Commencement of service

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by henrikfyrst, Jul 6, 2003.

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  1. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    Good Ladies & Gentlemen,

    Some time back there was a brief introduction by Dr Bear of the undersigned.

    This was followed by a long line of posts, most of which not directly related, as well as a separate thread seeking information as to my whereabouts.

    Unfortunately, technical difficulties meant that my registration did not actually fully complete, but by kind intervention of Chip White I can now finally partake in the goings-on. Thank you once more, Chip.

    As originally discussed with John, it was my hope that perhaps a named representative of an un-accredited institution could assist in adding a different perspective to some of the discussions here.

    I very much appreciate the words of welcome offered under the threads mentioned above, and hope to be able to make a worthwhile contribution.

    In anticipation,


    Henrik Fyrst Kristensen
     
  2. kf5k

    kf5k member

    Welcome to the wars Henrik, keep your sword handy, and I hope you enjoy the forum. I am one of the fans of the approved schools, or at least of most of them.
     
  3. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    Henrik

    Welcome. So you decided to take a dip in the shark tank.
     
  4. plcscott

    plcscott New Member

    Welcome Henrik,

    I wish you well here, but I have a feeling that you are going to tarred and feathered. I think it is something in the water, and some of the sharks have ingested way to much of it. I wish you well, and look forward to hearing another side.
     
  5. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    M. Godot arrives! Welcome, Henrik! Pay no attention to the caricaturists; unlike them, I am sure that you can cope with disagreement. I am guardedly open to real unaccredited schools--and (I hope) clearly against mills--so I am delighted to have you on board.
     
  6. Han

    Han New Member

    Welcome, I am glad to see we will have different perspectives in here.
     
  7. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    Thank you all very much for those kind words of welcome.

    It has been quite a frustrating time since John (of the Bear) introduced me and until being able to make first post. Both he and Chip have been most helpful, despite obviously having other things to think of.

    There are already quite a few perspectives on most things being demonstrated here, some being more adamant than others. Having taken to lurking, it did however become obvious to me that there was a total absence of voice directly from any of the unaccredited institutions, if one discounts the various threads and messages from 'anonymised' parties apparently emanating from the other side of the fence.

    Why is that? Did the forum use to swarm with such contributors, and have they all been sent scuttling after receiving less-than-kind attention? Are there no other above-board un-accredited institutions left in the world? Or have they all sought asylum under the banner of some un-recognised accrediting body or other, and simply get on with the matter at hand?

    This is really why I chose to join the fray. To proffer views and information where deemed appropriate. I cannot promise to be as regular or proliferate a contributor as some, but will certainly strive to address any point brought with direct relation to my own sphere of influence and interest.

    Disagreement and opposing points of view are not usually of a substance so as to get me too het up. Indeed, I rather appreciate a good, whole-hearted exchange of opinion. At times some threads here tend to boil over a bit, but there seems to be an element of self-policing going on, so perhaps nastiness can be largely avoided.

    I shall look forward to participating in the goings-on here, and thank you all again for your kind words.


    Henrik Fyrst Kristensen
     
  8. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    The whole problem is that unaccredited often means significantly lower standards. Often it means degree mill where no work or insignificant work is done.

    As we have found out accredited in Liberia or specks in the ocean can mean the same thing.

    I think unaccredited institutions may find more respect elsewhere than here because an overwhelming number of people here have advanced degrees from accredited schools and generally worked their asses off to get them.

    I think unaccredited institutions can develop respect by being consistent. Giving a degree to someone who has spent a couple years producing a well research dissertation and the next week giving a degree to someone with a 20 page paper written in a weekend does not garner respect.

    Flunk some people. Some of the people who show up here to defend their quicky degrees have the literacy of a grade 9 student.

    Offer programs in your own language and country. Get respect at home before you try to sell it to the world.

    There is a long list and I am sure others will provide you with much more insight. The old hands here have seen it all and tend to be cynical.
     
  9. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Welcome, sir. Glad to hear the technical difficulties were eliminated.

    It will be interesting to see the discussion develop. I will take the role of the skeptic regarding degree utility. I'm sure others will discuss the value of your school's educative processes, promotional activities, etc.

    Again, welcome.
     
  10. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    Dennis,

    I'll try and address your points 'between the lines', as it were.

    DR: The whole problem is that unaccredited often means significantly lower standards. Often it means degree mill where no work or insignificant work is done.

    HFK: I can only concur that there is a disturbing number of outright diploma mills, and it is at least as disturbing that these seem to be far more effective at reaching the potential candidate than are either accredited/recognised institutions or bona fide unaccredited such. The only thing we can do, however, is to establish and maintain our own standards. We do not engage in hard sell tactics, are in fact not very pro-active, in marketing terms, at all.

    DR: As we have found out accredited in Liberia or specks in the ocean can mean the same thing.

    HFK: '...can mean..' is accurate. That is the element where my personal concern rests, with the fact that apparently everyone and his uncle, including some that I would in the past have assigned a good deal of integrity, have jumped on the 'must have some sort of accreditation'-bandwagon. That would be fine, were they to pursue something that makes sense, but the many 'accreditum ego bono est' creations springing up everywhere can serve only one purpose, to deceive the public. As otherwise they would, in equal size letters and with equal prominence, next to their accreditation statement, advise that the claimed accreditation is not backed up by any thereto appointed authority or organisation.

    The trick of leaching off a war-torn nation is despicable, however it was conceived and executed. I suspect the people behind NBOE and SRU read this forum, and find it interesting and most likely indicative that they do not chime in with at least one well-phrased shot of indignation.

    DR: I think unaccredited institutions may find more respect elsewhere than here because an overwhelming number of people here have advanced degrees from accredited schools and generally worked their asses off to get them.

    HFK: If your point here is to imply that candidates at un-accredited institutions do not work for their degrees, that would no doubt depend on the institution in question. Just as the level and amount of work required at a recognised/accredited institution is not the same everywhere.

    It seems prudent to afford everyone the respect that one would like to be afforded oneself until it is possible to establish a basis for stepping away from the original position.

    Lest this go un-opposed, however, I am not here to seek respect, but to engage in exchange of views. If you or others can respect my views, fine. If not, equally fine. I will be certainly happy to acknowledge those of yourself and others.

    DR: I think unaccredited institutions can develop respect by being consistent.

    HFK: This same certainly applies to accredited/recognised institutions equally.

    DR: Giving a degree to someone who has spent a couple years producing a well research dissertation and the next week giving a degree to someone with a 20 page paper written in a weekend does not garner respect.

    HFK: Nor should it. I get the impression that you're principally referring to a particular entity? It is certainly an alien approach here.

    DR: Flunk some people. Some of the people who show up here to defend their quicky degrees have the literacy of a grade 9 student.

    HFK: It has not escaped my notice that some tend to be less articulate in their defence of whichever entity they have pledged their allegiance to. That is rather sad. It proves not only that they were duped, but they are then held out also as fools in public.

    Again, you're clearly referring to institutions working in a different realm to ours.

    DR: Offer programs in your own language and country. Get respect at home before you try to sell it to the world.

    HFK: With this I must disagree. There has, within the past few years, been a marked swing towards tertiary education being conducted in English. Nowadays, it is well recognised that as well as yourself, your degree must be able to travel. Most of Europe will by 2010 have gone to a system very close to that in use in UK institutions, and a very large proportion of courses will be conducted in English. It's already begun, and the pace will quicken over the next couple of years.

    DR: There is a long list and I am sure others will provide you with much more insight. The old hands here have seen it all and tend to be cynical.

    HFK: Cynicism can be cleansing, but also can tend to cloud issues, depending on timing. Those who 'have seen it all' also tend to have 'answers to it all', and thus may fail to recognise differences or nuances in new constellations and situations.

    As I think I said earlier, I am not here for profiling or to make anything look good, or whatever other ulterior motives could be suspected. I am merely making myself available for views and discussions, because there seemed to be nobody else here willing to stand up, to be known by name, to represent a bona fide, above-board unaccredited institution. Anyway, I suspect DegreeInfo, in terms of readership, is probably quite obscure and narrow, and so any hopes of profiling could be probably better furthered elsewhere, particularly given the amount of time that I expect to put into this.

    From your points, though, I cannot quite fathom where on the 'unaccredited always bad-unaccredited can actually be good' scale you sit most comfortably. Have you a fixed position?


    Henrik
     
  11. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    HenrikFyrst writes:

    > I cannot quite fathom where on the 'unaccredited always
    > bad-unaccredited can actually be good' scale you sit most
    > comfortably. Have you a fixed position?


    That's an ambiguous question. Are you asking "Are some unaccredited schools good?" or "Is the fact that a good school is unaccredited ever good?"?

    My answers are "yes, probably, somewhere" and "no" respectively. I think every good school should be either accredited or pursuing accreditation.

    Accreditors are the people with the resources to evaluate schools. If you ask me "Which are the good unaccredited schools?", you're asking me to evaluate them myself, and I don't have the resources to do that.
     
  12. gmanmikey

    gmanmikey New Member

    Welcome, Henrik. I'm glad all the technical glitches have been overcome, and you're now posting here.

    I'm not a big fan of unaccredited schools. I don't see what they bring to the table. Period. If I'm going to work hard and/or pay money for a degree it better be something I would want to put on my resume. I just don't see what an unaccredited degree is good for.

    About your school in particular: I find it hard to take seriously a "university" that has a "SET UP YOUR OWN COLLEGE" section. Does any other university offer this service? Do you get many takers?
     
  13. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    I wrote to Dennis Ruhl:

    > I cannot quite fathom where on the 'unaccredited always
    > bad-unaccredited can actually be good' scale you sit most
    > comfortably. Have you a fixed position?

    To which Mark Israel responds:

    That's an ambiguous question. Are you asking "Are some unaccredited schools good?" or "Is the fact that a good school is unaccredited ever good?"?

    My response:

    No, I did not ask Dennis that question, but what his own position was, as it was not clear to me. It is my impression, and I may be wrong, that most contributors here do posit themselves somewhere along a line with 'unaccredited always bad' at one end and 'unaccredited can actually be good' at the other. So I simply wondered where Dennis sees himself, in order that I might be able to better understand his points. I am not sure why that query is ambiguous.

    Henrik
     
  14. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    How would you suggest that students, employers and colleagues distinguish the degree mills from the "bona fide unaccredited"?

    Exactly. So how can someone who is unfamiliar with a particular university learn these things?

    The degree is supposed to certify the education. If we have to subsequently examine the education in order to certify the degree, then what's the point?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2003
  15. henrikfyrst

    henrikfyrst New Member

    Mike Goldberg, thank you for your welcome.

    Your point about 'why are they there' (i.e. unaccredited institutions) is a valid one. As with all other things that are there/here, it's because there's a demand of sorts. And I won't get into a marketing 'chicken or egg first' discussion on this.

    For some, it is the degree that counts. For whatever reason. For others, other things count. For whatever reason. You do as you want because..... Some other person does what he wants because...... Sometimes we do not understand or agree with other people's motivations, but that does not mean they are not as valid as our own.

    Why do you find it 'hard to take seriously' an organisation that seeks to capitalise on what it does day in and day out?

    I realise that a college in the US is a degree-granting institution. This is generally not the case elsewhere. The 'Start up your own college' heading on our web-site is primarily aimed at the many people already in HE who have been considering the potential benefits of being in business for themselves. This, for example, could be retiring senior lecturers and professors, or it could be those in HE administration. Indeed, it is expected that interested parties would already have an HE background, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit. We are not talking about degree-granting entities but colleges of higher education offering graduate and postgraduate certificate and diploma courses.

    I am not aware of any other institution offering quite a similar opportunity, although for example there is significant scope for something not too distantly removed with for example the UK Open University. I am quite sure that RA institutions will soon be offering something similar, and I wouldn't be surprised if either Phoenix or one of the recently accredited parties did not cook up something akin to a franchise arrangement.

    As for takers, alas, no, although a good few enquiries have been received. Perhaps the immensity of the complex is just too overwhelming. I do think that the whole structure could do with cutting down to something a bit more, shall we say, bite-sized.


    Henrik
     
  16. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I think that the ambiguity is between:

    A. Can a non-accredited university ever be good?

    and...

    B. Can it ever be good for a university to be non-accredited?

    My answers would be basically the same as Mark's.

    A. Occasionally.

    B. Perhaps, but it's hard to imagine how.
     
  17. gmanmikey

    gmanmikey New Member

    Henrik,

    Thank you for your reply.

    While a person's motivations may be valid, the degree from a non-accredited school is fairly useless. I can understand wanting to get a university degree. I cannot understand why someone would want to get a credential that could be termed "a ticking time bomb."

    Why would you want to be the supplier of such credentials? If you offer a degree, why not back it up by working to become GAAP?

    Your "SET UP YOUR OWN COLLEGE" can be read by people in the USA as being a degree mill franchising opportunity. At least I read it that way. I apologize if I am wrong. However, even after reading your explanation here I am disturbed by that page.

    Am I alone in seeing this as a red flag?

    Some universities in the USA do run short courses using professors or outside experts. However, the teacher provides the course while the school provides marketing, enrollment, administation, etc. Quite a different thing.
     
  18. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I'm sorry to report that unaccredited degrees are not "useless," at least not in the workplace.

    We have anecdotal evidence for this: a robust market for degree mills and unaccredited schools. But we also have empirical evidence.

    In my research, HR managers rated state approval and state licensure about the same as they did DETC and ACICS accreditation, and not so much lower than the regional accreditor (NCA) listed. However, this changed dramatically when they were given information about each. Their acceptance of state approval and state licensure dropped, and the differences were statistically significant.

    This all lends weight to the notion that the acceptance by employers of degrees from unaccredited schools is largely due to ignorance. But it is nonetheless true.
     
  19. gmanmikey

    gmanmikey New Member

    Rich,

    I'm sorry to stand corrected on the utility of unaccredited degrees.
     
  20. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or sincerity(?)

    I really am sorry to see it. So much seems to come from a lack of knowledge on the part of the hiring managers, plus more than a little laissez faire. :(
     

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