Why a non-RA school?

gbrogan:

Here's an example of what I mean...

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=526

It was a story I posted in a thread back on 3/23. Finding that article and posting in the thread is, if I remember correctly, what led me to create this thread the next day.

 

I suppose one could always find examples of bad schools, RA or NA. An RA CC school here in Cali was in danger of being stripped of their WASC accreditation, or lost their accreditation due to mismanagement. I do not have the desire to look it up. It will be contained in the search records in this forum.

A good RA or NA school will always tell you there are limitations to transfer, and "Always check with the school you wish to transfer".

I wish you the best in your studies Faxinator.


Abner

 

Interesting article, but the student should have contacted Nova before enrolling in FMU and asked them if FMU credits would transfer into their program. FMU was sleazy if they misled this person but the student should have exercised their own due diligence.

It's very unfortunate what happened to this person, however, if they posed the question to the FMU staff about transferring credits then it's obvious that they knew that there were instances of credits not being transferred. Had they never asked FMU because they were clueless, I'd have more sympathy.

 

Faxinator,


That artical is a good Laugh.

The guy who went to FMU is now sueing the school because he can't transfer his credits to the RA school he wants to go to .
Its his fault not the schools

"receiving institution decide which credits can transfer and which can't"

maybe prior to enrolling at FMU this guy schould of contacted the school that he wanted to transfer to and see if they would accept there credit.

Just Because Florida Metropolitan University is a NA school and the RA schools in that region don't take there transfer credit doesn't make an FMU education valueless

"FMU is accredited by ACICS, a national accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education:

"ACICS is actually stricter than SACS, in the sense that along with typical education requirements, ACICS forces FMU to meet job-placement and completion criteria to remain accredited"


NA accredition is stricter than the RA go figure !

 

Satz asked FMU's representatives about the school's accreditation, and whether the credits he earned there would count toward law school at Nova. "Of course you can do this," Satz says he was told. "You'll have no problem going to law school."

The rep might of mis-lead him and I stress might by letting Satz think he could transfer his credits to NOVA, But the rep never said he could transfer his credits to NOVA.

What the rep said was he would have no problem going to law school. The rep is 100% correct.

http://www.concord.kaplan.edu/

http://www.taftu.edu/

 

Not necessarily. Prior to educating myself about accreditation I would probably have asked a similar question and still been just as ignorant.

The difference is that when I asked them specifically about whether my credits earned at their school would be applicable to another, I would have also checked with the other school before I put my money down.

At least on the surface, it sounds like FMU intentionally misled this person. So because they were misled, accreditation did become an issue in the end.

 

And 100% intentionally misleading, if the article is correct. If the student asked specifically if his credits would be good at Nova, and the staff member replied: "You can go on to law school" then the staff member clearly misled him, hoping that he would accept the generic "law school" response to avoid saying: "No, our credits are useless at Nova. At 74 others cchools in Florida. Oh, and they're useless at 786 schools in the southeastern United States. And if we want to talk nationally, then our credits are worthless at literally THOUSANDS of schools."

I certainly believe that there are NA schools that provide a better education than some RA schools. There is no question in my mind that has to be the case. However, in this case accreditation was important in the equation, and his lack of understanding or ability to research it on his own ended up being a costly decision.

And true enough, his FMU education would not be worthless, only his ability to transfer those credits to the school he wanted to attend later.

 

Once again, personal choice and decision must prevail. RA or Na schools should be ethical. However, this article is one isolated incident.

As far as myself, I have been a perpetual student since 1984. I received my A.A. degree from an RA B&M CC. I have several credits from U of Iowa, UCLA, and UCI. I have experience with B&M and D/L.

Having said that, I am perfectly confident in pursuing my B.S. from California Coast University (NA).

good day gentleman!


Abner

 

Absolutely.

Oh, by the way, here's another incident at a different school:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002825617_crown24m.html

Here's info from another lawsuit filed against FMU. Of note:

Five years ago, Beverly James-Snyder, a student suing FMU, says she told the college before enrolling that she planned to go to law school. She asked whether she could transfer credits to University of South Florida, where she wanted to get her bachelor's degree. Edward Whittle, an instructor, told her local schools would "have to accept my credits without question," according to Ms. James-Snyder's sworn statement filed in court.

Through Corinthian's Ms. Dunlap, Mr. Whittle says he doesn't recall the conversation but says his "automatic response" to such questions is that "there is no guarantee credits can be transferred."

Ms. James-Snyder, now 40, completed her associate's degree in paralegal studies in 2002. But when she tried to enroll at University of South Florida that year, "they laughed me out of their office," she says. She now studies at University of Phoenix, a for-profit school with regional accreditation that accepted only a third of her FMU credits. She owes more than $20,000 in loans for FMU.

On the wall of her home office, Ms. James-Snyder used to hang certificates she earned for making the FMU honor role, with her 4.0 grade-point average. She has taken them down. "This degree isn't worth the paper it's written on," she says.

http://www.collegejournal.com/aidadmissions/newstrends/20051003-hechinger.html

 

This is the part of the article that got my attention.

Chalk another one up for the RA or no way argument.

 

I think the more options, variety, and differences in education there are make things better. Different accreditation opens up different opportunities for different situations.

I now how 3 degrees and am working on my 4th, I have a mix of NA and RA, and think that the DOE has got it right.

I’m having a blast with Distance Education, and am convinced that if the DETC were not innovating and pushing in the distance space, there would not be as many good / innovative programs available as there are.

Small minds see small pictures and don’t understand the strength of choices.

 

And to add to this the ONLY real issue about RA vs NA is the transfer of credits and doesn't have really much to do with employment in the government and/or private sector.

If you want to teach at a Bricks & Mortar university go to a B&M university and don't pursue your studies online. Online education was designed to allow busy working adults to pursue there college education and hence DETC came to be and continues to be successful with millions of alumni and students on a national and international basis.

Bricks & mortar schools have now pursued the online education venture because of it's success and popularity. It's about the $$. The more students that enroll the more money the school receives. It's simple economics and it doesn't matter if the school is for-profit or non-profit. The faculty and administrators still have to get paid.

DETC has been accrediting distance education longer and better than any regional body and that's all they do, whether its completely online or international B&M's with online courses. The DETC is considered to be the global leader in accrediting distance educational programs.

Some people think because their credits do not transfer to some regionally accredited colleges that the DETC credential is useless. Here's an excerpt from the FAQ section of the DETC website explaining the transfer of credit issue.

"The sine qua non of an institution’s quality is not if its credits transfer: this is a false premise. The fact that regionally accredited colleges refuse to accept credits from another school because it is not regionally accredited flies directly in the face of national policies advocated by American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), et al. The real issue here has less to do with the academic quality of the sending institution, and more to do with anti-competitive business practices of the receiving institution. Competition is heating up in higher education, and there are forces at work to control the inroads being made by “upstart” operators. Congress, the Department of Education, and the Department of Justice have been looking into this anti-competitive practice by higher education, and we suspect we will see significant activity in the coming months on this matter."

It's simply about anti-competition, but of course you'll never see the regionals ever admitting to this. They'll try and continue to persuade the public in believing they are the premier accreditor and that's why they can charge more for tutition because there standards are higher. Time and time again it has been proven and shown that national accreditors like the DETC are more strict and there are specific standards for distance learning that go beyond the regional standards. Yet people continue to believe that paying more for an online regionally accredited education will benefit them in the long run and they view NA as inferior. Ha, ignorance is proven once again.

Some famous alumni from DETC institutions are as follows. How about you tell all these people they received an inferior education:

industrialist Walter Chrysler, Senators Barry Goldwater and Stuart Symington, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, WWI war hero Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, cartoonist Charles Schultz, South African President Nelson Mandella, playwright Clifford Odetts, and millions of other men, women and children. Dozens of entertainers, ice skating stars and tennis professionals earned their high school diplomas from DETC institutions.

 

I could see that argument if it were not for the fact that, at least around me, many of the RA schools are cheaper--way cheaper in some cases--than FMU, for example.

I mean, if the majority of RA schools were way more expensive than the majority of NA schools, then I could buy that.

 

Faxinator,

When asked if

Do-SACS-accredited schools not recognize FMU credits because they deem the institution inferior? a spokesman from SACS said

'Not necessarily' "Institutions, as far as we're concerned, are responsible for setting their own transfer policies. They're free to set whatever transfer policies they wish to set"

If SACS doesn't think there superior then way don't SACS accredit schools accept FMU's credits ??


business practices maybe ??

The institutions discriminate not the accrediting bodies.

Quate from the artical

"ACICS is actually stricter than SACS, in the sense that along with typical education requirements, ACICS forces FMU to meet job-placement and completion criteria to remain accredited"

PH2B chalk that one up for NA

 

You'd have to ask each school that question, since SACS doesn't set the credit transfer policy at any school.

And yet FMU itself won't accept their own graduates to teach there, despite the stricter accreditation?

BTW: I enjoy the discussion on this topic. I find the debate enlightening and stimulating.

 

Like I'd i said the Schools discriminate not the accrediting bodies..

Algerbra at a NA school is no diffrent than the Algerbra at RA school.


FMU is Licensed in the state of Florida to issue degree's ..Maybe Flordia's law requires FMU to higher teachers with RA degrees.

That has nothing to with the quality of education at a NA school

 

That I don't know. The article states:

"FMU alumni can't teach at FMU, since the school requires its teachers to have attended regionally accredited schools."

It says "the school" and not the state, but I don't know for certain.

 

The journalist who wrote the article is clearly wrong (or may I say, inaccurate). If ACICS was really stricter than SACS, why in the world FMU would remain NA? RA is clearly way better for business!

In fact, I clearly see why people would choose Penn Foster, Ashworth/PCDI and CCU over RA schools. I see why people might choose, say, AMU (when it was DETC), Aspen and Tufts. FMU, however, is a mystery to me (at least its DL arm). If people can pay what amounts to UoPx prices for school, why not just go to UoPx and have far fewer problems with acceptance? Or, for that matter, why not do some research and find far cheaper alternative? It's definitely not "prestige".

 

I don't know Flordia's law either thats why I said maybe. I know Massachusetts requires and RA degree to teach.

 

Stanislav,

did you read the artical ?

It wasn't the journalist who said that it was a spokesman for FMU's

also

FMU applied for SACS accreditation in 2002, but withdrew its application in early 2003. The reason, Dunlap says, is that SACS insisted that the FMU schools not expand or add additional programs for two years while SACS processed its application, something FMU declined to do.

sounds to me the school wanted to expand and not sit idle as SACS required them to do.