Facebook University

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Kizmet, May 17, 2016.

Loading...
  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  2. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    This is one of those issues that sort of transcends accreditation in many ways.

    If Facebook started awarding degrees (let's say they were state approved but unaccredited) people would flock to them. And, if Facebook hired their own grads, those degrees would have immediate value. If competitors and other companies valued the work that Facebook was doing they might very well hire those grads as well even if accreditation really didn't come into the mix.

    It isn't a recognition of academic quality. It's a recognition of company specific training. A Facebook Masters degree would have the same sort of value as a certification from Cisco, Apple or Microsoft. Some of those certifications matter more to employers than academic degrees (and some of them are arguably comparable to graduate degrees).

    I could see a Facebook University grad having the same level of pride as a graduate of Ringling Brothers Clown College or Hamburger University and I don't mean that in a deprecating manner. The latter two institutions are not accredited but they have a great deal of value within their respective industries.
     
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I'm with Neuhaus. It's almost like UK policymakers are forgetting why most people go to university in the first place. It's not because they really need a degree for its own sake, it's because they believe that degree will help them with their career. To wit, I remember in the '90s when certain technical certifications were treated by workers and employers essentially like degrees. Some of them still are, e.g., CCIE.
     
  4. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    This looks like the UK is once again planning to redesign its higher education system.

    The changes are officially described here:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523396/bis-16-265-success-as-a-knowledge-economy.pdf

    I skimmed the first 40 pages or so, which are written in dense bureaucratic edu-speak.

    The changes are going to be substantial.

    The biggest one is the introduction of something called the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). This supposedly will measure educational effectiveness at the disciplinary level. I don't know how they propose to accomplish this. They say that it will be patterned off of the current research assessments, used by the funding bodies to direct research funding to the universities. They deny that it implies any kind of French-style national curriculum or loss of academic freedom.

    It's accompanied by what appears to be the elimination of the existing British HE accreditor, the QAA in 2017/18. A new QA framework will supposedly roll out in 2018/19.

    The new TEF will apparently be both a reputational ranking allowing students and employers to identify where the best instruction is taking place in various subjects, but also a major component of the British HE funding system.

    There will be three kinds of institutions (p. 25 box 1.1):

    1. Registered - these will presumably all be private institutions, operating legally as domestic British HE providers. They "must match the academic standards as they are described in the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ)." I don't know what this means, but am guessing that it basically means adhering to the format for a bachelors, masters or doctoral degree, but without the on-going scrutiny implied by accreditation. They must also have a students complaints procedure. They won't receive government funding. My impression of this one is that the UK is rolling out a low-end category modeled on the old and now somewhat defunct 'California approved' model.

    2. Approved - these will have access to some kinds of government funding. They will be allowed to set their fees at any level. They are required to maintain successful quality assurance through the QAA until 2017/8, and through the new QA framework from 2018/9.

    3. Approved - Fee Cap - these will have to agree to cap their fees at some government mandated limit, and in return they will receive additional government funding. They will have to submit to quality assurance as described above.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 17, 2016
  5. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    In the early 60s, the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little determined that some of their clients had the knowledge and performance level of an MBA and they began granting their own -- initially in association with Boston College, but within a year entirely on their own. They got regional accreditation, and I don't recall that it was especially controversial at the time.

    Incidentally, Arthur Little himself achieved a certain level of fame when he actually made a silk purse (or something very close) out of a sow's ear.
     
  6. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    I predict that this would be the most popular;

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Isn't posting profanity against the rules around here? Perhaps not.
     
  8. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    This is your new tactic?
     
  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    [​IMG]

    This has been a public service announcement.
     
  10. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    You forgot the "sticks and stones" axiom.
     
  11. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I think much of the problem stems from people simply not understanding the role degrees versus specialized career training. Whenever a field becomes trendy, data for instance, we start to see programs spring up all over the Internet. It seems reasonable that a Masters in Health Informatics would help someone get a job in health informatics. And some of them may serve that purpose. But many of these programs try to cram the introduction, intermediate studies and advanced level learning into 30 credits. The result is a degree that is watered down and often heavy on theory rather than practical learning.

    If we understand the masters degree to be a technical training program then it is a failure. But that has never really been the role of the masters degree. But as the degree offerings expand, there tends to be less required by way of undergraduate coursesload.

    Some of this also ties to institutional quality. There are online MS in Stat programs that require very little foundational work. Meanwhile, the undergrad program in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon requires some pretty advanced level R programming by your junior year. But part of it is also that academic degrees only ever prepared people for entry level positions in their respective field. That was fine when you graduated and went to work immediately doing the same thing, often at the same company, until retirement. But we are a world of career changers now who want to transition between roles and industries without losing seniority and the accompanying pay.

    If an accountant decides to become a software developer there are a handful of certs that would be more valuable to him/her than just going out and earning a typical Masters. And if higher Ed would stop trying to compete with industry education we might begin to see some exciting collaborations which were a bit more relevant to our present landscape.
     
  12. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Here's some highlights (selected and in some cases paraphrased by me) of the new British Higher Education shakeup (from the 'Summary of Decisions' on p. 18). My comments are in bold.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523396/bis-16-265-success-as-a-knowledge-economy.pdf

    * Replace multiple overlapping HE systems with a single regulator and route into the sector.

    * We will move to risk-based regulation which will reduce the regulatory burden upon the sector, except for those providers where special monitoring is needed

    * New institutions will be able to compete with quicker entry to the sector.

    My impression is the the UK wants to be more like the United States, where a wider variety of institutions offer degrees, and not just traditional state-universities. The British report never mentions Facebook or Google. (That's some journalist's invention, I think.) I suspect that the intent is to do what the New York Regents have been doing, accrediting many very high-profile specialist institutions that offer their own specialized degrees. These include Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, the American Museum of Natural History, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories and Christie's Auction House. Britain is filled with organizations that could do that very credibly.

    * The bar will continue to be set high on quality

    * We will open up access to providers to be able to award their own degrees by introducing greater flexibility to Degree Awarding Powers (DAPs), new probationary foundation and taught DAPs, time-limited granting of DAPs for all new holders...

    * We will simplify the granting of DAPs and university title (UT) for English institutions by transferring responsibility for the process from the Privy Council to the Office for Students (OfS).

    That's the end of "Royal Charters".

    * the creation of the Teaching Excellence Framework.

    If entry into the system is going to be made easier, then quality assurance will have to pay more attention to educational effectiveness, to outcomes as opposed to inputs. Funding will be conditional on succeeding at this and it will also produce a reputational score, allowing students and employers to know where the best instruction takes place in various subjects. (I wonder how they will measure that.)

    The fear that I have about all of this is that the TEF apparently won't be applicable to all British HE institutions. There will be a 'registered' category of institutions that don't have to submit to quality assurance oversight as long as they don't seek government funding. That sounds a lot like 'unaccredited' to me. I suspect that many unknown DL schools will shelter in this status and troll for students internationally while flying the flag of 'respected British university registered with the UK government' and touting whatever minimal oversight they are subject to as 'the equivalent of accreditation'. Maybe the fact that initial DAPs will only be for a limited time will weed the mills out, but if they qualified for DAPs in the first place, I worry it won't.


    * We will create the Office for Students (OfS) a new market regulator, in place of HEFCE.

    The BPPE of Britain!

    * The OfS will be a non-departmental public body. Ministers will be responsible for appointing the Chair, Chief Executive and and non-executive board members.

    * The OfS will be funded primarily by registration fees from HE providers.

    * The OfS will allocate teaching grant funding and will monitor the financial sustainability, efficiency and health of the sector.

    * The OfS will be given a statutory duty to assess the quality and standards of the HE sector.

    When the QAA is retired, this (or another body that it spins off from itself) is apparently what will function as Britain's new university accreditor.

    * The OfS will have powers to ensure compliance.

    Really? Or (being a government body) will every decision be subject to political pressure, endless hearings, appeals and court litigation? Will actually exercising whatever powers the OfS is given become more costly, dangerous and cumbersome than it's worth? State regulators like the BPPE have encountered that, even the regional accreditor WASC did when it took on City College of San Francisco (and lost).

    * We will also create UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) a new research and innovation funding body.

    A mash-up between the American-style NSF, NIH and a government-run venture capitalist firm?

    * UKRI will incorporate the functions of the seven Research Councils, Innovate UK and HEFCE's research funding function.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2016
  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    This is more or less what one can do in Switzerland right now, and it's apparently led more to hosting decent alternative providers than mills.
     
  14. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I agree with Steve.

    My biggest issues with schools like SMC is that I don't believe they would withstand a WES assessment.

    However, the ACBSP accreditation is a pretty good indicator that the programs are, to borrow the phrase, a "decent alternative provider."

    In many ways the Swiss system is how the U.S. system could have functioned and maybe was intended to function. Instead, a handful of states overall allow(ed) diploma mills to thrive.
     
  15. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    The Swiss system functions the way it does because it's pretty darn difficult - I'd say impossible for a DL school - to meet Swiss Federation requirements for a mainstream University - buildings, research, at least 100 highly-qualified full-time professors etc. So, up spring the Cantonally-approved schools of varying quality - from outright mill to very good indeed - e.g. IMD at the high end, both in quality and price.

    I agree ACBSP is a good indicator of a "decent alternative provider." Yet it strikes me as strange that a US school must be RA for its programs to be ACBSP-accredited, yet a foreign school need merely have "sufficient degree-granting status in its own country" - I think that's the phrase. ACBSP is the sole arbiter of what is "sufficent" in any country where it accredits programs - and so far, these include Kazakhstan, Mongolia and, of course, Switzerland.

    ACBSP accreditation is a great thing for business schools. That's why there are so many Swiss distance schools in that field. There is pretty much no programmatic accreditation available for many other disciplines, so you don't see them. Swiss Cantonal schools keep offering more and more distance business programs and very little else - as there is no equivalent of institutional accreditation and no programmatic accreditor for other DL-suitable subjects.

    Know what might make a difference and increase the range of offerings? If some decent US accreditor, e.g. DEAC were to reach out, ACBSP-style. DEAC has accredited overseas schools before - Australia, South Africa for sure, though they've never (yet) been as adventurous as ACBSP which, besides its activities in Switzerland, has accredited programs in Kazakhstan and, I believe, at no less than nine universities in Mongolia.

    I'd like to see a potentially large market of schools with other-than-business offerings here go to DEAC or another quality outfit.

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2016
  16. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Mongolia has less than three million people - and 14 million sheep. About 20 Universities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Mongolia
    New Zealand - 4.5 million people - 30 million sheep. But only 8 Universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_New_Zealand

    :question: :question: :question:

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2016
  17. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I think the next logical step for NA would be to start winning over more programmatic accreditors. We see very very stances where this is occurring right now. But an NA BSN with nursing programmatic accreditation is likely to have much more utility than a regular NA degree. Much of this ties to licensure, mind you. But I feel that if ACBSP started accrediting DEAC accredited schools we would start to witness a major shift.

    Functionally, there is no difference between SMC and say, Atlantic International University, they operate with roughly the same degree granting authority and the same lack of institutional accreditation. If AIU turned around and scored ACBSP, or some other recognized programmatic accreditation, it would give me reason for pause before labeling it a diploma mill so readily.

    Institutional accreditation has also shown us that it hardly makes a school's reputation bulletproof. I'd be very curious to see what happened if two equally qualified candidates went head to head, one with an MBA from UPhoenix and the other with an MBA from William Loveland College (DEAC, non-profit), for example.

    all of this to simply say that I think programmatic accreditation, in many ways, has the power to cause a major shift in how we think about accreditation in general.

    But if Facebook started offering degrees and hired their own graduates I think they could offer them with no degree authority whatsoever, let alone accreditation, and people would flock and those degrees would have more utility in certain circles than their accredited equivalents.
     
  18. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    They're already the Hoboken of business accreditation, so why not?

    Let ask you, though, even in the absence of programmatic accreditation would you go as far as to label AIU a diploma mill?
     
  19. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    OK, now everybody in Hoboken is upset . . .
     
  20. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    So is IACBE like the Bridgeport, CT of business accreditation? Just as cruddy as Hoboken but fewer people know about it?

    (Sorry for the video quality)

    Would I, personally, label it a diploma mill? No. The best diploma mills are pretty up front and honest about how they will straight up sell you a "degree." There is very little doubt about how Almeda works. AIU is much less clear.

    Illegal for use in Oregon? Yeah, but so was Nations University literally the day before DEAC accredited them. At least Nations had the option of applying for religious exemption in states like Oregon. AIU doesn't have that ability.

    There are red flags for AIU but nothing so definitive that I would have to call it a diploma mill. The whole ASIC thing makes them look shady because of how they frame it. But, then again, that's still some form of QA that a diploma mill might not qualify for.

    But if SMC didn't have ACBSP I would probably advise people to stay away from it entirely. And I don't. I typically just remind them that there are other options out there with less questionable issues surrounding their accreditation, they aren't exactly cheap and, depending upon one's goals, the lack of institutional accreditation may cause issues in the future.

    As an aside, apart from the WES assessment issue, I'd be very curious as to what would happen if I tried to transfer credits or gain admission to a U.S. based RA/ACBSP accredited university from SMC. But that's a curiosity I also have with NA nursing programs that have mainstream programmatic accreditation and how they will interact with their RA counterparts.
     

Share This Page