degreeconsult.com gone? Is there a paid consulting company giving online degree info?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by fingerfehler, Apr 6, 2009.

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  1. fingerfehler

    fingerfehler New Member

    www.degreeconsult.com of Santa Rosa, CA seems to be gone. www.geteducated.com now is just a program ranking website and not a paid service any more.

    Are there any firms/people left that still do consulting on online degrees?
     
  2. bazonkers

    bazonkers New Member

    That's an interesting question. I (as well as many others here) have spent enough time researching various offerings that we could probably consult or start a business offering that service.

    I hadn't realized that there was a need for that service and that people would pay for it. Hmmm. To answer your original question, I'm not aware of any except my own newly formed consulting business! :)
     
  3. Go_Fishy

    Go_Fishy New Member

    Well, it seems there is no need... ;)
     
  4. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    I had never heard of degreeconsult.com until now.
     
  5. fingerfehler

    fingerfehler New Member

    My understanding is that it was owned by a John Bear, and you could give it a bunch of your desires and constraints and for a fee, they would tell you what you should do.

    I guess as a consultant myself these days, I'm always looking around for someone who is an expert in areas where I am not, and I have no expertise at all in online degrees.
     
  6. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Oh! I had known from his Bears' Guides that Dr. Bear had once owned a firm known as Degree Consulting Services, but from one of his posts here I had learned that DCS no longer exists.
     
  7. TCord1964

    TCord1964 New Member

    Geez...throw a few bucks my way and I'd be more than happy to tell you where to go to school! :)
     
  8. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    This is news to me, but it seems to be true. I started the business in the mid 70s, and sold it on the day John Lennon died to Paul Proehl, who was about to take early retirement as Vice Chancellor of UCLA, and who planned to run it with some or all of his four sons. Through attrition, only son Peter remained, the last I heard, a year or two ago. I find him on the internet now, but as a chess teacher and counselor. I hope to learn more.
     
  9. japhy4529

    japhy4529 House Bassist

    Hi John,

    Here is a link to an archived version of degreeconsult.com, courtesy of Internet Archive/Wayback Machine. The latest archive of degreeconsult.com is dated 12/31/07.

    You will notice that your name is mentioned on the home page as the originator of DCS. In reviewing the site, it was unclear (at least to me) as to whether or not you were still involved in the company.

    I found the following contact info for DCS and Peter Proehl. Perhaps some of this information is still current:


    Degree Consulting Services
    P.O. Box 3533, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
    538 Blackstone Ct., Santa Rosa, CA 95409
    tel. 707.539.6466 fax 707.538.3577
    email [email protected]



    Best,
     
  10. fingerfehler

    fingerfehler New Member

    I'm quite serious about this. I did research for myself yesterday and found a ton of info. It seems one out of every 10 colleges and universities out there have a DL degree program. And this forum especially has a ton of contributor-provided info. I could see myself spending hours and days sifting this stuff to decide what to do, and what my best options are....

    Or I can stop wasting time and go to an expert who knows this marketplace and dump on him all my parameters and have him/her give me some expert advise and lay out a very specific plan.

    I go to a lawyer when I have a legal issue, and an accountant for my taxes. Why shouldn't I look for a degree consultant to help me avoid the potholes on the road to an education? I see a huge potential (from some of the stories I'm reading on the Internet) to waste a lot of time going down a bad road that doesn't work for me. And at my age, time is more valuable than money.

    So if any of you consider yourselves a bonafide expert in DL by now after years of working it and doing it, I'd be happy to hire you on to lay out for me a specific plan for me.

    I supposed I can get a plan for free as I'm sure that many of you are willing to offer a ton of valuable free advice. Or I can pay someone something and make them a little responsible for the outcome. So if any of you who know this stuff cold want to be responsible for the outcome, let me know and we can work something.
     
  11. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Thanks for the research, Tom. I have written to Peter, and hope to reconnect.

    For the record, while I sold the business to the Proehl family in 1980, I did agree to stay on as an unpaid consultant . . . and over the years, we did communicate from time to time, for advice or to share new information. But it has been about two years since the last communication, which seems to jibe with the info from archive.org.
     
  12. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    Keep in mind that just because you pay for something doesn't inherently make it any more valuable (except perhaps in your own mind) over something you get for free.

    I got one of Peter's consulting reports years ago. It was very lengthy and detailed, but what I was specifically interested in was doing a lot of credit via exam and portfolio, and all of the schools he sent me limited exam and portfolio to ~30 credits. When I called by phone to discuss, and asked specifically about Charter Oak, Edison, and Excelsior, he said something to the effect of "Oh, those are all such large programs, I don't really recommend them" I asked specifically why, and what other schools had similar offerings, and he didn't have answers for either.

    I also found it a little odd that he never participated on any of the online discussion sites (AED, here, Peterson's board, etc), and when I asked about a couple of schools that were newly entering distance learning, he seemed mostly unaware of the discussions that had been going on about them.

    There have been various other people over the years that have offered consulting services, some probably well qualified and some probably not at all.

    In principle, the idea of a degree consulting service is a good one, but unfortunately, I can't really think of a way of ensuring that the person or persons offering the service really know what they're talking about, except perhaps by reading hundreds of posts they've written to discern how well they know their topic... and at that point, you've probably done the necessary work yourself :)
     
  13. tcnixon

    tcnixon Active Member

    Upon occasion, I have done such consulting both at the high school and college level. I do very little now by choice.

    Having said that, I think the real money for such services was in the pre-Internet and early Internet days. Now that everyone has an Internet account, I think that fewer folks would be interested in such a service because many believe they can do the research themselves.

    That is not to say that if it were marketed correctly, it couldn't work. Just that you would have to work harder for less payoff than once was possible.

    Or so I believe.



    Tom Nixon
     
  14. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    ... and Tom is one of the very few people that I could highly recommend for doing such consultations :)
     
  15. tcnixon

    tcnixon Active Member


    Thanks, Chip. I appreciate the kind words! I am not around here as much as I once was, but it's nice to be remembered. :)



    Tom Nixon
     

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