Accreditation NA, RA and Speciality

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Robbie, Oct 4, 2009.

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  1. Robbie

    Robbie New Member

    I hope I may get some discussion on this topic. If it has already been discussed, please direct me to the past threads.

    I have looked over a lot of accreditation agencies' standards for schools to be eligible to apply for accreditation with their agencies. I am referring to those recognized accreditation agencies that accredit business degrees, psychology degrees, marriage-family therapist degrees, and on. I can't find one of those agencies that will accept a school's program for accreditation unless the school is Regionally Accredited. These agencies appear to discount the worth of the Nationally Accredited schools, i.e. DETC, for eligibility. All of these agencies are recognized by the USDoE and/or CHEA. The USDoE recognizes the DETC and the ACCIS accreditation agencies under the same standards as the Regionals. Do any of you have any "reasonable" explanations why there is a prejudice against Nationally Accredited schools for eligibility for application for the specialized accreditation? Or is it they just haven't kept up with the changing tides in education?

    I can't accept any answer that the DETC or ACCIS accreditation agencies are any less credible than Regional Accreditation based on facts all of those agencies have to meet the same standards to be recognized by the USDoE.
     
  2. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    The Academy of Art University in San Francisco was accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), by the Foundation for Interior Design Education and Research (FIDER) and by the National Architecture Accreditation Board (NAAB) while it was still accredited by ACICS. It's since become RA with WASC.

    Hollywood's Musician's Institute is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) as well as by ACICS, I believe.

    San Francisco's Hastings College of Law, a unique stand-alone unit of the University of California, is accredited by the American Bar Association but doesn't have an other accreditation that I'm aware of.

    The National Test Pilot School at the remarkable Mojave Airport (where Burt Rutan builds his spaceships) has one of its two degree programs accredited by the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), but is otherwise state-approved. Naturally it has all kinds of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recognitions as well, but that's not academic accreditation as conventionally conceived.

    I'm sure that it's possible to come up with additional examples of this kind of thing.

    The Secretary of Education just decides (under advisement) if he thinks that accreditors are credible enough to qualify their schools for participation in student financial-aid programs.

    That doesn't necessarily mean that all accreditors' accreditations are academically equivalent, that if a school satisfies one accreditor that it will satisfy all of the others as well, or that all accreditors are looking for exactly the same things in the schools that they accredit.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 4, 2009
  3. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    Hey Robbie,

    I am not very coherent yet as I got home very late, so bear with me. After years of observation, one could conclude that RA's are the most familiar with schools and other associated agencies. The perception has been since the RA's are most common, they must be the most credible. Is this ignorance, laziness, or both? I don't know.

    Having said that, times are changing. As more and more schools are becoming aware of the valid non RA's, they are accepting them more and more. When a school is patiently explained the merits of NA's, they will usually accept a student. This in turn opens the doors for other NA transfer students (Ex. Excelsior). This also causes a domino affect (TESC has slowly been accepting NA credits). The DETC Director has been instrumental in educating schools and working in collaborative efforts along with schools like Excelsior. In other cases, Mr. Lambert will explain the merits of DETC to a schools that have denied NA credits, and many times upon explanation, the school has a change of heart.

    Many times, things are just the way the are because nobody has questioned them and demanded feasible explanations. Case in point? The famous Texas fiasco involving THECB. THECB decided they would decide which valid accreditors were recognized, and which were not. Of course, they failed to understand that this function falls under the auspices of the USDE and CHEA, and was not the intent of a bill designed to target DIPLOMA MILLS. When several stood up and demanded a coherent legal answer, it turns out THECB was not applying the law correctly, and it is no longer a misdemeanor/illegal to use and NA degree in Texas. Fast forward to the future. NA degrees are perfectly legal to use in Texas, as it should have been along. Sounds crazy hah?

    So to use your phrase, educators have been slow to keep up with the changing tides. I have found it more constructive to try and educate and inform in order to cause change, rather than just complain. This is not a comment aimed at you, but just a general statement.

    Take it easy and keep questioning.

    Abneer :)
     
  4. Robbie

    Robbie New Member

    Thanks guys for your comments. It does help. I have been writing to the USDE and to my Congressman and Congresswoman about these issues between NA and RA. It is very alarming that most of them up there in DC have no idea how the system works and not working.

    I have learned a lot in these discussions forums. I have even changed my opinion of some things due to the information and very informative factual information some of you all have posted.
     
  5. foobar

    foobar Member

    Paraphrasing and extending:

    DOE recognition of accreditors merely implies that the accreditation processes identifies institutions whose academics and institutional practices meet a minimum threshold that qualifies the institution to participate in federal financial aid programs.

    It is NOT meant to imply equality of accredited institutions on any other construct.
     
  6. Malajac

    Malajac Member


    Very interesting. Could you perhaps provide sources/references/links for further reading about this?
     
  7. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member


    Here are some starting points:

    From US Dept Education website http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation.html#Overview
    The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accreditation in the United States involves non-governmental entities as well as governmental agencies.

    From WASC (one of the RAs) http://www.wascsenior.org/findit/files/forms/Handbook_of_Accreditation_2008_with_hyperlinks.pdfSource (Page 5)
    The Standards of Accreditation apply to all institutions in the region. For those seeking candidacy and initial accreditation, the Standards must be met at least at a minimum level. For institutions seeking reaffirmation of accreditation, the Standards must be met at a higher level. The Standards define normative expectations and characteristics of excellence, and provide a framework for institutional self-review. Depending upon the stage of development of the institution, some components of the Standards may be viewed as of greater or lesser priority
     
  8. Malajac

    Malajac Member

    Thanks Ian. :)


    http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation_pg12.html



    http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/accreditation_pg14.html#RecognitionCriteria



    I may be mistaken, but I think the above requirement (widely accepted) goes somewhat beyond the purpose of assuring minimum standards solely for purposes of being eligible for participation in financial aid programs.

    Would you consider NA accrediting agencies such as DETC as satisfying the above stated requirement?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 5, 2009
  9. mongoose65

    mongoose65 New Member

    The truth is that as much as "Education" like to tout it's progressivness, it is actually an old time INSTITUTION with layers of bureaucracy, petty politics and holier than though types who want everyone to do things exactly as they did and PAY as much as they did. The ends justifying the means is irrelevant. I am going through it now. New York Dept of Ed will not recognize any NA degree for licensures or certifications no matter how qualified the candidate. Industry will, the government will, the US dept of Ed will, but NY Dept of Ed will not and I guarantee they will be one of the last in the nation to accept alternate accreditations because of the "concerns" of stodgy old politicians and academics. I work in administration in a NY school district and they are still using typewriters and carbon paper. It's a perfect example of how "progressive" they are.
     
  10. telefax

    telefax Member

    No offense, but I’m not convinced that you’re asking the right question. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that AACSB allowed NA schools to apply just as RA schools do. Now look at AACSB’s guidelines – are there DETC schools in the United States that would meet AACSB’s individual school criteria?
     
  11. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    There is also the business aspect - is it cost effective for a school to pay $16,500 followed by $4,500 annually to become AASCB accredited?

    I've asked several MBAs over the years if their school was RA or AASCB accredited and get a blank stare (included MBAs from Pepperdine, USC, U of Phoenix, and CSUDH) - so my guess is that most students do not care about accreditation (except those going into academia or specialized occupations).
     
  12. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I'll see your extension and raise it to probably absurd lengths.

    The federal government doesn't want to award thousands of dollars to students enrolled at mills. So it kind of puts a roughly-defined floor on the kind of school that qualifies students for financial aid. But the feds don't want to look at every school individually, a tremendous task. So they defer to the judgement of the accreditors. To that end the feds recognize accreditors that -- 1) maintain at least the standard the feds have decided to accept, and 2) in their estimation do it reasonably reliably.

    Obviously there's a range within the class of schools that individual accreditors accredit. They aren't all the same by any measure. Stanford is a better undergraduate school than CSUDH and a more powerful doctoral research institution than TUI University, despite all of them being accredited by WASC. What WASC does is put in a floor and kind of ensures that everybody's on the same page. CSUDH doesn't have Stanford's admissions standards, but Stanford recognizes it as a legitimate peer university.

    It's obvious that specialized architecture, engineering, law and medical accreditors are focusing on very different things. A school that satisfies one of them quite likely won't satisfy another. Just because the federal government recognizes a host of specialized accreditors doesn't imply that they are identical and interchangeable.

    TRACS insists that all the schools it accredits have what it calls a "Biblical basis" for all programs and requires that the schools only hire theologically-conservative Christians as faculty and staff. Obviously that's not what the secular accreditors are interested in doing and it wouldn't exactly suit the new Buddhist-run University of the West in suburban LA.

    The general institutional accreditors that accredit entire schools instead of individual programs and departments typically pay less attention than the specialized accreditors to detailed program syllabi, content and methodology. Institutional accreditors are more apt to leave detailed management of those pedagogical matters to the school itself. That's why better schools try to have both institutional accreditation and all the specialized accreditations that are applicable. In some professions, when licensing boards demand the specialized accreditations, that's crucial. In other majors, specialized accreditations might not even exist.

    An institutional accreditor's primary emphasis is on whether the school has the general organization, finances and administrative resources necessary to pull everything off credibly, both now and for the foreseeable future. They want to see robust internal controls and quality-assurance procedures in place.

    Some specialized accreditors are prepared to be institutional accreditors of small specialized schools that only teach their subject. Other specialized accreditors don't think that they are in a position to evaluate things like finance and governance, so they want to see institutional accredition before they will look at programs. Whether particular accreditors will be satisfied with ACICS or DETC is up to them. I gave several examples of ACICS schools with specialized accreditations, but I don't recall seeing it with DETC. Examples might be out there though.

    My own impresson is that most DETC and ACICS schools are small proprietorships of limited means. Their physical facilities are often leased suites in office-parks. Their administrations are small and bare-bones and they don't have the physical facilities or financial resources that even small RA colleges typically boast. Many education entrepeneurs opt for "NA" over RA because it's seen as a less demanding hurdle to cross.

    As far as instructional quality goes, a lot of that depends on the individual professor, I guess. I know for a fact that state-approved schools have offered some excellent classes, better in my estimation than some RA classes in the same subject. In fact, I know of an individual from Stanford who informally teaches a weekly year-long non-credit, non-degree class in a specialized subject unavailable elsewhere, without any government permission at all. He's like Socrates, his students just get together with him. The problem with that is that it isn't reliable. The next free-lance teacher might be a charlatan and the next state-approved school might be academically meaningless.

    I'm sure that many DETC and ACICS classes are very good too, better than many RA classes. There's plenty of overlap. It's possible to get a good education at a DETC or ACICS school. But I'm not as confident of reliability with those institutional accreditors as I am with RA schools. The low-end might be lower and more frequently encountered. The high-end certainly doesn't seem to be as high.

    There are more specific issues too. As one example of many, ABET is pretty hard-nosed about hands-on engineering labs. DETC has accredited several engineering programs that are a lot more free with DL than ABET will countanance. It's a judgement call (I'm emphatically with ABET on that one) but it's going to be difficult to argue that it's academically all the same thing because the education secretary recognizes both accreditors. It's a significant difference.
     
  13. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    For some professional accreditors, there is no inherent prejudice against non-RA schools -- but there is a distinct prejudice against distance learning. It just so happens that the best-known non-RA accreditation agency is DETC, which specializes in the accreditation of DL schools. So in practice, the prejudice against DL also represents a prejudice against NA.

    For example, two of the most important and best-known professional accreditation agencies are ABA (for law programs) and ABET (for engineering programs). Both agencies occasionally do accredit non-RA, state-approved schools, as noted in Post #2 above. But the exceptions are all conventional, residential, B&M programs. Neither ABA nor ABET will accredit purely DL programs, whether they are RA or NA.

    In summary, for at least some professional accreditors, the difference between eligibility and non-eligibility is not RA vs. NA. The key difference is actually B&M vs. DL. However, this prejudice still tends to hurt NA schools, because the best-known NA agency (DETC) specializes in DL-oriented schools.
     
  14. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    The Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) is a specialized professional accreditor, recognized by both CHEA and USDoE.

    Their list of accredited schools seems to be down at the moment, but their list of candidate schools in California includes two NA schools accredited by ACICS: American University of Health Sciences, and West Coast University. So CCNE appears willing to consider NA schools for professional nursing education.
     
  15. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    Another example: the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology (JRCERT) is CHEA and USDoE recognized. It has accredited at least one NA school, Lebanon College in New Hampshire, which is institutionally accredited by ACICS.

    I expect that you would be able to find other examples of ACICS-accredited NA schools with USDoE-recognized professional accreditation in health-related fields. But note that these are B&M schools. I'm not sure how effectively subjects like nursing or radiologic technology can be taught in a purely distance mode. So I suspect you might find fewer (maybe zero) examples of DETC-accredited NA schools with these sorts of specialized professional accreditations.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 5, 2009
  16. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    Aspen's nursing MS degree is CCNE accredited:

    http://www.aspen.edu/nursing/index.htm

    Abner
     
  17. CalDog

    CalDog New Member

    OK, so there is an example of an NA, DETC-accredited school with specialized professional accreditation.
    Note that the Aspen MSN program, though covered under DETC's institutional accreditation of Aspen, is not a pure distance program. The program includes two "practicum" courses at the student's workplace:
    To qualify for the Aspen MSN program, you already have to be a licensed registered nurse, so it's reasonable to assume that you have a professional supervisor who can act as a preceptor. Aspen doesn't offer lower-level nursing degree programs, which would probably require more hands-on supervised training.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 5, 2009
  18. geoffs

    geoffs Member

    Duh! they are a business, low level training with large practical components are expensive!
     
  19. Robbie

    Robbie New Member

    Lots of great information here. Thanks.

    I guess what I am asking is what Dave G. stated. Why do specialized accreditation have a prejudice against schools such as the ones accredited by the DETC (totally distance learning)? I am referring to those accreditation agencies which require "Regional Accreditation" and will not accept "National Accreditation" for eligibility. Isn't a specialized accreditation agency the same thing as the DETC? The DETC specializes in totally distance education. Doesn't the DETC review every program a school offers and not the school as a whole? I know it is the individual specialized accreditation agency's right to choose what type of programs it will accredit, but isn't unfair, ethically speaking, not to include any school which is accredited by an accreditation agency recognized by the USDE?
     
  20. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I wouldn't consider it unfair. It is what it is, would be my philosophy. I think there's been some excellent explanations as to why already given. My view is that DETC is small and practically insignificant compared to RA. There's maybe 100 DETC schools on the one hand compared to thousands that are RA. Plus the 100 DETC schools are generally smaller and not generally notable. As has been mentioned, the reputation of DETC seems to be on the rise. My opinion is that the DETC reputation will continue to get better but will probably never be equal to RA.
     

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