Reasons for Pursuing Unaccredited Degrees

I echo those very thoughts.

I'm hoping academia figures it out.

 

Two ideas. First, I believe that for brick-and-mortar schools, DL programs were seen as revenue opportunities. The programs are priced based upon market forces and competition rather than as low as possible to meet students' needs. Many schools are hoping DL will be profitable for them. (Blasphey! Profitable for the holy non-profits?!)

Second, the costs of a classroom-based degree program introduced by a brick-and-mortar school are largely amortized by the operation as a whole. The buildings, administration, other facilities, even faculty, are already in place. The school is likely using excess capacity to operate the new program, so the costs are already sunk. But DL programs require investments in courseware, infrastructure (especially computing resources), even new faculty (or expensive training for current facutly). As anyone in business knows, "paperless" doesn't mean "cheaper."

It's a complicated issue. I'm sure many doctoral candidates are basing their dissertations on this and similar questions. (Not me, of course.) But that's my off-the-cuff take.

Rich Douglas

 

Of course, that's "Blasphemy!" And no *&@$% text editor.

Rich Douglas

 

Mr. Highsmith:

This is nothing a cursory look at web sites couldn't illustrate. Other individuals on the board seem to agree with the basic premise. But lest we become distracted from the question I raised, let me give you a couple examples:

RA City University, Bellevue, WA; Proprietary
MBA costs $14,500.

RA California State University, Dominguez Hills, CA; State
MBA costs $9,000

Northcentral University, AZ; Propretary
(Not even yet accredited - merely a candidate)
MBA costs$10,120 (note: this represents a significant increase the minute they secured accreditation candidacy)

Unaccredited California Coast University; Proprietary
MBA costs $3,775

Unaccredited Southwest University; Proprietary
MBA costs $4,000.

Both unaccredited schools (and admitedly NCU) allow students to progress at their own rate. If you can complete the coursework in 2 weeks, more power to you. Whereas, the RA schools require a longer time based on the more structured quarter of semester system. City University does allow for completion of classes on a 4-6 week rotation.

Now, there are several other examples. Look around, you'll see them.

Disclaimer: My issue has to do with the exhorbitant costs associated with some programs. I DO NOT recommend unaccredited degrees. I am not recommending any of the schools. I did not mention them in my original post and only do so now since you challenged the accuracy of my assertions as "blowing smoke."

But I have a feeling you'll find some rationale to discredit the examples.



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David F

 

I cannot imagine any good reason, these days, to pursue an unaccredited bachelor's degree. There are simply too many options that combine flexibility of schedule and format (ranging from part-time residential to completely DL), low cost, and speed.

The case for non-RA graduate degrees is more complicated, though in most instances an RA graduate degree is highly, highly preferable. In my opinion, there are only two good reasons to do a legitimate non-RA graduate program:

*One is doing it because of a unique learning program that isn't readily available among accessible RA institutions; and/or,

*One is doing it to gain knowledge, training, or background for some type of entrepreneurial venture in which the degree will not be used as a traditional hiring credential.

Cost may be a factor, too, but it must be weighed against what you're expecting to get for your money.

 

I've seen these three reasons before. One I've never really seen discussed may not be a big issue here, but sure is in the associations and societies I frequent.

There are a class of people who have formed a subculture, some of whom have little or no use for traditional education. These people are known as the SGs (severely gifted). I prefer the term EG (extremely gifted), but anyway...

One such group, of which I am a member, is Ultranet, which has a 1:30,000 cutoff. Compare this to Mensa's 1:50 cutoff, and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. Another group, of which I am a candidate member, has a 1:1,000,000 cutoff. (It will be about four more years before a vote is taken as to whether or not I will be a full member.)

In this place, you will find people who have spent their entire lives banging their heads against hoop jumps, bureaucratic hurdles, and what some have come to call "accudummic" nonsense. Is this because they can't do the work? No. Their problems with the system have to do with intangibles, such as an unwillingness to get into debt to do remedial work just to say they did it. Some were offered the opportunity to go to university at early ages (say, 14), some were able to take this option, others (like me) were not.

Many of these people could eat the GRE for breakfast. (Some have.) Loads of them have Ph.D.s, but many do not, for the reasons mentioned above. The system really has no place for someone who can audit nine college texts in an hour but simply does not wish to get into debt to prove they meet some "standard".

There has been some talk of a HIQ U that would be specifically for this community, but there are so many issues around how to do this and retain autonomy that it has never really gotten off the ground. If a HIQ U ever does get started, it will inevitably start in that "murky" unaccredited zone. I can assure you that the SGs would not take kindly to having a pack of normals come in to "accredit" them.

So, what is left is that sometimes murky area of non-accreditation. Just because I don't need a Ph.D. does not mean that I am not dearly attached to my discipline in the exact same what that someone from Cambridge UK is. I didn't want to do someone else's research, I wanted to do my own, and I refused to wait. I'm not unique in the SG community. We are sometimes known as the "outsiders" (a term coined by Grady Towers, a genius who was murdered a few years back -- had a job as a security guard) -- but we are not outliers within our subculture. We stake our claims proudly, and recently have stopped being ashamed of being intelligent.

Where do we fit in to regional accreditation that demands that a Ph.D. recipient took Phil 101 -- when we ourselves may very well be the topic of a Phil 101 paper submitted to an RA institution?

Am I making any sense? Probably not, but I can hope the message is clear that it's not always about cost or convenience. In the last two years I have been scrutinized more closely by this subculture than any Ph.D. committee could ever hope to scrutinize me.


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Quinn

 

You had mentioned on another post your dream was to earn a PhD. Were you looking into RA schools for this - or another state approved program?

 

I was offered an opportunity to go to Europe in 96 to pursue a Ph.D. straight out but couldn't take it.

I also looked into TESC to get the Bach., but decided against paying for something I didn't need at the time. I also considered UNISA, but they never got around to replying to my query. I considered Purdue, as well, but nobody there was really in my topic area. I also considered the local SFU, but same restriction.



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Quinn

 

Let me make it clear that I am not advocating non-accredited degrees. However the question was asked as to why someone may choose the non-accredited route. Could it be that some state-approved schools are more liberal with granting credit for life learning experiences? Just a thought.

 

State-licensed is a better term to be using. I don't think many states use the CA model of "approval."

On the matter of "life experience" -- I wrote a piece a while back as to why "life-experience" is a bad model for doctorates. I didn't use the "life-experience" route on mine, and I don't support such a thing.

Anyway, here is the piece I wrote up on it.

An Argument Against Work and Life Assessment Doctorates and For Guided Independent Research
Copyright © 2001 by Quinn Tyler Jackson

"The unexamined life is not worth living...." —Socrates
"...and the unlived life is not worth examining." — Guy Kawasaki
The notion that work, independent research and study, or life experience has equivalence with academic study and can be used as a means of gaining academic credentials is very appealing to those who have lived a lot of living. Regionally accredited American universities such as New Jersey’s Thomas Edison State College, New York’s Regent’s College, and Connecticut’s Charter Oak State College all are empowered to grant, to some varying quantity depending on the institution, undergraduate credit for appropriately documented work and life experience.

Since academic degrees come at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral level, it seems natural to examine the validity of conferring credit for work and life experience for degrees above the undergraduate level. If the United States Department of Education is willing to grant accrediting authority to the regional accreditors, and the regional accreditors in turn are willing to grant authority to the universities that practice portfolio assessment as a policy, one is inclined to ask where this enlightened policy reaches its limitations.

If one totally ignores issues of accreditation and gets to underlying issues, strong arguments can be made against granting of work and life credit at the doctoral level, no matter how advanced or how specialized this experience may be. To do so would go against the spirit of doctoral conferral.

A doctor of philosophy is not merely an expert or specialist in a field; there are specific criteria that are traditionally met by doctoral candidates—no matter how that degree is obtained. The doctoral candidate has:

1. a broad knowledge of the discipline,
2. a deep narrow knowledge of some particular aspect of the discipline,
3. a demonstrated ability to undergo a prolonged period of methodologically sound formal research,
4. a demonstrated ability to identify some unique contribution to be made to the discipline,
5. a demonstrated ability to provide a sound, original contribution to the discipline,
6. an ability to provide peers and future researchers in the discipline with leads for future contributions.


For the spirit of doctoral conferral to be true to the calling, the satisfaction of these items must be made with the candidate’s knowing in advance that this is the road ahead. Accidentally or coincidentally satisfying these six criteria over a period of work or life experience can and does occur, but unless the candidate set out to satisfy these points knowing beforehand what they were, the achievement may or may not be repeatable.

Society rightly expects the doctor of philosophy to be able to repeat this feat, and being assessed as coincidentally having met these criteria does not necessarily guarantee some likelihood of the candidate being able to do so again. By knowing in advance what is required, and by setting out to meet these requirements, the doctoral candidate is, by necessity, forced to learn how to learn and how to apply that learning to the solution of some significant problem in the discipline. This is what the doctoral conferral should signify: that the doctor can, when presented with a problem that is within his or her discipline, set out to undergo a period of extended research, apply the correct and appropriate methodology, provide documentation of the path taken, and provide peers with a road map to judge the merits of that and future work. The happenstance of having fulfilled these requirements that may or may not be involved with assessment doctorates does not provide any guarantee of this unwritten promise.

These issues are deeply rooted in the nature of the earned research doctorate. Doctoral equivalence can only be assessed if the candidate had a clear understanding of the criteria to be met in advance of meeting them, and ex post facto work and life assessment cannot guarantee this quality of performance. It should be noted, however, that this argument against work and life assessment does not necessarily apply to non-professional research assessment. If a candidate could show documentation that clearly demonstrated an understanding of the six criteria mentioned, and gave indications of having conducted extra-professional research within the boundaries suggested by those criteria, there is room to accept the research at par with traditional doctoral research.

The key in these cases is proper and complete documentation accompanied by narrative substantiation of the candidate’s claim of having understood the hurdles before having jumped them. Since not everyone is an accomplished, self-disciplined autodidact, resources must be made available that give guidance to the independent researcher, so that efforts towards doctoral competence and recognition do not go unnecessarily unrecognized by degree granting institutions.




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Quinn

 

Zero (0) [none]

Next questions please.

 

I'm not in a position to adequately answer this now; I'm at work. But, I'd like to point out Amberton University's regionally accredited MBA at $5940. It is close enough in cost to the unaccredited programs that I don't see how anyone could justify the unaccredited degree, considering its disadvantages. That's $83/month difference for two years, which should be a no-brainer for someone who already has an undergraduate degree in business.

There will always be a few people who want, no, who NEED a pink Yugo; for those few, more power to them. If I were a business major, I would try hard to find that $2000 (parttime job, delay my entry a semester and work, get a loan...something). For those who don't need the portability of an RA degree, I'd point them towards the public library and give them a copy of the curriculum guideline of the program of their choice; cost: $0.

But I want structure, man....then go to the library at the same time every day, and follow the curriculum!

(I actually thought that you were talking about undergraduate degrees. It is **EASY** to blow away unaccredited undergraduate programs on cost.)

If you're willing to go GAAP, it is easy, it is not too hard to match unaccredited graduate degrees on cost. My doctoral degree will cost less than $2000.

I did notice this on Southwester University's website regarding admissions requirements master degrees:

Master of Science in Administrative Studies
...and others:

-Accredited Bachelor's degree or equivalent
-Thirty-six (36) semester hours beyond the Bachelor's Degree. Thesis not required.
-Graduate students may apply up to 9 semester hours of transfer credit
-Cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better

Do they not accept their own undergraduate degrees for admission?

On second thought, this is all I have to say on this dead horse.

 

Very nice Quinn, thanks for sharing that. I would like to repost this on Usenet. There's a little discussion that would benefit greatly, I believe.

 

LOL

What is the link to Usenet?

 

That's one possibility, though not all state-approved schools award graduate credit for life experience.

One significant attitude shift: In the days when the Columbia Pacifics, Claytons, etc., were seen as legitimate, envelope-pushing DL institutions, they were embraced in part because many people thought it high time to award academic credit at the graduate level for relevant life experience. We seem to have done an about-face on that one. Whereas plenty of RA schools award undergraduate credit for life experience portfolios, it appears to be verboten at the graduate level, at least if you want to be accredited.

I'm of mixed minds on whether grad credit should be awarded for relevant life experience, but I know that any DL school that has a liberal policy on that will very quickly be designated "less-than-wonderful" by many people on this board. I may be in agreement, but it's interesting how that attitude shifted without much of a debate on the issue.

 

Sure. Fire away.

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Quinn

 

I should add that, despite the article I wrote about experience doctorates, the only real reason I went the non-accredited route was because my previous experience was acceptable. (Sort of a case of the coffee in me calling my own kettle black.)

I would like to see accredited universities find some balance between what is sometimes permitted by non-accredited schools and what is definitely avoided in accredited graduate programs. A model that learns from the forerunners of life-experience evaluation and from the specific model of accredited doctoral programs, blending the best of both approaches, is really what I am aiming for ... not some total denial of life-experience evaluation.

People want recognition for past achievement, and schools want to produce qualified credential holders, and I do believe that the two can meet. I also believe that some non-accredited programs definitely can provide models for this.

So, yes, KidDL, I do believe that the reason people opt for non-accredited programs is the appeal of life-experience. I also sincerely desire that those who have an opportunity to provide a model for this realize that how they go about executing life-experience evaluation may in future change how "education" is done and how it is viewed. The life-experience evaluation model, in my opinion, should follow a set of specific criteria, as is suggested in the closing paragraphs of the piece I put up. In the sciences, those criteria are pretty much what I have listed, and I do believe that some research into the meaning of doctoral study should be done so that more schools can find a viable solution to the problem of so many qualified people in the developed world suffering through life without their "ticket."

Only the pioneers can really examine these things in the detail they need to be ... and if things keep up with the "accreditation only" wave ... I fear that there will never be a true synthesis of the models, and the cookie cutter will become the only legal means of making cookies, which I would hate to see.



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Quinn

 

God, I need some sleep -- you can imagine that I've not had much in the last two days. Think before you write, Quinn.

When I say in one post that I didn't use life experience in my challenge, and then say the reason I went with non-accredited because I could use life-experience, it reads very odd indeed.

I did use "life-experience" in my bach. challenge. I did not use professional work experience or life experience in my doctoral challenge. (Only extra-professional research.)

I'm going to rest now. I've put my foot in my e-mouth one too many times, and it shows. I apologize for sounding a bit batty.


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Quinn

 

Both unaccredited schools (and admitedly NCU) allow students to progress at their own rate. If you can complete the coursework in 2 weeks, more power to you. Whereas, the RA schools require a longer time based on the more structured quarter of semester system. City University does allow for completion of classes on a 4-6 week rotation.

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It is true that at NCU one can progress and complete a course in just a matter of a few weeks. The flip side of that coin is that due to RA standards each course must be completed in 16 weeks. Of course an extension or two can be gained but open-ended this program is not.

Most of us studying in the DL arena are of advancing age and thus have family and professional obligations complicating our matriculation. One major advantage to the unaccredited market is the open-ended format in terms of course completion. Not only can a student advance at a quicker pace but at a slower pace as well. One never knows when a personal and/or professional conflict might arise. California Coast comes to mind as an institution which can accommodate such a need.

Regards, Wes