UNISA lets DETC lapse

I don’t think they are misinterpreting it, I think people are reading it. The fact that you want it to say something else is not really the point, it says what it says.

 

Thanks Dlady for making my point for me. I didn't contend or imply anything. I did ask 1 question and aside from my assessment of the UNISA conversation, everything I stated was factual. That is not some poor, podunk website. <--We are talking about the Deparment of Education. Do they now not know what they are talking about? Are they now disreputable? Despite the fact that they are saying something that you disagree with, it's there in black and white--there's nothing to debate. It says what it says and they are who they are. I never said anything about transferring credits. I don't even see how that relates to what we're talking about. Whether RA schools will accept credits from NA schools or not, does that change what the Department of Education has listed on their website pertaining to the DETC? Not at all.

 

I agree. The DOE is simply the DOE and what they say about the DETC is simply what they say about DETC. Some things are not all that complicated.

 

I agree. I interpreted it as somebody at the Dept of Education responding to a question by looking at the list of Dept. of Education recognized accreditors and only finding one specialized accreditor that claims DL as its exclusive province.

If people on this board try to read that as authority for the claim that DETC schools offer the best or the most legitimate courses and programs available by DL, then I think that would be a tremendous stretch at best.

DETC doesn't accredit state universities. It doesn't accredit research-intensive universities or schools with really strong scholarly or subject-matter reputations. Most of the DETC lineup seems to consist of small and rather obscure proprietorships.

A more modest and defensible interpretation might be that with DETC, a prospective student can be confident that a school's DL delivery provisions are being endorsed. An RA institution might be stronger academically in many cases, but if its DL programs are poorly designed and delivered, then remote students might not be getting full access to the school's strengths. With DETC schools, DL is going to be the school's and the accreditor's specialty.

Of course, there's no real reason to assume that the best DL programs will always come from DL specialty schools, which is what the strong interpretation seems to imply. The best schools might be those that can draw from academically powerful B&M programs in strengthening their DL content.

On a slightly different note, I've always thought that DETC might find a niche for itself not as an alternative stand-alone institutional accreditor in head-to-head competition with RA (a tough battle), but rather as a specialized DL delivery accreditor. So you might have an RA accredited school with an AACSB accredited business school that in turn offers some DETC accredited DL programs.

In fact, I've wondered if that might be a reason why UNISA and the Australian schools might have sought their DETC accreditation. Not as an unnecessary duplication of their local "GAAP" status so much as an indication that their DL offerings are effective and student-friendly.

 

Well thought out and all probably true, a balanced perspective. However, it still doesn’t change what the DOE says in their FAQ. They wrote it, not some DETC shill.

I’m not saying your perspective is wrong, far from it. However, literality is something this board has beat to death, so I don’t think that it is fair to say that for statements that literally say DETC is somehow not in standing with RA are acceptable; but statements that literally say DETC has merit and is the place to look for legitimate online programs need to be ‘understood’ and not ‘misrepresented’.

Do you see the nuance here? It is small in size but broad in scope.