I'd be curious to know the Liberal/Conservative ratio when it comes to non-RA acceptance. Anyone want to chime? Thanks!
TRACS seems to support biblical literalism, creationism, and what I would consider an evangelical platform; for this reason, it's popular among some conservative schools but probably not the darling of liberals. The DETC has been wonderfully diverse, accrediting across the ideological spectrum, from the Caycean Atlantic University to the Assemblies of God's Global University. (Aside: My one regret is that the Vedanta Society has not fired up an online M.Div. and gotten it DETC accredited, because that' s one out-of-the-norm program I would actually do.) Cheers, ------------------ Tom Head www.tomhead.net co-author, Bears' Guide to the Best Education Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press) co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)
TRACS seems to support biblical literalism, creationism, and what I would consider an evangelical platform; for this reason, it's popular among some conservative schools but probably not the darling of liberals. The DETC has been wonderfully diverse, accrediting across the ideological spectrum, from the Caycean Atlantic University to the Assemblies of God's Global University. (Aside: My one regret is that the Vedanta Society has not fired up an online M.Div. and gotten it DETC accredited, because that' s one out-of-the-norm program I would actually do.) Cheers, ------------------ Tom Head www.tomhead.net co-author, Bears' Guide to the Best Education Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press) co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)
Very interesting...really peaks my interest. I have found it curious that those who often blast non-RA degrees, at least those whom I've engaged in debate, are liberal. Aren't liberals interested in changing the norm? Non-discriminating? Doing away with tradition? Thanks for your input Tom
If I had to label myself, it would probably be as a conservative with Libertarian leanings. That being said, it's been my experience that liberals are only interested in changing the norm & enforcing non-discrimination when it suits their ideals. Otherwise, their propaganda & censorship would do Joseph Goebbels proud. BUT....(and it's a big BUT), I don't recommend non-RA schools to the vast majority of degree seekers, and I would never *recommend* an unaccredited school to anyone. Bruce
Didn't Minister Goebbels have a distance learning degree from Reich University, or was it Trinity? Russell
Amazon lists a forthcoming book by the arch foe of distance education, Professor David Noble in Canada. [/i]Digital Diploma Mills[/i] was scheduled for November 2001 but Amazon does not yet have it. Noble appears to be as conservative as they come.
Mr/Ms Dramahead needs to clarify the question a bit. This is the third context of conservative/liberal used in a reply. Actually, this one is a de-contextualized, dictionary meaning of conservative: a traditionalist. The other contexts so far are political conservatives and religious conservatives. While Noble is an educational traditionalist, I'd bet a Canadian dollar (or one 'o them Euro thingies) that he is a political liberal, by the present meaning of the word. I'm basing that merely on probabilities; I have little knowledge of him.
Liberal/Conservative in what sense? There's liberal and conservative in the generic sense of one's orientation to change. And there's liberal and conservative in the sense of adherance to two rather stereotyped sets of positions regarding social issues, the government's role in the economy, race/class/gender identity politics and so on. And to complicate things, 'liberal' and 'conservative' don't mean precisely the same thing in Britain as they do in America. So I'd say that it's liberal in the first sense to adopt DL, since it's the new thing that's upsetting the applecart, and conservative to prefer to keep things as they are. But it's pretty clear that political conservatives have been among the leading "liberals" in their quick embrace of alternative educational delivery methods. Conversely, university professors are America's bastion of the hard political left. But paradoxically, they often seem to be "conservatives" when it comes to embracing DL doctorates or changes in their own working conditions, such as lifetime tenure. So I don't think that the generic sort of liberalism/conservatism correlates very well with the political kind. The same thing holds true of non-RA degrees. Both political liberals and political conservatives can be found among those that embrace and reject non-RA schools. Excluding degree mills, I think that non-RA schools kind of gravitate to three poles: There is the relatively a-political and highly secular vocational pole. These are the trades and vocational programs and the degree programs that grew out of them. DETC and the similar non-DL accreditors like ACICS or ACCSCT live here. Being oriented towards real world employment, they may be a little more tolerant of capitalism than the academic left. So they may be vaguely conservative in the sense of not being instinctually anti-business. You will find very little Foucault or Lukacs here. Their motto may be "no nonsense". There is an almost stereotypically "religious right" pole that is alienated from the wider society for both political and religious/sectarian reasons. Bob Jones U. is probably its Harvard, with lots of weird non-RA Bible institutes. The existence of state religious exemptions makes it relatively easy to start these kind of schools, so there are a lot of them, gradually fading off into the mill category. And there is a sort of mirror image of them, particularly in the CA-approved sector, with lots of schools that lean towards "progressive" social activism and "alternative" sensibilities. The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco is an extreme example. You also find non-Christian schools here like Dharma Realm Buddhist U. The San Diego University for Integrative Studies offers a DL Ph.D. in Tibetan Buddhist psychology. The Western Institute of Social Research probably fits here as well. I think that it is a tribute to the regional accreditors that they are willing to embrace schools from both of these opposed poles if they can demonstrate their academic credibility. Jerry Falwell's Liberty may be an example on one hand, and deeply alternative CIIS on the other. They are diametrically opposed politically and (at least in the case of Liberty, CIIS being more universalist) theologically. But both operate programs that are credible and reasonably rigorous.
My take on Noble is that he objects to DE primarily because he fears it's consumer-driven, and partly because it represents the phenomenon he has called "technology-worship." Think of Noble as a younger, slightly crankier Wendell Berry without the poetry and rural charm, and you're in the ballpark. Cheers, ------------------ Tom Head www.tomhead.net co-author, Bears' Guide to the Best Education Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press) co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)
