South Dakota bill takes aim at fake degrees

Here are my comments borrowed from another channel:




[quote="Hungry Ghost/Bill

Of course DETC would scream bloody murder when it wasn't included, but strongly support the legislation once it was. By making it impossible to legally use state-licensed degrees in SD (and apparently foreign degrees as well), that's just more SD business channeled DETC's way.


Quote - Abner:

Come one H.G. This was not some conspiracy designed to "funnel more business to DETC", as you seem to suggest. DETC had no idea of this bill until I alerted them. Further, are you suggesting that it is any accreditors job to worry about the fate of State approved UA degrees? The answer is of course NO. It is the job of State approved schools and students to defend themselves and their interests. That is the beauty of this country, we all have the power to affect change, but it must be demanded and fought for, plain and simple. I will admit some of these changes did not come easy, nor did they happen by accident.

Abner

 

In a nutshell, fraud is any act, expression or omission calculated to deceive, that in turn was reasonably relied on by another person who suffered damages as a result.

So if one person truthfully tells another about studying in a credible program lacking accreditation recognized by the US Secretary of Education, where's the deception? Where are the damages?

Obviously in some cases deception and damages may actually exist, but it's the function of a fraud trial to establish those things.

 

Consider another type of credential that is widely used in our society: the state-issued professional license (CPA, PE, etc). If someone, at a party or elsewhere, feels that they have been misled by your claim of a state license, then they can file a complaint with the appropriate board. If the board feels that the complaint is warranted, then they investigate and take action if necessary.

This enforcement system has operated successfully, for decades, in every state, and no one seems to find it unusually intrusive. Why couldn't there be a similar system for degree use?

Not necessarily. In Oregon, for example, the use of a state-licensed -- but unaccredited -- degree is perfectly legal, as long if a disclaimer is added. Anyone who evaluates the degree is perfectly free to disregard the disclaimer if they feel it is irrelevant, and make whatever decision they care to. So how does the Oregon law take away anyone's right to make determinations?

Not necessarily. States with degree use laws can establish procedures for approval of legitimate schools without USDOE-recognized accreditation. For example, Oregon's list of such schools is here.

 

There's a huge difference between practicing a regulated profession without a licence and being educated without a license.

I think that people would probably find it very intrusive if legislators proposed to extend government licencing and regulation from particular sensitive occupations to all occupations.

It doesn't.

I agree again.

If states like South Dakota established...

A. some provision for degrees earned outside the United States, and

B. some procedure for fairly evaluating the credility of out-of-state programs that don't have USDoEd recognized accreditation (or a disclaimer requirement), then

...I'd have less concern about what they are doing.

 

Credentials are credentials. Can you explain why there should there be a huge difference between (say) advertising an engineering BS as a qualification vs. advertising an engineering PE as a qualification?

Or can you explain why there should be a huge difference between advertising an accounting BA as a qualification vs. advertising a CPA as a qualification?

In practice, of course, there are major differences. For example:

(1) Verification. State licenses can usually be verified easily, immediately, and definitively, at no cost, using online databases. But this is not true of degrees.

(2) Complaints. It is usually possible to file a complaint against someone with a bogus license easily, at no cost, using online forms. But this is not true of degrees. You have suggested that someone victimized by a bogus degree holder has the recourse of suing for fraud, but this process is both complex and expensive, and would not be a practical recourse for many (most?) victims.

(3) Enforcement. The penalties for license fraud are generally more severe, and prosecuted more vigorously, than those for degree fraud.

Why? The licensure system offers transparency (through easy verification), eases the burden on victims (by providing a convenient alternative to civil litigation), and facilitates enforcement (by providing laws with real teeth). Why should these features be perceived as negative?

By comparison, the degree system is opaque, provides little practical recourse to those victimized by bogus credentials, and is poorly enforced. And that's why degree fraud is rampant, while license fraud is virtually non-existent. When was the last time you heard of a "license mill" ?

 

Very convenient, but you know the subject is colleges and universities, right? Not learning. Not studying. Colleges and universities award these things called degrees, which are supposed to represent something. When they don't, when they're either fake or so bad as to function the same way, the use of them is fraud, legal or otherwise. If that point has to be illustrated each time, fine. But you've been around here long enough not to need a duplicitous tack like that.

 

Learning and studying are irrelevant to colleges and universities? That's news to me. My whole reason for being interested in higher education is precisely the opportunity that it offers for learning and for study.

I was under the impression that degrees represent successful completion of a program of study and learning. If that's not the case, then what's wrong with degree-mills?

Fraud has several necessary elements including intentional deception and resulting damages. If there's no deception and no damages, then there's no fraud. That's just a fact.

This thread is entitled, "South Dakota bill takes aim at fake degrees". But it turns out that what SD is actually taking aim at are degrees that aren't accredited by a federally approved accreditor. The unstated assumption seems to be that all unaccredited degrees are fake, and that's demonstrably false. The further escalation from "fake" to "fraudulent" is just tendentous hyperbole.

Again, I don't have much objection to a disclaimer requirement for non-accredited degrees. I could even support a law forbidding use of non-accredited degrees, if there was provision for approving credible degrees earned outside the United States, and if there was some means to get credible non-accredited domestic degrees looked at and approved. Oregon's law has both of those necessary features, but South Dakota's new law seems to omit them.

 

FLA Expatriate,

Thanks for posting this! It was much appreciated.


Abner

 

Texas has yet to update their site accepting degrees from accreditors recognized by USDOE and CHEA. Is it listed somewhere else on their site?