Employment with an unaccredited degree

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by TeacherBelgium, Dec 2, 2020.

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  1. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    You don't mind if we don't hold our collective breaths waiting for that, do you?
     
  2. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    You posed it as if it should apply to every hiring manager.
    Also, you type really fast. Props for that!
     
  3. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    No kidding. You completely missed the point of that post. Amazing.

    You're writing with emotion, not logic, and from an extremely biased perspective (based on what you've posted).
     
  4. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    LOL, no I don't mind.
     
  5. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I posted my opinion. Your inference of it is yours alone.
     
  6. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    But you literally said: '' I have been to Belgium. I loved the Netherlands''
    As if we were one and the same.
    So is it so weird that I assumed you assumed that the Netherlands and Belgium are the same country?
    There was a time Belgium was part of the Netherlands.
    In 1830 we split.
    Since 1831 we have our own constitution.
     
  7. Thorne

    Thorne Active Member

    Part of the challenge is what different people consider legitimate vs illegitimate when it comes from international schools. In your world, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's related to government based on the DHS story and mandatory background checks, the guidelines are obviously clearer, but in the private sector, there are still some people who think online degrees or degrees from DeVry or U of Phoenix are illegitimate, fake, etc.

    I'm probably going to pay to get my international degrees evaluated just so that people cannot complain about my degree being illegitimate if used in the US (also to make it easier to work for USGOV if that is in my future), but it just seems like a real racket.
     
  8. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    Whatever.
     
  9. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    University of Phoenix is a real, accredited university. Why do people in the US keep stigmatizing that university so much?
    Literally every site I have visited criticizes U of P so much.
    While University of the People which is much more amateuristic passes the test for everyone. I don't get that.
     
  10. Thorne

    Thorne Active Member

    Uh...look, I like you, but lately you've been kind of acting...rabid?

    Rich is not the-elitist-doctor-who-shall-not-be-named and has really good points literally 99% of the time, his points about accreditation are definitely important considerations for government jobs or regulated professions, even in Belgium I doubt that anyone could get a government job based on an unaccredited or questionably-legitimate degree unless they flew way under the radar and got really lucky.

    They allegedly used some predatory practices back in the day to gouge students, then didn't require much rigor to get degrees. One of my former colleagues, currently a store manager for a retail chain, got his Bachelor's from UoP and said that most of the classes he had to take were open-book exams, papers with lax requirements, and no real potential for a grade less than a B if you even remotely paid attention.
     
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  11. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    But University of The People has also really loose requirements.
    People there don't even get their grades from a professor. The pupils grade each other.
    Their course content is literally copy paste from free sources on the internet.

    I don't get how people can see that university as a genuine one, while University of Phoenix is seen as a '' fake'' one.

    To be honest all bachelor programmes are not too difficult to pass.
    I passed 120 ECTS (60 us credits) in a bachelor's programme ( long story short: I left the bachelor's because I wanted to graduate a year sooner) and then I went on to an associate's degree which was another 120 ECTS (60 us credits) and I literally noticed no difference between a bachelor's degree difficulty and an associate's degree difficulty. Both were on par in my experience.
    Bachelor's degrees are mostly just reproducing. The master's degrees constitute more of doing research on your own.
    Obviously it will also depend on what direction one chooses. Mathematics will obviously be vastly different from history for example. I'm talking about law school here.
    I didn't find the courses in a bachelor that much more difficult than the courses in an associate's in that regard to be fair.
    So maybe your co-worker gave himself less credit than he actually deserves. Maybe a bachelor's was just too easy for him.
     
  12. AuditGuy

    AuditGuy Member

    This has been standard practice in the many firms I've worked with for a long long long time. - "background checks are mandatory for all employees, this would cause a rejection. (A degree from any unaccredited school would trigger a denial." The risk management functions define it mostly as "reputational risk" to the organization, which can be substantial, although there are additional categories of risk involved. Depending on the company and the level of the position, some will allow nationally accredited degrees but flag them as such.
     
  13. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    I think that reputational risk will mostly be with real mills that award degrees based on life experience.
    If the university can be Googled, if the course content can be accessed and if people can legitimately trust that you took the courses and had to really put the work in, they will be less likely to fear reputational risk.

    I asked a famous company here in Belgium if they would hire me with unaccredited degrees and I mentioned that I'm a very talkative person, creative and that I speak and write three languages. I didn't mention that I also hold accredited degrees because for me the application for that position was a social experiment to see how they would react to purely unaccredited degrees.
    I mentioned that the school offers decent programmes etc.
    And they invited me for a first round in the hiring process.
    I got to hear today that I passed to the second round.
    I intentionally left my accredited degrees off my curriculum and only mentioned the unaccredited ones and my work experience to see how they would react.
    Apparently that was enough for them to peak their interest.
    Wouldn't it also depend on how well one can sell theirself?

    It saddens me that so many unaccredited schools with high potential are immediately thrown in the bin by so many people.
    Some unaccredited schools set their courses up as MOOCS and they offer really rigorous programmes and even though they are not accredited, the baby is thrown away with the bath water it seems. That saddens me.
    Sometimes not being accredited drives the price down.
    For people like myself that matters a lot.

    Edit : so I have to work with the degrees I have because I can't say to an employer upfront that I didn't have the money for better schools but that I had the potential. That would come over even more pathetic. So I better defend the schools I could afford.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2020
  14. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    You're not. I love the Netherlands.
     
  15. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    With that amazing thrust of wit at the last second, you win! Congratulations!
     
  16. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Hmmm...let's see. I've worked for the US Air Force, Xerox, AT&T, Prudential, several other private sector companies, the federal government, and have run my own consulting practice. So....no.
     
  17. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Good idea. If you want to work for the federal government and use a foreign degree to meet some job requirement, you must get a foreign credential evaluation.
     
  18. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    This is a point you can read about. It's no secret.
     
  19. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Yes to the first point, but I don't agree with the latter. I'm sure there are situations all over where students didn't work hard to get their degrees. But I worked for UoP for a year and taught as an adjunct for an additional two years after that. UoP is easy to get into, but its graduates earn their degrees.
     
  20. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    Somebody explained it to me already.
     

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