I came across this language on a Smithsonian vacancy announcement: "NOTE: The Smithsonian does not recognize academic degrees from schools that are not accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the Department of Education. Any applicant falsely claiming an academic degree from an accredited school will be subject to actions ranging from disqualification from federal employment to removal from federal service." I like it!
Re: Why.. True. Again, "unaccredited" may be being confused with "diploma mill." While all diploma mills are unaccredited, all unaccredited institutions are not diploma mills... nor are they necessarily substandard. Some of them are merely unaccredited. Simple as that. But, then... we all knew that already, didn't we. Still, the Smithsonian's policy demonstrates, beautifully, the need for one's degree to be accredited, no matter how rigorous or legitimate or inexpensive (and, therefore, attractive) an unaccredited alternative might be. While its policy may seem unfair to those who have a soft spot in their hearts for the handful of unaccredited institutions that are every bit as rigorous and legitimate as accredited ones, the Smithsonian's busy. It doesn't have time to do its own due diligence to determine which unaccredited degrees are not bogus, and which are. Accreditation guarantees that whatever the degree is, it at least meets certain minimum standards of quality as established by the accreditor... standards that the Smithsonian is saying it trusts, prima facie. That's what accreditation's for, in the first place... its highest calling, perhaps.
A major problem with the Smithsonian policy The huge problem with the Smithsonian's policy is that there are some well-established, even prestigious, accrediting agencies (AACSB, American Dental Association, American Library Association, at least half a dozen others) that lost their Department of Education recognition over matters having nothing to do with quality, but rather federal loan policies. As Thurston Manning, former president of the North Central Association wrote in 2003, "The agencies dropped from the Secretary [of Education]'s list are those that accredit programs only [not schools] and for the most part require a program to be within the offerings of an alrady-accredited institution." But "for the most part" is not "all" -- and I think the Smithsonian would be much more reasonable to make their standard based on the list of the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org), which does recognize all the ones that were dropped by the Department of Education.
Re: Re: Why.. That's me, that's me. You are talking about Meeeeee... Actually, I think that I agree with that. But I also think that good non-accredited schools can and do succeed in their own specialized ecological niches. By that I mean communities that are alread familiar with the school and with what it's doing. For example a particular religious denomination might not only accept, but actively favor, clergy candidates who have graduated from its own non-accredited seminary.
Re: Re: Re: Why.. What Bill said. Also: The Smithsonian needs an exhibit of stuffed millists: one small step for taxidermy, one giant leap for curatorship.
Re: A major problem with the Smithsonian policy But it works both ways. DoE recognizes some accreditors, like the New York State Board of Regents and the ABA, that CHEA doesn't. So some perfectly legitimate institutions like (for example) Rockefeller University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and California Western School of Law are in the DoE database of accredited schools, but not the CHEA database.
I believe there are two distict requirements here, the second; "Any applicant falsely claiming an academic degree from an accredited school will be subject to actions ranging from disqualification from federal employment to removal from federal service" refers to applicants who falsely state they have a degree when they do not. I know of one major company who hired a PhD chief scientist. After a while his staff gradually realized he did not understand their work and eventually he was fired. He did not have any degrees. Stanford U said at the time (quite a few years ago) that about 30% of requests for degree validation show the degree was never granted, plus only a small quantities of degrees awarded are ever requested to be validated.
CalDog's point is indeed valid. If the Dept. of Education and CHEA can't agree, then perhaps the most sensible policy is one that says either or both, and still leaves room for appeals, as does the Oregon list. Wonder how the Smithsonian deals with non-US degrees, a can with more worms in it than the US can.
I'm wondering if the Smithsonian, in a situation like that, would be willing/likely to accept a positive credential evaluation such as what AACRAO (or a NACES member agency) provides. I mean... doesn't something like that at least help to uncan such worms?
I guess that I do too... IF the Smithsonian has some small print procedure that allows exceptions to be made for exceptional individuals. That needn't mean recognizing unaccredited degrees, I guess. But it might mean waiving a degree requirement if a particular candidate was judged to have exceptionally strong non-degree qualifications, which in turn might include completion of a non-accredited program, whether or not a degree was ultimately awarded. As an example, there's a certain CA-approved school out there that isn't only recognized by the federal government, the courses that it offers for the FAA are actually mandatory for the pilots who do US government type-certifications of the airplanes you ride in. The FAA specifies the school by name in the job specs on some of its job announcements. (So does MIT.) It's true! (If you weren't a white-knuckle flyer before, bet you will be now. ) It isn't the degree that some students choose to earn that's being recognized by the feds here, just the specialized and almost unique course offerings. But... given the fact that the school chose to offer its masters degree because it was asked to by the United States Department of Defense, I'd hope that earning the degree along with taking the individual courses that make it up wouldn't be disqualifying at the Smithsonian... (There's a WASC site visit upcoming, so maybe the question will be moot in the future.) So I don't know if I'm arguing with the accreditation requirement or the credentialism implicit in the whole 'recognition' thing. It would be ironic indeed if the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum puts this thing in their Milestones of Flight gallery alongside the original Wright Brothers flyer, but the brawny federal bouncers stop the guy who flew it at the door: "No coat, no tie, no degree. No admission!" There's gotta be some flexibility.
