Acceptance of DETC-accredited degrees: let's find out!

What would also be interesting is measuring the acceptance of reputable NA degrees by HR professionals and hiring managers in the non-academic and non-government related corporate sector. Career enhancement and earning potential is, after all, ultimately why many choose to seek higher education, no?

 

What The Professor suggests is a part of what Rich Douglas was looking at in his PhD research, which included interviews with several hundred HR managers at major corporations, endeavoring to learn their views and policies on various kinds of degrees.

Title: The accreditation of degree-granting institutions and its role in the utility of college degrees in the workplace

Abstract: This study explored the role of accreditation and other types of recognition of degree-granting institutions in terms of the usefulness of those degrees to graduates using them in the employment sector. Emphasis was placed on nontraditional degree-granting institutions and the agencies that recognize, approve, license, and/or accredit them. A survey of the development of nontraditional higher education is provided, along with a review of the literature relevant to the research topic. To represent the workplace, human resource professionals were identified and offered an opportunity to fill out an online survey instrument. Completed surveys were received from 267 participants to explore the study's research questions. The participants were asked to rate the acceptability of each degree source when considering employees for hire, promotion, and tuition reimbursement purposes. An Analysis of Variance was performed to explore the research questions, and statistically significant differences were found for each. Post-hoc tests were used to locate and analyze differences. There were significant differences in how participants rated the provided forms of recognition, the provided schools, and the provided forms of recognition with descriptions. There also were significant differences between how the participants rated forms of recognition and their corresponding schools. Finally, there were significant differences between how participants rated the forms of recognition before and after descriptions were provided.

 

My impression is that acceptance often isn't decided by one single office and that there might be many variables influencing it. An admissions office might decide to accept a wide variety of applications just to see what turns up, passing them along to a departmental admissions committee who in turn might dismiss most of them as unsuitable in their competitive admissions situation. Some departments only accept a small fraction of their applicants and many well-qualified applicants will get rejection letters.

So we would need to inquire not only into whether the initial clerical screeners would pass a DETC graduate along to the people making the final decisions, we would also need to know whether the application would have any significant chance of success at that subsequent point. It's conceivable that a university might be willing to consider 'NA' graduates in principle, but none of the current DETC lineup are producing suitable graduates.

 

Bill, you make some excellent points here. You are correct that individual departments, rather than the admissions office, are typically the entity with the final decision as to whether a student is or is not accepted into a given program. However, it is the registrar's office, not the academic department, that makes the decision on the transferability of credits, courses and degrees (which are the items of interest to Dr. Bear). For example, just because the Chair of the Sociology Department might not like, say, Nova Southeastern, Capella, or Andrew Jackson University, that person does not have the authority to decide whether or not NSU, Capella or AJU units will transfer to the university.

For the questions that Dr. Bear has outlined, the college & university registrars would be the best population to survey.

 

Riiiggght. I am beginning to doubt you actually understand how this whole things works. There are many factors involved, and by not providing enough information to make the decision, you will probably get the results you WANT verse actually scientifically meaningful results.

To do it your way, why not just ask: "Do you discriminate against transfer credits from a school acredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the US Department of Education and CHEA based solely on the source of accreditation?"

That, my friend, is straightforward under your definition but would not get you the results you want. What I recommend above, or something like it, would yield scientifically interesting results that describe reality.

Further, since this thread is still in the unaccredited section, and good suggestions on how to avoid bias are being ignored, I think we can all see where this is designed to go...

 

Some DETC accredited schools have their credit ACE evaluated, will they have advantage over non ACE evaluated credits?
We need to include such credits in survey.

Also looks like no one is interested to run survey among employers. :-(

 

Lerner: 'Some DETC accredited schools have their credit ACE evaluated, will they have advantage over non ACE evaluated credits? We need to include such credits in survey."

Bear: That was the motivation for my suggested second question. I did not include that question when I did my initial survey 10 years ago, and subsequently learned that it does make a difference in some situations, but I have no idea how many.

 

I can speak for Degreeinfo, and I suspect that John, Steve, and most of the rest of the posters in this thread feel the same way. There is no agenda or desire for any particular outcome, just a genuine intellectual (and practical) curiosity to find out, in the most unbiased way possible, what the actual acceptance level of DETC degrees is among RA schools. It would be equally interesting to do the same with employers; I suspect Rich and John's data, which is now closing in to 10 years old, probably understates current acceptance of DETC degrees in the workplace.

As far as the school survey, I don't think that a tiny sampling of a half-dozen schools will yield any meaningful data; as it is, there are probably a lot of variables that will come into play, and individual school policy variations are likely to be an issue. So I believe that a large sample of schools will the the only way to yield reasonably reliable data, though someone with more knowledge than I have of research methods and statistical analysis could probably comment on minimum sample size and methodology for selecting schools.

Also, to be clear, this is not the "unaccredited schools" discussion forum. It is the "Accredited vs State-Approved vs Unaccredited" forum. It is the place where we discuss issues relating specifically to accreditation or lack thereof. Therefore, this is the appropriate place to be discussing a method for evaluating acceptance of one or another form of accreditation, whether it be RA, DETC, or other lesser-known DoED-recognized accreditors.

 

John's original question-wording was: "With regard to degrees and transfer credits from schools accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council, do you accept them..." followed by his multiple-choice alternatives.

My suspicion is that acceptance of degrees and transfer credits might be two different things.

I think that if somebody is going to do this, they would probably need to ask separate questions for credit transfers and for admissions. Those questions would probably need to be artfully worded to control variables and clarify ambiguities.

Many schools are much more free in accepting transfer credits into undergraduate than graduate programs. So those levels would need to be specified, which might involve creating a hypothetical scenario. (Perhaps several.)

Turning to acceptance of entire degrees, that suggests graduate admissions. If we want to get a feeling for the true value of DETC (or whatever) degrees in admissions, then we will need to think about how we could obtain information about net success rates of graduates actually getting into graduate programs. (Would registrars have that information?)

I'm thinking that it might be interesting to direct these questionaires to registrars, as John suggests, and to simultaneously direct similar questionaires to department chairmen, asking them if their department has to their knowledge ever admitted any graduates of DETC (or whatever it is) schools to their graduate programs. I'd be curious to see if the results from the two sets of respondents correlate.

It might also be interesting to see if any other patterns start to emerge, such as greater 'NA' admissions success at proprietorial as opposed to prestige programs or whatever turns up. So it might be useful to include some questions in which the respondents answer some questions about the nature of their own schools.

Of course, the longer and more involved the questionaire, the lower the likely response rate.

 

Why not ask a random sample of DETC undergrads, if their credits were accepted for RA graduate programs.

 

Interesting, since I was wondering what the target really was.

Maybe such data already exisits with DETC, or some DETC schools.

 

You see, this is the problem here, you are spinning to try and present things a certain way when a simple analysis of the facts suggests otherwise. This section of the forum is called "Accredited vs State-Approved vs Unaccredited". Not RA vs NA or RA vs DETC. You can't just make up stuff that anyone with eyes can clearly see. Either change the name of this section or move this thread. If even this little fact is spun to suite your views what does that say about most everything else about your arguments, like there is no prevailing bias, when we can all see you are trying to make money promoting certain schools. Again, just look at the top of the page. Are you denying you have a contract with eLearners to make money? Come-on man...just be honest and you will get so much farther...

 

Your making my argument for me, there are so many factors involved in this that you need to ask more than a simple question concerning who accredits what... My proposed survey scenario is considerably more valid; otherwise, the wording of the question will drive results one way or another. If you want to keep it really simple as I said earlier a one question YES/NO "Do you discriminate against transfer credits from a school accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the US Department of Education and CHEA based solely on the source of accreditation?" is the way to go.

Further, you have to understand the motivations here. If a school denies transfer credit they GET TO CHARGE FOR THE COURSE AGAIN!! So hmm, fewer transfers equal more $$$...

A follow on question to the YES/NO question would be interesting, namely "Which accrediting body do you most often discriminate against?" and a third narrative fill in the blank question of "Why?"

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why DETC and DETC member institutions, as well as other national accreditors and their member institutions, are not doing the heavy lifting regarding this issue. National accrediting agencies and their member institutions have, by leaps and bounds, the most to gain from knowing which RA colleges and universities maintain admissions policies that do not discriminate against students with NA credits and degrees. I can't think of any better marketing tool for a NA school to have on its web site or in its literature sent through the mail than a comprehensive list of RA schools that do not discriminate against graduates of NA schools.

Instead of complaining about discriminatory admissions policies, why don't senior leaders from national accrediting bodies, as well as senior leaders from individual member institutions fan out across the country, making personal visits with RA school administrators to convince them of the quality and rigor of NA degree and certificate proprams. Maybe national accreditors could hold conferences to which they would invite RA schools as a means of showcasing the rigorous academics at NA institutions. By the way, I'm no higher education expert, so if these ideas sound ridiculous, please rebuke me gently.

I guess what I'm saying is this: I don't understand why all this hard work is left to the members of this discussion board who, it seems to me, have little to gain personally from gathering and analyzing data and publishing the results of this research. Where is DETC? Where is TRACS? Where is ACCSCT? Where is ACICS? Where is ABHE? And the list goes on.... Why aren't they stepping up to the proverbial plate?

I think its sad that mere curosity can motivate members of Degreeinfo to conduct research that national accrediting agencies and their member schools are obviously not motivated to conduct, even though the NA academic community has all of the academic, financial, and professional reasons in the world to be doing this research.

Am I making any sense?

 

Eddie wonders why DETC, etc., is not doing the 'heavy lifting' in this matter. Good question.

DETC did a survey of satisfaction and acceptance, and published the results (and their interpretation thereof) in a 20-page booklet. Following is my analysis of their survey.

AN ANALYSIS OF DETC’S SURVEY OF GRADUATES

SUMMARY
• DETC-accredited schools were asked to submit 2,100 names of graduates. 1,353 (64%) were submitted. Some sent just one or two names; others sent the requested 100.
• Of the 1,353 surveys sent out, only 18% were returned.
• 35% of the respondents gave permission to contact their employer; 65% said no.
• Of 80 employers contacted, 34 responded.
• Of the 34, 30 knew their employee had a distance degree.
• Thus out of every 100 employers, 35 were contacted, 15 replied, and 13 knew about the distance degree.
• Regarding transfer of credits, out of every 100 graduates, 67 did not try, 21 were successful, and 12 were not. Crucially, no distinction was made between acceptance by other DETC schools, and by regionally accredited schools.
• Over a seven year period, the percentage of students under age 30 dropped from 34% to 9%.

INTRODUCTION
The Distance Education and Training Council in Washington published a 20-page booklet entitled “DETC Degree Programs: graduates and employers evaluate their worth.”

It is a report and analysis of research conducted by DETC in July 2001. 21 member schools “were asked to submit a random sample of 100 names of graduates from their degree programs.” There were three stated purposes:
• learning how DETC degree graduates felt about their experience
• how the degree affected their careers and personal life
• how employers felt about employees with a DETC-accredited degree

1,300 graduates and 80 employers were surveyed. 18% of the graduates and 42% of the employers responded.

DETC says that “the results of these surveys certainly reflect favorably on accredited distance study degrees. [The data] underscores the theme that DETC degrees are valuable, worthwhile credentials ...particularly to the student and to his or her employer.”

The introduction concludes, “We invite you to study the data that follow.” Here are my comments.

SURVEY METHODOLOGY
21 schools were asked to provide 100 names each, randomly.

COMMENT:
1,353 names were submitted out of 2,100 requested (64%) that might have been expected from the 21 schools. There was no explanation of why many schools did not comply in full with the request. Some sent just one or two names.

THE SURVEY:
226 questionnaires were returned. DETC believes that 18% is a good response.

COMMENT:
The 18% seems extremely low, since one would assume graduates would be eager to have further validation of their degree. Hypothesis that could be tested: The 82% who did not respond were people who may well have not been proud of or happy with their DETC degree.

THE SURVEY:
97% said the information they received before enrolling was accurate, and 98% said the program matched their expectations.

COMMENT
This is where school differences could be very relevant. For instance, only one survey was received from an Andrew Jackson University student, only two from the American Academy of Nutrition. We cannot assume that every school had identical satisfaction. We learn little overall satisfaction of all students and nothing about the individual schools.

THE SURVEY:
35% of students gave permission to have their supervisors surveyed by DETC.

COMMENT:
That means that 65% denied permission. Thus a remarkably high percentage presumably did not want their employers to know about their DETC degree.

THE SURVEY:
42% of the 80 supervisors responded.

COMMENT:
Thus 58% did not respond. This seems quite high.

THE SURVEY:
91% of supervisors knew that the employee had earned a distance degree.

COMMENT:
The statistics throughout are in this form. It is important to remember that this is 91% of the 42% who responded —and the 42% is of employers contacted -- but 65% of the employers were not contacted because permission was denied. It is safe to predict that the vast majority of employers do not know that the employee had a distance degree. In other words, out of every 100 employers, 35 were contacted, 15 replied, and 13 knew that their employee had a distance degree.

THE SURVEY
DETC reports that of the 33% who did try to have their degree or credits transferred, 21% were successful (presumably 21% of 100%) and 12% were not).

COMMENT
In other words, out of every 100 graduates, 21 had their credits accepted, 12 did not, and 67 did not try. Crucially, there is no indication of whether the transfer was attempted to another DETC school or to a regionally accredited school. The figure of 13/21 (or 40%) rejection is quite high, and would almost certainly be considerably higher, if transfer to non-DETC schools was considered.

THE SURVEY
Compared with results given from a survey seven years earlier, the number of students under 30 dropped from 34% to 9%, while the number over 41 rose from 23% to 34%.

COMMENT
If the data are representative, there is a very significant aging of the student population.

THE SURVEY
The overwhelmingly most popular reason people chose the degree program was “personal satisfaction” (74% chose it as the highest reason; next highest was “improve job skills” at 46%.)

COMMENT
And 78% rated personal satisfaction as the highest benefit; they got what they paid for.

 

Wow, thanks, Dr. Bear! Great info. It's a shame that higher participation rates for students and institutions were not be achieved.

Have you had any personal conversations with graduates from DETC schools who were not proud of or happy with their degrees? If so, what were some reasons for their dissatisfaction?

As a TRACS seminary graduate, I am very proud of my degree as preparation for ministry; however, having a NA master's really limited my opportunities for doctoral work. At the time I chose Luther Rice for my M.Div, I had planned just to stay there to pursue a D.Min. After graduation, however, I decided to pursue a doctorate related to my career in Air Force education services (I'm in the Higher Ed and Adult Learning Ed.D program at Walden.) If I had to do it all over again, I would have attended a RA school for my master's, so I would have more choices for pursuing a doctorate. But, I really thank God for schools like Walden, Capella, U of Phoenix, TUI, etc., that welcome NA graduates into their doctoral programs.

 

I am sending you a PM. I LOVE this project idea! There's so much opinion on both sides of the fence and none of us really, truly know.