Defending the Non-Wonderful, or Seeking the Wonderful?

In theory, I think it might work *IF* all consumers were interested in quality education. Just from reading this forum its easy to see that's not the case. The stock market does a pretty good job of holding company's feet to the fire because all of the investors want to make money. I'm not foolish enough to believe that this protects the individual investor, but I believe it does keep the market/economy moving in the the right general direction. If all consumers of education were interested in quality education, I think it would have a similar effect on higher education. Unfortunately, we have many people who are looking for easy, quick or cheap. None of those have anything to do with quality. And thus the reason why we we see the non-wonderful amoungst us.

 

I think at this point we have to become more careful as to what the subject is that is being discussed. If a person produces a quality piece of research, comparable to a doctoral dissertation from a known legitimate school then I don't think there's anything wrong with saying outright that it's a quality piece of research. However, a "dissertation" is another of those terms that has a specific meaning and one clearly understood component of that meaning is that a dissertation is more than just the final 200 or 300 page document. A dissertation is a process. It is a process of developing a proposal, researching, supervision, writing/rewriting, peer review, etc. Before I could venture an opinion as to whether the Apple dissertation was the equivalent to the Orange dissertation I would need to know more about the process that was followed in producing the Orange dissertation (if Orange University is the alleged non-wonderful school). I would want to know more about the qualifications of the Professors on the Doctoral Committee and a small bunch of other things as well. My reasoning for this is, as I said, the process has substantial meaning, but also, because it is a very small leap for someone to say, "Because my dissertation from Orange University is of good quality, this means that Orange University is of good quality." and we know that this may not be even close to true because a very good student could enroll in a very poor university and still produce a nice piece of work.
Jack

 

Well, George, it would certainly look different. It might not look the way hardliners would want it to, but what might result is a consumer "tier" system listing the supposedly good, bad, and ugly institutions. The good schools would continue to be good, some new good ones would enter on to the scene and offer alternatives, some bad or gray schools would crop up, and some ugly schools would inevitably become part of the equation.

In the free market, the "bad" (or marginal) and the "ugly" certain will appear in any product pool. In the scenario-Australia, these things would have to be dealt with by normal market forces, rather than by "force of law." As long as the market were transparent within normal business law, the blemishes would be clear.

In the final analysis, I believe the Australian consumer would be the better off for it, as I also believe that the truly good would get better in such a market. Devoid their sacred paternalistic protections, they would have to adjust their practices to a realistic free market, just the way a child grows into an adult when sent out of the home to fend a while for him or herself.

With competition nipping at their heels, some of the achilles heels in the existing system would be strengthened. Stodgy practices would find themselves magically and realistically reformed in the face of new attention for the hearts, minds, and wallets of the educational consumer. Residency requirements (that aren't always strictly necessary) in doctoral programs might be loosened.

The truly bad and ugly would exist, but they would likely not flourish, IMO. They might survive for some time in the way mediocre stores survive. But they wouldn't predominate.

 

Um...Isn't "external validation" EXACTLY what defenders of nonwonderful schools are trying to extract from the rest of us? They want us to admit that their degrees are equivalent to those from recognized and accredited institutions?

In short, they want the rest of us to let THEM take a (easier, cheaper, quicker) shortcut whilst WE go the long way 'round.

No thanks.

I do NOT demand accreditation. Never have. But I DO demand that the unaccredited institution have SOME meaningful professional or academic recognition from the profession or community of scholars in the field.

Anything less cannot be sold as objectively "equivalent" without engaging in fraud. And the FIRST requirement of good scholarship is objective honesty.

QED.

 

This is quite similar to my thinking on what might be a plausible alternative to the existing systems. I think having a system where schools offering doctorates would have to put the resulting dissertations into a permanent public record would also serve consumers, employers, and the academic community.

 

I don't think a total-full-disclosure accreditation would assume that all consumers are interested in quality education... just that they're interested in cost-efficient education. A student interested in a middling, not-terribly-rigorous education in a certain field -- something that teaches them the basics or enough to get by -- would actually know which was the cheaper of actual equivalent schools, say Mediocre Community College or Mediocre Technical School. Students
in search of quality already use this kind of ranking systems to decide between Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc., so it wouldn't affect the top end very much.

The stock market does do a very good job, but only when the stock market is considered as the sum of private enterprise and public regulation. Countries new to capitalism, that lack regulation or have inconsistent and biased regulation (think Russia) have markets that are rife with gangsterism, cronyism, rip-offs, scams and gross inefficiencies.

 

Umm....before we suggest dumping the current system, let's ask two questions. First, is it working? Second, is it worth dumping to permit a few schools to operate?

To the first question, of course it's working. During the 1970's and 1980's there were legitimate DL schools in the U.S. that couldn't get accredited. That isn't the case anymore. And are there overseas DL schools (or potential schools) that simply cannot be created, but are needed? And are there legitimate schools anywhere that cannot get properly recognized?

To the second question, we don't need to dump entire control systems merely to allow a few schools to operate unfettered. This lets in so many bad schools. Also, it still isn't clear that there are legitimate schools (or potential ones) inhibited by the current system.

This is all much ado about nothing.

 

I think it would not be a plausible alternative unless the standards for academic information disclosure were not just the same as for all businesses... but much, much stricter and very strongly enforced. This means money for things like surprise audits and it would be quite an expensive undertaking.

 

No, I don't believe this is what is truly being sought. It may be what has been the effective result, but I think it's a case of some third variable making some second variable vary so as to appear to be the correlation to some first variable.

In plain English: I think what appears to be the case of non-accredited degree holders seeking admission of "equivalency" is actually non-accredited degree holders seeking to avoid blanket condemnation.

And you touch upon another social factor: the feeling that those who go the accredited route take the harder, more expensive, more onerous path. A feeling which stirs the "We did it the hard way! Baptism by fire! Make them suffer like we had to!"

Those who didn't get their accredited BA in 4 weeks probably sometimes feel the same way when they read that such possibilities exist in the system. (I know some do, because some react to this possibility with equal distaste.)

 

In practice, yes. I do.

We need to be clear whether we are talking about university degrees or educational experiences.

I can't really imagine a sound and valuable university degree that lacks any external validation.

But I can easily imagine valuable educational experiences that don't. My bookshelf is filled with books, I learn a lot reading them, but nobody validates it.

The thing with degrees is that they purport to provide external validation of a student's personal learning experiences. But if nobody has any way of knowing what standard the degree represents, if any, then it fails in its purpose.

If external validation is necessary on the personal level, then why isn't it necessary on the institutional level?

Right now I have all the degrees that I anticipate ever needing. I continue to study, but I don't care a whole lot whether my sources are accredited. I'm my own professor, so to speak, I assign my own readings, and I'm mostly interested in whether the material seems valuable. So I agree with you in my own personal case.

But I don't think that personal observation implies that unknown university degrees should be embraced by the rest of the community, sight unseen. That's just ridiculous.

I don't think that your argument would be convincing to me.

Your fondness for the school, even your arguably wonderful dissertation, would tell me quite a bit about you personally. But it wouldn't tell me nearly enough about the school and its degrees.

I mean, lots of people do excellent work without having attended a university at all. Certainly I could be convinced that one of those people is as well prepared as a university graduate. (I know many people like that.) But I wouldn't want to generalize from an individual case to broad conclusions about lack of formal education in general.

That happens when people display degrees, expecting the degree to improve their status with other people. Those other people need to have some assurance that the degree actually means something. Hence the interest in external validation.

The clause "or equivalent" does give you some wiggle room. There are a few non-RA schools that clearly are RA equvalent. Rockefeller University in New York, for example. But Rockefeller has been extremely research productive, to the point of generating Nobel Prize winners. That's external validation too, just of a different sort.

The bottom line is: If nobody besides a school's graduate recognizes the school, then why whould anyone else give it any credence? If the graduate presents his or her personal work for assessment, then how is that different than somebody without a degree presenting similar work?

 

Hi Nosborne

I think you state it very well. An institution CAN be unaccredited and be legitimate. A doctoral program can be unaccredited but rigorous. Unfortunately these cases are very rare. We should be open to the legitimate but unaccredited choices. The oneous, however, is on the unaccredited schools/graduates to show their legitimacy not the opposite.

 

But the bottom line is, you are trying to get people to accept degrees from schools that are not externally examined as being the equivalent of degrees from recognized schools.

How are we supposed to reach this conclusion? On faith? Because YOU say so?

The degree holder is the proponent of its authenticity, that it represents a particular level of academic achievement. The holder of a degree from an accredited school need only point to the external validation for his proof. The holder of an unaccredited degree who is thereby enabled to take and pass a professional examination (I.E. California Bar exam) can point to his license.

But YOU point to nothing. You offer ZERO evidence to support the idea that a degree from a nonwonderful school should EVER be accepted on its face. And THEN you suggest that it is somehow a matter of civil rights that I accept your position without question!

Nonsense.

 

What Nosborne said. This is what I've been saying for years. The thread-starter knows full well that the chant of "RA or no way" is simply untrue. There are occasional UA schools which are doing things right--not too many, but they do exist. Most UA schools don't and most hardly deserve the name of school. I hope that Dr Jackson (whose concern for rigour in dissertations has been expressed at length elsewhere) does not believe that his own work with a UA institution is somehow defended by defending a class of institutions which, taken as a whole, is not defensible by those who care about rigour.

 

OK, let's ask those questions, and a few more.

It is working for a majority, but it fails a minority. It has been my experience that there is a significant portion of that minority it does fail who are effectively marginalized by this failure. As credentialism spreads, that minority that it does marginalize will effectively become even more marginalized as they fail to be productive members of society not because they are unproductive citizens, but because they cannot fit into a homogeneized academic culture.

Second, the existing system serves a purpose, but that purpose is not singular. Other purposes exist, that are not served.

Finally, it might be argued that the reason DL programs began to be accredited is that legitimate non-accredited providers began to threaten the then closed-door accredited bodies by taking away what was not then seen, but was later seen to be, a significant fiscal resource: students who prefer to take their degrees by distance education for whatever reason. Had those institutions been forbidden from the get-go, there may still yet be no accredited distance institutions.

To suggest that everything that is inventable has been invented, so let's close the patent office and stop progress has, indeed, been proposed in the past. But everything that can be done in distance education hasn't been done yet, and the room for pioneers to wiggle is stifflingly small in the existing climate.

 

Dave Hayden: "I think you state it very well. An institution CAN be unaccredited and be legitimate. A doctoral program can be unaccredited but rigorous. Unfortunately these cases are very rare. We should be open to the legitimate but unaccredited choices. The oneous, however, is on the unaccredited schools/graduates to show their legitimacy not the opposite."


Cehi: The original comment was made by Nosborne, which I thought, was well desribed. Dave, I whoe-heartedly agree with your conclusion - the oneous is on the unaccredited school/graduates to show the need for recognition or legitimacy.

On a different, but related point, Bill Dayson has previously described a school/university in California (pardon me, I forgot the name of the school) that was not accredited at the time, but engages in superior scholarship that had bestowed prominent recognition of their products (scholarship/research) and for their scholars/researchers as well. According to Bill, the particular school is now WASC accredited. Bill, Nosborne and Dave Hayden, thank you. Your comments on this particular issue are appreciated. Thank you.

 

Re: Re: mixed metaphor???

Question: why did you chose this particular one? Just because it's in Serbia?

My intuitions: it's Serbian, it's called "University", it appears to be founded in the 60ies. My hunch is that they're legitimate. Just another run-of-the-mill, underfunded state university in Eastern Europe. What might make us think it's not legitimate?

 

Amen Brother!

Furthermore, what many people forget is that a lot of individuals get their degrees for very personal reasons. Personal satisfaction is one of them. For example, for years I felt like a law school drop out because I did not get my degree. An ABA law school does not touch transfer students unless they are in good academic standing at their previous law school. For me an unacredited, state approved school was my only cost effective choice. I don't use my degree or credentials in my resume or bussiness cards, although I could because the government agency that regulates my field of work accepted my credentials. However, I don't feel confortable with the prospect of getting a job or making a sale were my unacredited degree had an effect on it. I think ethics are up to the individual and even if there is a person who has an unaccredited degree one must see what is the purpose of the degree before passing judgement.

By the way I don't feel like a law school drop out anymore.

Sincerely,

 

Hawaii before the arrival of the determned Mr. Brunton! A giant antipodean Wyoming!

I think that one of two things would happen:

Either all private higher eduction in Australia would be discredited and only the state funded universities would be recognized as academically reliable. (Presumably government funding would continue to depend on standards being met.)

Or else the legitimate private higher education institutions would end up banding together in a private association, with membership dependent on standards being met. In other words, they would create something very similar to an American regional accreditor.

How many private degree-granting higher education providers does Australia have? I recall the excitement in the 1980's about Bond University ("shaken, not stirred"), which was being presented in the Australian press as if it were an unprecedented innovation.

 

Re: Re: Re: mixed metaphor???

1. It claims to be self-evaluating.
2. Its main contact address appears to be a post box.

No other reason.

 

I LOVE IT!

Now, you are trying to sell something false calling it something true and using some sort of equal protection argument!

This is CRAZY!

Look!

For everyone, an American Ph.D. degree represents completion of a broadly agreed amount of post bacheloreate coursework and the writing and successful defense of a dissertation that in the opinion of established scholars in the field makes a significant original contribution to knowledge in the field.

ANY diploma purporting to be an American Ph.D. degree makes this representation to the general public, to our various governments, and to the academic community.

And that is EXACTLY the academic achievement the holder of such a diploma WISHES to claim to the public, government, and academic community.

ANY such diploma that does NOT in fact represent this work is a FRAUD. It is a LIE in fancy script. It is a DELIBERATE MISREPRESENTATION to all who see it.

Majority/minority has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

If someone cannot do all that is necessary to earn a Ph.D., HE DOESN"T GET A Ph.D.!

OKAY??