Tea Party = Pro-DL and anti accreditation organizations?

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by thomas_jefferson, Sep 23, 2010.

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  1. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    That's interesting, although while most Tea party activists would probably agree with Dick Armey on many issues today, I doubt many of them have thought much about this particular issue.

    -=Steve=-
     
  2. cravenco

    cravenco New Member

    As the old Discussion Board saying goes, "I agree".
     
  3. AV8R

    AV8R Active Member

  4. I thought the Tea Party was a real party? ;)

    Dick Armey does seem to be one of the strong voices of the movement, along with Sarah Palin. The equation I put as the title of the thread is a little misleading but I think gets the general message across. I see your point though.
     
  5. Even if this were to go through, I think something similar to the current system would arise from the ashes.
     
  6. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    So now "State Approved" would be the new "gold standard"? Other than the New York Regents, state approval and state authorization have not had a very distinguished history. My experiences with state departments of education in California and Illinois did not leave me with a huge amount of confidence in those organizations.

    Since many on the conservative side tend to favor the reduction or abolition of the Department of Education, perhaps this is the DOE's way of deflecting blame to another entity.
     
  7. DBA_Curious

    DBA_Curious New Member

    Quite frankly, I think that's a horrible idea.

    If states take over 'accreditation', you can believe that they will restrict commerce as necessary to favor state-run universities. I wouldn't be in favor of that at all.

    Also, that goes against the very notion of law in this country. We have three types, common, statutory and administrative. Administrative is the province of large institutions like the FCC and OSHA and is required whenever a situation is complex enough that specialized knowledge is needed to adjudicate.

    Education isn't something all states are prepared with which to deal. I shudder to think of the ramifications. You'd end up with state-run systems being the favorite and private institutions having to fight like hell to earn their stripes.
     
  8. JWC

    JWC New Member

    Not exactly what Reagan had in mind but a GREAT idea nevertheless!
     
  9. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    A charge completely divorced from reality. For better or worse, it's free market factors that are setting tuition rates. For a given program, it's accreditation type is but one element of its brand value.
     
  10. imalcolm

    imalcolm New Member

    One market factor that isn't exactly free is federal funding, and I think it has a huge effect on tuition prices.
     
  11. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    Neutral effect, particularly at the graduate level. Restrict the supply of Federally-guaranteed student loans and private lenders would increase supply - at higher rates.

    If there's any doubt about that, just attend a major college football game - watch the army of loan and credit card peddlers loitering outside the gate hawking their wares to students.
     
  12. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I'm increasingly skeptical of anything flying the "tea party" flag.

    I loved Rick Santelli's rant. I liked the idea of grass-roots populist opposition to out-of-control regulation and deficit spending.

    But the whole thing was quickly hijacked by an unholy alliance of the liberal news/opinion media who needed leaders to face their cameras, and ambitious right-wing politicians eager to promote themselves by doing exactly that.

    So somehow people like Sarah Palin became media-crowned tea-party celebrities, self-appointed arbitors of what is and isn't truly 'tea party'. And 'the tea party movement' became little more than a trendy new name for the Republican party's familiar right-wing activist base. (Which is exactly what the liberal media wanted to portray it as being in the first place... hence the unholy alliance.)

    That's a familiar degree-mill assertion. I'd like to see Armey, or anyone else who agrees with him, try to produce a convincing argument against accreditation.

    That idea was floated years ago by looney-tunes voices in George Bush's administration. There have been a number of threads about it. (Here's one of the earliest. Barack Obama's Education Department has subsequently shifted its own idiot/ideological sights to aim at for-profit education on behalf of the teachers unions.
     
  13. perrymk

    perrymk Member

    There are a couple of problems I see.

    First, states already have enough budget woes. There simply isn't the money to take over accreditation responsibilities.

    Second, fields are moving in the direction of accreditation and certification. Whether this is good or bad is the topic of another discussion. I am employed in a forensic lab that recently achieved accreditation. Part of the reason we did this is that federal grants are sometimes tied to whether or not one has accreditation. I'm told that in some states the right to operate a forensic lab that ultimately presents evidence in court is tied to accreditation.
     
  14. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    True. A recent study by the Parthenon group on two-year programs demonstrated that the cost per year per student was about $12,000. However, in public community colleges, over $7,000 of that is paid for my local tax funds (not counting any federal tax funds).
     
  15. friendorfoe

    friendorfoe Active Member

    I disagree if you are speaking in terms of federally backed loans. Federally backed loans remove risk from the market place. If private lenders enter the fray, these loans can be defaulted on with nothing more than damage to a credit rating and may even be dismissed or reduced in a bankruptcy court as they fall under that court's jurisdiction, unliked Title IV loans which cannot be forgiven.

    If you remove the federal government backed loans private lenders may charge higher rates (likely since the risk is greater) but there will be far fewer dollars in circulation and I think demand will drastically decrease for education services causing prices to drop, especially in smaller midwestern schools.
     
  16. GeneralSnus

    GeneralSnus Member

    I don't understand this remark. Are there even any professor unions in higher education outside of the various faculty councils/senates? I'm not aware of any, let alone any that would have enough clout to influence a national issue.
     
  17. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    "You think" = it might. Or it might not. To do so would be another risky libertarian experiment.

    A college education is widely viewed as the ticket to a comfortable life; consequently, eliminating Federal loans won't affect demand at all. It will simply lead to a gold rush in the private education lending industry; the transfer of more wealth from the poor and middle class into the hands of private lenders.

    And - if recent history is a lesson - a proliferation of exotic, complex, opaque, publicly-traded securities collateralized with education loan bundles.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 24, 2010
  18. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Does that mean you believe that experiments that involve making government bigger aren't risky?

    -=Steve=-
     
  19. Daniel Luechtefeld

    Daniel Luechtefeld New Member

    In this case we're not talking about "bigger", we're discussing the merits of maintaining the Federal government's current position in the market.

    With respect to government roles in higher education lending markets, there is a broad range of experience in the developed world from which to draw data - Australia/New Zealand, Europe, and northeast Asia (Japan and the ROK).

    In contrast, there are few libertarian (as we regard the term) models in the developed world from which to draw data. Such models are theoretical, their implementations experimental...but their effects far-reaching. They should be clearly presented to public stakeholders - taxpayers and loan consumers - as such.
     

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