Grupo Tarraco Formacion or oh no, not another Master Propio stuff

Discussion in 'Business and MBA degrees' started by Mac Juli, May 28, 2021.

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  1. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    Yep, the Spanish degree pricing is insanely low. I saw an official Master's from a University there once for under $3,000. It's a totally different world there when it comes to education.
     
  2. manuel

    manuel Member

    In general, official degrees are cheaper than propios. The official degrees are set by the government while the other prices are set by the universities and institutions. That is one reason I prefer official over propios and that you have more chances of transferring those credits.
     
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  3. cacoleman1983

    cacoleman1983 Well-Known Member

    The digitization and globalization of higher education will continue to drive educations costs down. There is a little or no point of buying a degree from a diploma mill these days. Just complete a short continuing education program or a foreign degree program and you still get quality education to meet the same requirements met in a traditional setting for pennies on the dollar/pound. We are seeing more of what was considered diploma mills decades ago be the norm as far as obtaining college credit and earning a degree. The irony of those like myself working in higher education is this makes me want to get away from that industry in order to promote all of these alternate methods of education for professional and personal development we continually discuss here.
     
    manuel likes this.
  4. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    It hasn't been evaluated as an accredited master's degree. The bachelor's degree evaluation is practically useless for someone who already has a bachelor's degree in a business-related field. It's my understanding that ENEB students are typically admitted through the bachelor's degree pathway as opposed to the no degree plus experience pathway. If you have no bachelor's degree, you'll have to explain why you have a foreign master's degree from a school that's unrecognized by the government and no undergraduate degree.
     
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  5. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    ENEB is cheap because it is unaccredited and unrecognized. ENEB is only as good as whatever current partnership it has, and it still doesn't guarantee that the master's degree will be evaluated as an accredited master's degree. Public universities in Europe are typically cheaper than for-profit universities like Isabel I, so I don't see the titulo propio degrees as being the way of the future.
     
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  6. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    We assume it hasn't only because we don't know the results of all of the evaluations that may have been done outside of the ones that have been made public. That and the fact propios are typically evaluated for graduate credit by a number of U.S. evaluators.

    If the evaluation is needed for their circumstance, then I tend to agree and say that one Bachelor's to another in that scenario would be a lateral move if it's being done for anything more than establishing stateside legitimacy/equivalency. But I mentioned it because the RA equivalence (and the other equivalence evaluations) removes official doubts of its legitimacy even if it doesn't remove personal doubts and--at least with the evaluators discussed--its U.S. evaluation acceptance which in that realm is important because many schools' degrees are not even accepted for evaluation and are rejected upon submission or blocked altogether the way WES does it. Now, its utility is a different matter because one has to contend with the view of it being foreign which all foreign degrees (except very internationally well-known schools like Oxford or a level or two below) have to contend with, and then the possibility of an evaluation being asked for which may or may not meet the holder's needs. I mean, that can be the case with any foreign degree, but as a propio it's more likely to be evaluated only for graduate credit than other types.

    For the latter, it's a result of the differences in education systems and customs. In the U.S. it's very rare for people to go from no degree to Master's but not as uncommon there and other places. In those other places no one would question it, but certainly in the United States there would be some 'splain'in to do.
     
  7. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    I can imagine that it's harder to explain why you don't have a bachelor's degree, and the school you earned your master's degree from is not recognized by the country it resides in. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that Isabel I will not issue transcripts. It's one thing to earn a tilulo propio from a school with government authority to issue degrees; it's another to earn one from a school that has to form a partnership, and the partner won't issue transcripts.
     
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  8. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    To be fair, they charge nearly $8,000 (unless you get it through one of the discount outlets) and that used to be their only price but they weren't very competitive at that price in Spain because propios from accredited Universities there are generally much cheaper than that, so they took a drastic approach to gaining more in the market and to their credit it's really paid off.

    Most propios are offered by schools that don't have its own institutional accreditation but are partnered with accredited schools. In Spain, they often use the term "accredited" in that arrangement where we would use "certified", but there it is considered fine and customary where here in the U.S. it would be considered odd. The closest U.S. examples I can think of offhand would be MTI, Coursera, and edX.

    Isabel swings back and forth between non-profit and for-profit in different years. I don't know anything about the Spanish business/tax system so I can't make a final judgement on that, but I imagine there is either some kind of tax benefit that has them doing it, or some kind of legal threshold that catalyzes the change.
     
  9. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    I suppose it depends on how we would define "recognized". The government of Spain recognizes the right to grant propios and their legitimacy, they simply don't have to be registered with the government like official degrees do and that difference means no entering Doctoral programs in Spain, and generally no entering into any kind of government job in Spain where an official degree is usually a requirement for the job.

    Accredited Universities in Spain do offer propios and they are respected. The only propios that get no respect are the ones not at least certified by a University. That certification is a big deal there and appears to matter to U.S. evaluators as well.
     
  10. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    ENEB alone has over 65,000 students and it takes them up to 60 days to issue credentials. Tack on all of the other schools Isabel certifies with thousands and thousands of students like the Formacion schools for example, and Isabel would need an Amazon-like operation to handle all of those transcripts. With their small staff it's just better for them to monitor the schools they certify and let each of those schools handle the transcripts. Universities like San Jorge issue their own transcripts, but they certify fewer schools and usually ones with smaller enrollment sizes, but I believe San Jorge has a much larger staff as well so it's likely not much of a strain for them.
     
  11. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    Hmmmm. I can't say I've personally seen that being the case, but I have really only paid attention to propios from Spain so perhaps things are different in other Spanish countries.
     
  12. manuel

    manuel Member

    I am really talking about Spain and not other Spanish-speaking countries. Here is a link from ElPais https://elpais.com/economia/2014/09/15/actualidad/1410780326_199891.html:

    "6- Precio: En cuanto al precio de matrícula, los oficiales están sujetos a las tasas por crédito fijadas por el Ministerio de Educación y las comunidades autónomas, mientras que la cuantía de los propios la determinan las propias universidades. “Los propios suelen ser más caros porque se autofinancian. Si no resultan útiles al mercado, es fácil hacerlos desaparecer. La flexibilidad es buena tanto para su creación como para su disolución”, remacha Patxi Aldecoa."

    Propios are more expensive because they are paid 100% by students (not help from the government) while the government sets the prices per credit in the official degrees.
     
  13. manuel

    manuel Member

    Last edited: Jul 28, 2021
  14. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    ElPais actually pointed out mostly great reasons in favor of propios there.

    I'm not disputing official degrees being cheaper, I just haven't seen much evidence personally. I've seen so many propios under $1,000 that it's become the default price level I think of, but based on what you've said and the claim made in the article, I'll have to do some more research into the pricing.
     
  15. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

  16. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    In the U.S., education credentials are typically validated by receiving a transcript from the source. One can also check the National Student Clearinghouse if the college is in there, but that isn't an option with foreign schools. Maybe when I have time this evening, I'll search to see if anyone has been able to get these degrees evaluated as accredited master's degrees.
     
  17. Thorne

    Thorne Active Member

    Probably not Grupo Tarraco certificates, but RFValve has talked about getting at least one of his titulo propios evaluated as an accredited Master's degree.

    I don't know if anyone has obtained a successful evaluation as an accredited Master's from the ENEB stuff, but I do know a few people outside of these forums who have had their propios from Antonio Nebrija or Miguel Cervantes (two universities that do lots of propio programs) evaluted as accredited Master's in the US. I also suspect that if someone did get ENEB evaluated that way, they wouldn't say anything to prevent people from storming the gate and getting the institution blacklisted like WES seems to love doing. This is not my way of saying, "You can't prove otherwise, therefore I'm right, lol," just thinking through the issue.
     
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  18. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Interesting. If I have this right, it seems to be easier for a titulo propio to be evaluated as an accredited master's if the school has degree-granting authority in its home country?
     
    Thorne likes this.
  19. Thorne

    Thorne Active Member

    It does seem to be that way. I think the only reason ENEB even gets evaluated at all is because the degrees are issued by UI1. If the degree came with a transcript from UI1, I would put really good money on getting it successfully evaluated as equivalent to an RA Master's.
     
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  20. cacoleman1983

    cacoleman1983 Well-Known Member

    I know we've discussed the validation of ENEB with the MCA Business School in Florida, USA school here. I noticed one of the recent forum posts of people having multiple degrees with someone listing the International MBA degree through validation by MCA Business School on their LinkedIn profile as well. That's crazy. I'm still curious as to that validation making any difference in acceptance of ENEB as a whole. FYI: MCA Business School is viewed as being CIAC accredited due to its affiliation with Humboldt University. Azteca University lists CIAC as an accredited partner so maybe that is a validation scheme that may be forming to get the official MBA by validation with their partnership with UCN.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2021

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