Hello Forum, I have been wondering about "Of the degree granting institutions that is accredited by DETC, which is best ranked institution for Masters program? I appreciate your comments. Thanks Migara
There must form of Ranking I would have thought. If non exists, how would the members of of this forum rank the DETC insitutions?
That's easy: Just ask yourself the following question: "Was the school in question previously a mill?" If the answer is yes, then they go to the bottom of the list!
I don't know of any rankings of DETC-accredited schools. What is it you really want to know? The most prestigious DETC-accredited school? (That's a tie among them all, by the way.) The one that delivers the best instruction? (No one knows.) What? No DETC-accredited school will award a degree that is more distinguished than the others. So if you're considering taking the DETC route, select the program that best fits your needs.
Good one. You know, their tuition rates are still competetive with many (most?) DETC schools and have a wide variety of courses of study. They might be the perfect place to direct people towards who desire DETC education
Hello Rich, Yes I would like to know which of DETC schools are Most respected/prestigious. Having looked into few schools, I find all most offers MBAs. I don't like MBA. Hence why I choose University of Atlanta. they offer MS in Finance. I am also applying to Mercy College for their MS in Accounting. As I am based in New Zealand, RA isn't a big issue as in US. All I want a respect/good school that is accredited by say US Department of Education/Ministry of Education. I hope this make sense.
There are some 4,000 schools of higher education in the US. If all accredited schools were to be ranked by respect or prestige, DETC schools would all sit somewhere around the very bottom. So while there is an "highest ranked" DETC school out there (someone has to win, after all), do you see why that would be pretty meaningless? I can see it now, the graduate of the 3,842nd most prestigious school demanding respect from a graduate of the 3,975th most prestigious school
I consider that William Howard Taft Univ. (as well as others, e.g., AMU, WGU and now Global even prior to additionally gaining RA) offers credible academic programs; however, Taft is seemingly overpriced for a standalone DETC accredited degree when factored in with the potential downside for the NA degree holder. I would add the American Graduate Univ. with its federal government niche market programs in Acquisition, Contracting, Program/Project management, and Supply Chain Management.
Right, but you're getting responses like this because there is no ranking of DETC schools. The only ranking of American schools that there is (that anyone cares about) is the one from U.S. News, which would dump all DETC schools together in the bottom category called "unranked", along with a whole lot of regionally accredited schools, e.g., community colleges. So I'm not sure your question has a real answer. There's no established ranking that includes these schools, because pretty much by definition anyone who enrolls in one has chosen other criteria than prestige. I'm not saying that to be dismissive of them -- many of those schools are perfectly serviceable -- but they're all unremarkable, at least when it comes to this sort of thing. Having said that, personally the ones I think look the most interesting are Harrison Middleton University for its Great Books approach to its curricula, and Yorktown University for its skepticism toward government (they once had Arthur Laffer on faculty). -=Steve=-
We could tweak this thread a bit and actually make it useful. Answer this question: If a legitimate ranking were to be created, what criteria would be used? Admission GRE scores? Employment stats? Licensure success rate? Part of the reason I'm asking is that I'm not a big fan of the USNews rankings. When I actually read the fine print and discovered the criteria they're using to create the rankings I felt like some of the criteria were not really indicative of quality education and so the credibility of the entire ranking system dropped in my opinion. I know that no system would appeal to eveyone but maybe we could think about the core elements that might determine if one school was "better" than another.
Yeah, Laffer's presence on their faculty list impressed me too. I was less impressed to see that Robert de Sorbon's owner has taught for them as well. Neither one seems to be associated with Yorktown now.
The thing about ranking schools is that it involves a significant amount of subjective opinion. It is also geographic. Meaning that if you live in Sacramento, a degree from Sacramento State University might be held in higher regard than San Diego State University and vice versa for residents of San Diego. As far as DETC schools, they are generally less well known. They don't have name recognition. They generally don't have large student populations and the student body they do have will be spread out over the world so there's no local concentration. They don't have athletic teams. So I think that utility is going to generally be very similar amongst all the DETC schools. The exceptions being the two or three that also have RA. Having RA will improve the utility. If the question was value of the education rather than utility of the degree then I liked Kizmet's line of thinking.
It'll need more than a tweak. I rank programs for my own purposes in my own head. My criteria run something like this: 1. Does the school offer a program of interest to me? If I'm not interested, then it doesn't rank. 2. Is is program accessible to me in terms of admissions requirements, cost, program design and so on. If I can't take advantage of it, then it doesn't rank. 3. What's the delivery format? Untaught examination-only independent study? Taught? How? Improving interactivity definitely moves programs up, but too many unnecessary technical requirements and bells-and-whistles can be a negative. Programs should be well-designed and user-friendly. 4. What kind of reputation does the school have among professional peers in the subject of the degree? Schools with strong reputations will have better occupational utility and will probably be a better educational experience generally. Googling can reveal a lot here. Obscure schools (like pretty much all of DETC) move down, leaders move up. (4a. If a school has a good reputation, can I be sure that DL students get to participate in all the stuff that earned the reputation? A school might have wonderful research programs, but if they are only for on-campus students and DL students are simply lone-rangers, we might not see much bump in the charts.) 5. What do the class descriptions look like? What aspects of the subject do they teach and what do they consider important? What approach to the subject do they take? If their interests and approach are congruent with my own, the program will move up the charts. 6. If class syllabi are available, what do they look like? What topics do classes cover each week? How much time is devoted to them? What do assignments look like? What are the class readings? Do these things seem appropriate both to the degree awarded and to the time and money involved in earning it? 7. What does the faculty list look like? Are these people who I'd love to study with, or should I perhaps be teaching them? I guess that it's obvious that each person applying these kind of criteria can be expected to generate a different personal short-list of attractive DL programs, in different rank order.
