All, I am curious about what (if anything) legitimate but non-RA programs are doing in the way of research or research fostering activities. It seems to me that a school intent on improving their academic reputation and name recognition (in a positive way) would want to establish some sort or research fostering activity (i.e., requiring research publication from faculty; holding academic conferences; publishing research journals; applying for institutional research grants, etc.). I know of a few limited instances of this sort of thing, but I thought I would throw out the query to the group. Thanks, Tony Maranto
I've never researched this issue and so am offering an opinion, not fact. I'm betting that you won't find any real research (by which I mean "quality") coming out of non-RA schools (or their GAAP equivalents). By "quality" I mean, published by a peer reviewed professional journal or a book publisher. Why? Again, speculation on my part . . . they have a whole bunch of adjunct faculty who are simply trying to makes ends meet and don't have time to do the quality research necessary to publish in peer reviewed journals. They might be OK teachers but they're not researchers. I might add that I don't count the brown teal (or similar efforts) in this. After all, regardless of the quality, it was self-published. Jack BTW, I also might add that I've frequently thought that it would be a great idea to publish a journal based entirely on the articles of non-academic philosophers. There must be so many "would you like fries with that?" philosophers around who have continued to keep their hand in the game, that you could produce a quarterly or biannual journal - even if it was simply a web journal. So many ideas, so little time. Jack
While they are RA now (last 2-3 years), prior to being anything more than state approved the City of Hope and the American Film Institute's programs did very good research. Also some of the inital work proposed by the new (and currently UN-accredited) UC-Merced sounds world class.
Hi, Tony. I agree with you pretty emphatically. I've been making a small scale attempt to get a feeling for what a few schools are doing by Googling them. The results are often revealing. Here's some results for American Military University: http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9399 AMU shows collaborations with the US Department of Justice in creating a weapons of mass destruction certificate program and with the US Merchant Marine Academy in jointly developing some masters programs. The results show that AMU is treated seriously by organizations like FEMA and the various military services. AMU professors seem to appear regularly at conferences and they publish books and papers. Interestingly, there seem to be quite a bit of activity by AMU masters degree students (the school doesn't offer doctorates), suggesting that AMU promotes student participation. All in all, it seems like a signature indicative of serious academics, and I'd give AMU high odds on becoming RA fairly quickly. AMU is accredited by DETC (and apparently is very intent on pursuing RA with the North Central Association). Moving to the completely non-accredited ranks, here's Hsi Lai University (currently a candidate for accreditation with the Western Association). I think that it shows a lot of credible features, but it doesn't impress me quite as much as AMU. http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9099&pagenumber=1 Scroll down and you reach San Francisco's Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, a CA-approved school that seems to enjoy living on the edge. But it actually does do research. In fact, in its chosen field, "alternative" status might actually have some value. This school shows little interest in pursuing recognized accreditation, but it's something more than a joke. Scroll down further and you reach the results (such as they are) for Berne and for Knightsbridge. Here's results for my favorite CA-approved school, little 20 student National Test Pilot School: http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9174&pagenumber=1 This place is obviously tight with everyone from NASA and the FAA to the aerospace industry and foreign governments. Most non-accredited schools are in danger of being shut down because they aren't good enough. NTPS was threatened with closure by the US State Department because it was deemed to be too good! (The government feared that NTPS was leaking American defense technology.) It's also probably the world's most expensive college, with tuition of $500,000/year.
At one end of the scale, you can find research being done at, for example, Bob Jones University, with a Google search like: site:.bju.edu "research interests" and find results like "His current research interests include Optimal lawn mowing techniques, Pawn Obstruction, [...]" (http://www.bju.edu/academics/cas/math/cps/faculty.html) At the other end, I understand that Trinity College and University has been associated with some excellent work on the brown teal.
