man to acknowledge that a problem exists when a person with a Ph.D. in psychology who aces the prerequisites is unable to negotiate even the first course assignment.

After consulting with some AED regulars, I wrote a letter summarizing my experience to the University President. He, in turn, assigned my grievance to a mid-level functionary who responded with an annoyingly dismissive, paternalistic say-nothing reply. I’m a Fed with years of experience so I recognize double-speak! In the end, I was left dangling with neither recognition that a curriculum gap existed nor a suggestion about how I might remedy the shortfall between the two courses. I will say that I was allowed to drop the course with full refund. Many of my classmates also dropped; in point of fact, there was something of a stampede for the exit.

Recognizing it isn’t a good idea to alienate one’s faculty, my initial approach was measured but I decided I did not want to continue with UMUC. So, I wrote a second letter to the President in which I expressed my pointed dismay with his follow-up. To President Heeger’s credit, he assigned my grievance to the University Provost who finally, after my disappointing experiences with the chair and the functionary, approached me with sincerity. After reviewing the situation he recognized that a problem existed and he outlined efforts that were to be made to ensure better standardization of course content so others would not have to contend with a similar dilemma.

I recognize that there are different ways to interpret the situation I encountered and one interpretation is that the system worked. Although, it required an extremely vocal 50 year old, well-established in his career to get the message across. The interested reader can draw his/her own conclusions.

I would like to add that I transferred into the BS IS program at UMass Lowell where I haven’t encountered even a remotely similar situation. My rationale for selecting UMass was the provision of a weekly chat. I once waited two weeks for an instructor’s reply at UMUC and I came to recognize the importance of instructor access in effective distance learning. Chat proved to be a bonus but not as crucial as I’d envisioned. My UML instructors have been knowledgeable and responsive; I almost never wait longer than overnight for a reply to a question. The tuition is significantly less than UMUC and there is a wide range of computing and IS courses available online. There are no extra fees for out-of-state students. UML is also an RA school and it has recently offered the bachelors degree in general studies. Moreover, on the one occasion where I did encounter a problem my issue was met with immediate acceptance and a good faith problem-solving effort. No dissembling, no shuck. This is a very good but little-recognized resource for an online bachelor degree.

 

Bill, profound as always!

 

Again, this testifies to the week distance learning environment in the US. More and more it appears that the majority of distance learning options from the US can not stand up to intense scrutiny.

Incidentally, the UMUC is not there but the University of Maryland at College Park is listed as well as SUNY, George Washington University and many more.

Dennis Siemens

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As profound as the situation warrants.

You wrote:

I find that sweeping dismissal of hundreds of distance education programs based only on their national origin to be ridiculous and completely unsupported by any evidence.

If you can justify your remark Lewchuk, please do so. If you can't, and if it is just an expression of your personal dislike of the United States, then it is indeed bullshit.

 

A little clarification from my wife. It was not her boss it was somebody connected with DoDS (Department of Defense Schools) in Europe. DoDs is the organization that runs schools for US miltary/dipomatic/GS children. He told her that he felt that the University of Maryland's European "campuses" (and he may have meant only the ones on the military bases as opposed to the main European one were not rigorous enough and that basically he had disdain for the credits. I don't know whether he could have done anything about it since they are accredited and I assume he would have had to have given teachers credit for them whether or not he felt the credits were rigorous.

Let me also say that this was some time ago, prior to my having met my wife. In other words we are not talking in the last 10 years.

North