Benefits and risks of obtaining a DETC Psy.D?

My point was that this is not a DETC vs RA issue. It’s strictly an issue of ABA accreditation, which does not allow for DL law schools. What evidence is there that the ABA considers DETC accreditation inferior to RA? None.

 

Well, it's not happening with DETC JD degrees. Depending on your state, DETC law degrees are considered second rate at best, or totally unacceptable at worst. And there don't seem to be any obvious trends towards greater acceptance, at either the state or federal levels.

It's ironic that DETC boosters are holding out hope for greater respect through the legal system -- given that the legal system itself holds DETC degrees in flagrant disrespect.

 

How could the ABA not think less of DETC schools when they're against distance learning and the DETC is, by definition, the Distance Education & Training Council?

Are we really this determined to suggest that no professional agency sees the DETC as inferior that we ignore the ABA's stance against DL and also the very meaning of the DETC's acronym?

 

Good point by you.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randell1234
How could you lump all of these schools into one? If a position calls for an RA school then CCU and HMU is out. If a position calls for an accreditied degree they are all in.

You may be right, although your qualifiers are slightly different than mine. Since you are having a hard time understanding, let me spell mine out in another way for you.

If a measure of utility for a doctoral degree from one of these schools is recognition of the school within academic and research circles then they all at the bottom of the barrel.

That said, we can spin this accreditation debate all day and in many different directions, but in the end, no matter whether NA or RA, legitimate DL doctoral graduates will compete for jobs and in the work place. We are getting no where and helping no one. Lets get back to the business of helping each other obtain legitimate accredited degrees so we can all compete smarter and make more money.

 

The ABA currently has strict limits on the amount of DL that can be allowed in an accredited JD curriculum. It's obvious that DETC JD programs cannot receive ABA accreditation while those limits are in place.

But DETC law schools, in their present form, still wouldn't meet ABA accreditation requirements, even if 100% DL was acceptable.

For example, the admissions standards at Concord and Taft are clearly lower than those expected of ABA schools. All ABA law schools are selective to some extent in admissions; for example, an LSAT score of 140 is widely perceived as the "floor" at even the least selective schools. The DETC schools, in contrast, don't even ask applicants to take the LSAT. Like it or not, that's a joke by ABA standards.

Furthermore, the bar pass rates at Concord and Taft are clearly lower than those expected of ABA schools. For July 2009, the average pass rate for ABA schools in California was about 77%. A school can meet ABA expectations with a pass rate about 15% lower than the ABA average, which in this case would be around 62%. In July 2009, Concord was at 38% and Taft was at 33%. Again, by ABA standards, that's a joke.

It may be true that the legal community "thinks less" of DETC schools because of a bias against DL. But people also "think less" of schools with unusually low admissions standards, or unusually low bar pass rates. And the reality is that schools like Concord and Taft fall into those categories, regardless of any biases that may exist towards DETC or DL.

 

I guess you could measure it anyway you want to get the results you desire. As far as NCU, if you measure utility by the ability to get a job in academia at a research institute you would have to be half nuts to think you would beat out someone from UF, FSU, or USF (can you tell I live in Florida ). I guess the measure of utility is what you want to do with it...then you can decide if it will work for you.

 

The issue wasn't ready for legal action or government intervention 30 years ago, since there wasn't any DL market being driven by the internet. The huge and viable DL market today is producing a much larger number of DETC graduates, which is one reason the issue is ripe for litigation.

 

While it is true that correspondence law degrees are considered second rate, there are a small number of graduates that have successfully passed the bar exam and went on to become productive members of the legal profession. For those who simply didn't have the financial resources to attend a traditional law school, I think distance learning was a viable alternative, irrespective of whether the law degree is considered second rate or not.

 

With absolutely no evidence of any such activity. Got it. Thanks!

 

I'm not so sure pursuing an option that has a success rate of near zero is a good idea. (Near zero, not 33%, considering how many students are screened out by the rigors of studying the law, being unprepared/incapable of the challenge, failing to get past the Baby Bar, dropping out for a variety of other reasons, or just not ever getting past the Bar itself. Not to mention the obviously diminished career prospects.)

I'm all for schools like Taft and Concord providing the opportunity for someone to study the law and pass the Bar. But the odds of success are so tiny that it precludes recommending it.

 

Yes, DETC academic degrees have been around for many years BUT not the doctoral credential. The accreditation of the doctorate may place greater onus on DETC to defend the equivalence of these doctorates with those from RA schools IF graduates from DETC doctoral programs are met with opposition in their respective states. We shall see.

 

It is not a matter of being a "DETC booster" or hoping for greater respect. However it is a fact that DETC is currently in the doctoral degree accrediting category, including the newly introduced Psy.D. If in fact these advanced degrees do not provide their graduates with the viability and credibility that they expect to receive in their respective professions as well as acceptance in their states of residence, than DETC and ALL the schools under their aegis that offer these doctoral degree programs will lose significant credibility with a concomitant loss of significant income due to a loss of interest in such programs on the part of prospective students. I don't believe that DETC can afford this kind of loss of credibility and if necessary, may very well take legal steps to protect their interests and viability.

 

CS1, what it comes down too is that prospective students who apply to DETC schools need to be certain as to their career and professional objectives in obtaining an advanced DETC degree and whether it will be meet their expectations and needs.

 

For those graduates of DL law degrees that did pass the bar exam and went on to practice law, your claim of not so sure it's a good idea would appear ludicrous. If these DL law schools can turn out a small number of graduates that pass the bar exam, then I say all the more power to them.

 

DETC graduates can also take steps to the extent that their credentials are being invalidated by RA schools, organizations and employers by consulting with an attorney and filing complaints with the federal government and state regulators of those RA schools, organizations and employers.

There is also a large number of active military personnel and their spouses that are graduating from DETC schools, and many of them have obtained government grants to pursue their studies. They have every right of recognition with respect to their DETC credentials, since many of them are not in a position to attend a traditional B&M school. Consequently, DL is a logical alternative.

 

The American Museum of Natural History and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have scholarly and in the latter instance clinical clout that DETC schools can only dream about. Nevertheless, their doctoral programs have both been accredited for less than a year and probably haven't produced any graduates as of yet. That impressive feat was possible because these were important scholarly and in Sloan Kettering's case medical institutions before they ever considered creating a doctoral program.

I think that there's a lesson for DETC in that. DETC seems weighted down with small proprietorial degree-sales businesses that have never established any academic or professional reputation to speak of. They take the opposite approach to the one that I just described, awarding advanced degrees from the start and then maybe, hopefully, some academic substance will appear later. Most DETC schools are totally obscure (except on boards like this). Oftentimes their most impressive feature and their bigget selling point is the fact that they are accredited at all. That's pretty minimal. DETC probably needs to address that.

If DETC really wants to become more competitive and grow its reputation in the doctoral space, then it needs to encourage applications from existing scholarly or professional institutions that have already established reputations and might be thinking about creating a DL degree program. In the meantime, it can push its existing doctorate-grantors into participating more actively in the intellectual lives of their disciplines. That needs to be written more forcefully into DETC's accreditation standards.

I thought that this was a thread about DETC doctorates, pro and con. It says that up in the subject line. If you want to talk about the weaknesses of low-end RA DL programs, then I suppose that we can do that too. They aren't always very impressive either. But that won't improve the current DETC programs' limited profile in the doctoral space.

You claimed that DETC is a general institutional accreditor (of DL programs, but in multiple fields) and said that the other doctoral accreditors are specialized and hence not comparable. But that's not true. ACICS is a general institutional accreditor that accredits programs in many different fields. It accredits more schools than DETC does and it isn't restricted to DL. (I think that ACICS doctoral programs suffer from limitations similar to DETC's.) While geographically restricted to New York State, the NY Regents are a general institutional accreditor as well, with art, drama, business, scientific and theological schools included among the 23 institutions that they currently accredit. (In contrast to both DETC and ACICS, the NY Regents field several internationally renowned doctoral institutions.)

The US Department of Education doesn't accredit programs, it recognizes accreditors. The Education Department has never asserted the equivalence of all schools with recognized accreditation or denied that some accreditors field stronger lineups than others.

The fact that the Dept. of Education doesn't recognize DETC and ACICS as accreditors of PhDs probably tells us something. But Washington does recognize DETC and ACICS as accreditors of Doctor of Science ScDs (at some RA schools these are more prestigious than PhDs), DAs, EdDs, PsyDs and all manner of specialized D.Whatevers limited only by a school's imagination, I guess. ACICS accredited NW Polytechnic near me offers a DBA and a DCE (Doctor of Computer Engineering). So Washington isn't binding DETC's and ACICS' hands too tightly and they possess considerable liberty to accredit all manner of doctoral programs.

Now that they've been admitted to the big leagues, both DETC and ACICS need to strengthen the scholarly and professional engagement aspects of their accreditation standards so as to better address the new game that their doctoral grantors have started playing. These accreditors would probably be well advised to seek out some less marginal applicants as well, something a bit more inspiring than an endless series of small degree-sales proprietorships.

 

Every right of recognition from whom?

Do private employers have to recognize a degree from one school as equal to that of another?

Do colleges have to recognize a degree or course work from a different school as equivalent to theirs?

Does the federal government have to treat all degrees the same?

You seem to be making the argument that massive changes can be made in qualitative perceptions based on law-suits.

Take two candidates for a job with the IRS. One has a law degree from a recognized university and the other has one from a little-known and perhaps questionable DETC school. Are you saying that you can force the interview committee to render a similar opinion on both candidates through threat of legal action?

Come come now...

 

That's the biggest thing that jumps out at me. That collection of outstanding DETC students someone posted a few weeks ago was full of very nice people with good intentions but most were ordinary folks who were balancing work and school. Would they have made the 'best of' list in most competitive colleges?

No, they wouldn't. For every police commander, there was a person whose seeming quality was 'Hey, they took classes here..."