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Yes, you're right. And Neuhaus is right too. Bridgeport is not a nice place. Lots of murders and stuff like that.

 

The WLC candidate would get the gig hands down!

 

Absolutely! :smile:

J.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, ASIC is perfectly legal and can accredit whatever it wants, but has no remit outside the UK as I and many of my colleagues see it.

Global Vision University is ASIC accredited. It’s also recognized by California University FCE and an institutional member of the American Association for Higher Education and Accreditation, AAHEA. According to GVU, the university “offers a range of partnership models, which can be adapted to suit the needs of each institution”. Google that, and you end up on the websites of both Pebble Hills University and a California University FCE affiliate called Eton University. Eton, by the way, runs its own credential evaluation service, the American Council for Credit Evaluation, american-cce dot org

Global Vision University is also a member of an organization called QISAN, the Quality International Study Abroad Network which as I understand it operates out of the same address as ASIC. Notting Hill College in Manchester is a member of QISAN and also ASIC accredited and functions as a UK study center of Eton University. TransPacific University, formerly known as Hasaca National University is ASIC accredited. It’s also a partner of both AAHEA and California University FCE. Fred DiUlus, who is on ASIC’s academic advisory board, is a member of faculty.

In the UK, Trans-Atlantic College and Concepts College were once accredited by ASIC. Trans-Atlantic College’s chancellor was a graduate of the International University of Fundamental Studies, and Concepts College (now Concepts University College) had a “three week and never executed” agreement with Charisma University (ASIC accredited), and is still listed as an affiliate of California University FCE and may still have an affiliation agreement with Saint Monica University, Honolulu and Cameroon. SMU is ASIC accredited.

Many years ago, Concepts College was an affiliate of the World Information Distributed University, Russia, and, if memory serves me right, also of West Coast University, Panama.

 

There is nothing wrong with ASIC. What is wrong is how some schools try to paint ASIC as something more than it is.

There is nothing wrong with earning a "mini-MBA" but if you use it to mislead people into thinking you have an MBA then that's a problem. The same can be said for Masters certificates.

ASIC can accredit whomever they want. So can PMI. Neither provide institutional accreditation and neither are a substitute for institutional accreditation. ASIC, as legitimate as it is for its limited focus, also has a pretty fair number of shady schools waving their flag. That is of some concern.

With any accrediting agency member institutions need to be aware of the company they keep. It's one of the reasons why some schools are probably not thrilled with HLC as they share a directory with Phoenix, Capella and a handful of other for-profit schools.

AIU, by way of ASIC, shares a common accreditor with many legitimate schools that do not offer degrees and "use" ASIC accreditation as it is meant to be "used" within the UK. But many of the degree granting schools on ASIC's directory are somewhat sketchy. Warnborough, for example, and a myriad of Swiss canton approved schools trying desperately to lure international students in.

ASIC accreditation isn't sketchy. But when it is the only accreditation that you have it doesn't help your case, IMHO.

 

So what do you believe it is?

Isn't an academic accreditor supposed to provide some trusted external verification of a entire school's (or an individual program's) institutional and academic soundness?

So if an accreditor's list of accredited schools includes, as you say, "a pretty fair number of shady schools", then doesn't that suggest that the basic accreditation function isn't being satisfactorily performed?

 

A QA organization that has limited governmental recognition for immigration purposes.

No, because their "accreditation" is not what we, in the U.S., understand "accreditation" to be. The UK does not rely upon organizations like ASIC to provide legitimacy for their schools. As such, the scope of what ASIC is evaluating and the level of quality assurance they are providing is different, very different, than institutional accreditation as it is in the U.S.

 

What the United Kingdom is proposing with its 'registered' category looks to me to be less stringent than what the old BPPVE required from 'California Approved' degree-granters.

So what reasons are there to think that Britain's results with the largely-unregulated experiment will turn out any better than California's?

It's true that California was a great incubator of new schools, a number of which were reasonably credible and went on to achieve accreditation. I expect that is the result that the UK hopes to see too. They want to become a center of higher education innovation and experiment. But the low-end of the 'California approved' spectrum was low indeed, almost indistinguishable from 'degree mill'.

My worry is that if effectively unregulated schools are given British degree-awarding powers (DAPs), then they will be able to boast that they are awarding "recognized British academic awards". That phrase still means something out there in the world. I fear that the day is coming when it will no longer mean anything, and that there is going to be a very ugly transition period when con-artists try to market their mills under the flag of "quality British higher education".

Unregulated British DL programs are likely to become a common future topic of heated argument right here on Degreeinfo.

 

DAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I sent you an email..no response...

 

Normally, diploma mills have to make up fake accrediting agencies in order to fool customers who don't understand accreditation. ASIC takes care of that for them.

 

I forget who made the distinction (John Bear or Steve Levicoff perhaps?), but there is a definite difference between a diploma mill and a degree mill.

 

Let's look at two schools accredited by ASIC...

Atlantic International University (U.S.)
Israeli Dance Institute (U.K.)

We don't see that sort of variation, typically, at a US based regional accreditor. They don't accredit non-degree granting career schools alongside degree granting universities. The National Accreditors do. But that's also one of the major criticisms of the National Accreditors; that they started doing only career schools and then decided to "dabble" in academic universities.

A quick look over ASIC's website shows that there are some shady operators on their international list. Within the UK, the degree granting universities tend to be well established colleges with no issues. Not all of the UK schools award degrees. Those without degree authority, that offer academic coursework, seem to have degrees conferred by partner schools. This is a scheme that is much more common in the U.K.
than the U.S. But their international list starts to get a bit sketchy. In that sense, it isn't unlike ACBSP's international roster.

It may be the case that AIU and SMC offer the exact same level of coursework in terms of quality and rigor. Financial management may be top notch and their books might be immaculate. But ACBSP won't even consider accrediting AIU because it lacks institutional accreditation and is located in the U.S. operating only under state approval. An equally unaccredited school operating under the Swiss equivalent of state (canton) approval, however, faces no such barrier.

Just as we say that ACBSP is not a substitute for institutional accreditation neither is ASIC.

ASIC isn't an institutional accreditor. And their usage of the word "accredit" does not imply degree authority. They're just a QA outfit and they aim to:

Just a different focus and operating in a climate where their idea of "accreditation" differs greatly from what we know here. They are no more or less legitimacy than the BAC which has similar goals. They aren't verifying degree integrity. They are trying to prevent visa mills. In the UK the government (fancy that) is tasked with ferreting out the diploma mills, not private accreditors.

 

The distinction is Levicoff's, but you won't find it in use anywhere.

As Bear noted in his books, one person's diploma mill is another's nontraditional university.

 

It's true. If one doesn't believe it they need only explain "life experience" operators like Almeda to a person and then follow it up with portfolio assessment at the Big 3 and see how murky that line really is.

 

ACBSP is a specialized accreditor of business programs.

ASIC has seemingly positioned itself as a general institutional accreditor of a whole assortment of typically obscure degree-granting schools located outside the UK.

In the UK, the initial award of degree awarding powers (DAPs) is something separate from accreditation. Degree-awarding-powers were until the recent changes acquired through receiving a 'Royal Charter' or through act of Parliament. After the recent changes, degree awarding powers will apparently be granted by a new government higher education oversight agency, the Office for Students (OfS).

Here in California, initial legal authorization to operate as a higher education institution is acquired by legislative act (UC and the CSU primarily) or through California approval acquired through the BPPE.

'Just'? Isn't quality assurance the whole point of accreditation?

Britain's university accreditor has up until now been the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (the QAA). In the United States the regional accreditors and the rest of the Dept of Education and/or CHEA recognized accreditors perform that QA function. That's what 'accreditation' is. Neither the QAA or the American accreditors have anything to do with initial legal authorization to operate as degree-granting post-secondary institution. The accreditors make assessments of the soundness of schools (and programs offered by schools) that presumably are otherwise operating legally wherever they are located.

Even in the case of the 'international universities'? Those don't seem to have anything to do with the UK Border Agency or with granting student visas for study in the UK.

In your opinion, does ASIC 'accreditation' of a degree-granting 'university' outside Britain communicate anything to the wider world about the institutional or academic soundness of the 'university' in question?

You seem to trying to simultaneously suggest to us that it both does and doesn't.

 

Send again, no excuses