Interesting Accreditation Question

I have an interesting situation for discussion. I understand the difference between national and regional accreditation. Obviously, regional accreditation will always be the preferred method of earning a degree and its acceptability is much higher. I was doing some thinking about those schools that are accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), and there are some colleges and universities that will accept credits with this national accreditation. However, if the school has also had courses evaluated by ACE (American Council on Education), then the acceptability of credits from schools that are listed with ACE is greater than just having national accreditation with DETC. There are a number of reputable colleges and universities that accept the ACE college recommendations. This is the dilemma or interesting part. Of those colleges and universities that accept the ACE recommendations and if an individual actually graduates with a degree from a school that is DETC accreditated, but, more importantly, also has the ACE recommendation how does the college or university treat this person if they want to acquire a job or employment? In other words, I realize that if their degree comes from a regionally accredited college or university that this isn't even an issue. But, how does a college or university that accepts the ACE recoommendation treat a person who graduates from a school with an actual degree? Sure, they can agree to accept credit from a school that is ACE recommended, but does this completely change if the person actually earns a degree from an institution that has been ACE recommended? Has anyone else had this same experience, and if so, how was your degree treated, and what was your overall experience? The reason why I'm so interested in this is because I was thinking about earning a degree from a school that is nationally accredited, and also has ACE recommendation for their courses so that I could have utility for the degree and also transfer courses in the future. I do know that there will be those colleges and universities that will not whatsoever accept credits from a nationally accredited school and also ACE credit recommendations, but it seems more and more colleges and universities are opening up to receiving these places. That is why I personally feel that the most important thing is for you to earn a degree that is accredited by a place that is recognized the the U.S. Dept. of Education. But, this whole accreditation thing gets really complicated, and just want some good input to see if this has been an issue for someone else, or if someone else has experienced this same issue in the past. Anyone can feel free to weigh in, and please I would appreciate it if you could help me by dealing directly with the issue that I raised, and anything that would relate to it, and other things to think about that I might not have thought of. Thank you.

 

When I did my survey of registrars and admissions officers in 2000 (presented at the AACRAO national convention that year), I got data on the acceptability (always, usually, sometimes, rarely, never) of a wide range of kinds of degrees, from regionally-accredited residential and regionally-accredited online to DETC to state approved, etc. I did not include DETC + ACE, which simply didn't occur to me then, but it was a preliminary study. I am confident that then (and probably more so now), DETC + ACE would have had somewhat higher acceptance than the roughly 40% of "always" or "usually" then.

I believe forum poster "CoachTurner" is in the process of replicating my survey, with some significant changes, and it would be great to learn how it is going.

 

ACE makes credit recommendations course-by-course. Thus, a nationally accredited school might award some credits towards its degrees that carry ACE recommendations, and others that do not.

If one earns a bachelor's degree from such a school, expect graduate schools to treat your degree on the basis of the accreditation of the school awarding your bachelor's, not any individual ACE recommendations. I don't recall graduate schools making a distinction. However....

If your degree was largely made up of courses carrying ACE credit recommendations, that would be a very strong argument in favor of an exception at those schools that normally do not accept graduates of NA schools.

 

Universities treat credit transfers like this on a case-to-case basis. Many follow the ACE recommendations, while others do not. Some schools, like the nationally accredited (by AALE) Southern Virginia University have had a high degree of success in transfers and in their graduates going on to good graduate schools (SVU is a brick and mortar liberal arts school). Schools accredited by DETC will likely be scrutinized more carefully by most institutions (due to the built-in prejudice that some will have toward online learning). ACE recommendations should provide an advantage, however.

The best thing to do is to chat with an admissions officer at the university to which you wish to transfer.

 

But with so many regionally accredited schools becoming online status now, should the prejudice be somewhat subsided to a minimum?

RA schools are also becoming aware of something that detc schools have known all the time,( that full time workers find online education convient) and with the price of gas becoming a factor online school are becoming more popular than ever.

 

Higher education maintains a very rigid culture that is slow to change in many areas. Most of the full-time tenure-track faculty at universities are interviewed and hired by department chairs who are senior faculty and around before online learning became prevalent. There is still a very pervasive view among many academics that distance learning, by its very nature, is inferior to learning in a face-to-face environment. There is no body of research/data to support this view, but the opinion persists (sort of like the idea that the Ed.D. is an inferior degree to the Ph.D. in education, when no data exists to confirm that view).

It will take the retirement of many in the current generation before online learning is given its proper respect. It will also take some demonstration of real high quality online learning. Most motivated students who are exposed to well-designed and well-taught instruction online should learn as well as those receiving well-designed and well-taught F2F instruction. However, as those of us who have followed this field know, much of what is done in the name of online learning ibelow the quality that it should be.