A Slightly Strange set of Bedfellows on Ed2Go

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Mark A. Sykes, Apr 29, 2015.

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  1. Mark A. Sykes

    Mark A. Sykes Member

    Ed2Go is offering a medical coding course for, as I understand it, credit at a community college.

    What's very odd from my perspective is that Ed2Go - a Cengage Learning subsidiary - is offering a course with portions of content copyright by Penn Foster (formerly International Correspondence School or ICS, from which I got my [hobby-related] Catering and Animal Science diplomas) and delivering the course through Sinclair Community College. PF is nationally accredited by Distance Education Accrediting Commission, formerly DETC, and Sinclair is regionally accredited through North Central Association (NCA). NEVER have I seen a regional pick up a national's course content and say, "Here's our class material." You hardly typically see credits from national accepted by a regional.

    Nothing Earth-shattering here, just not used to seeing a regional teach from a national's class lesson plan.
     
  2. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I'm not surprised. Many schools (for and non-profit) are purchasing curriculum from companies which write curriculum. PF is one such company. They offer that curriculum for credit through their eponymous college (which is nationally accredited) but they sell it as well. I once took a hobby certificate through PF. About a year later, I decided to take a similar course through a seemingly unrelated provider only to discover that the course content was identical. I put the books side by side. They matched word for word. Plagiarism? Maybe. More likely it was just a canned curriculum sold.

    There are a number of public and non-profit schools offering content from companies (most of which are just curriculum providers and have no accreditation of their own). Most recently, we discussed a certificate program offered through Villanova which is basically being offered by a third party provider but co-branded for Villanova.

    The irony, of course, is that people think that if companies like Corinthian go out of business that "for-profit education" will die with them. Relationships like this exist all over the place. And that isn't, necessarily, a bad thing.
     
  3. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Also, it could be argued that it's just that sort of coursework, vocational training, that Penn Foster does best. Faster, easier and ?cheaper to purchase the courses than to develop them themselves from scratch.
     

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