Is IUFS recognized by the Russian Government?

The following statement appears in the main web page of the International University of Fundamental Studies (IUFS), St. Petersburg, Russia: In 1998, the IUFS was recognized by the State Committee for Higher Professional Education fo Russia. Please comment on the acceptance of its degrees!

 

http://www.iufs.edu

I can't say for sure, but in my opinion
this thing puts out a terrible smell.

Check out their religious studies
department:
http://www.iufs.edu/ITU.html

I bet that their facilities aren't quite as grand as the Czarist palace pictured
on their website, and the link to
American Coastline University doesn't
help much either.

It's hard to know what the Russian 'State Committee for Higher Professional Education' really is. Is it equivalent to regional accreditation, or to registration in South Dakota? Even if its standards look good on paper, how well are they actually enforced? Can a "biznessman" (aka "gangster") subvert those strict standards with a bribe or a gun?

Personally, I wouldn't consider
enrolling (for a degree program as opposed to just taking classes) in any post-Soviet DL program that is not offered by an estabished university or higher technical institute, at least until it appears in the standard references like the UNESCO Handbook.

Although in my opinion the whole concept of GAAP is totally inadaquate to police international education now that distance education on the web has made it so easy and attractive. Something is going to have to be done very quickly to make it possible to separate the credible universities in obscure and unusual countries from all the mills that buzz around accreditation havens like flies.

 

This seems contradictory. An endorsement of being listed in the International Handbook, then a denouncement of the same as inadequate. Of course, it could be both contradictory and very accurate. However....

A recent major survey of college admissions officials found that degrees from schools listed in the International Handbook were rated about 55% as acceptable as degrees from RA schools with some residency, and 68% as acceptable as RA schools that were 100% non-resident. And only 12% of respondents rejected outright schools listed in the IHU.
Schools listed in the IHU were considered MORE acceptable than those accredited by national agencies like DETC. (The difference was statistically significant.)

Schools listed in the World Education Series fared even better. They were rated 74% as acceptable as RA schools with some residency; they were rated 98% as acceptable as RA non-residential. (Only 6% of respondents said they were not acceptable at all). The difference between the two was not statistically significant.

Similar results were obtained when comparing listing in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook.

There was a demonstrable drop off from GAAP (foreign) to nationally accredited (i.e. DETC--47% as acceptable; 20% of respondents said degrees from nationally accredited schools were not at all acceptable!), then a ridiculous drop to the non-GAAP forms of recognition (state approved, Caribbean, private Euro accreditation, etc.).

The fact is, GAAP is what admissions officers go by. And why not? It's their concept and their practice.

Rich Douglas, Ph.D. (Candidate)
Centro de Estudios Universitarios
Monterrey, NL, Mexico

 

Rich, I'm going to take the liberty of starting a new thread to discuss GAAP, since I think that it is an important subject that is badly in need of further examination. I will respond to your post in detail there.

That way this thread can stay dedicated to IUFS, which is certainly a worthy topic in its own right.