UNISA Not A Real School

I'm sorry you had to face this jerk, however, dealing with jerks is not even worth it. :eek5: I commend you on passing the information to your superiors and moving along. :biggrin: The best defense is just ignore them, I've met a couple of jerks in my time, one laughed at me because my undergraduate school is "Catholic". He said why would you want to go to a school associated with child rapists. Then another one ripped Northwestern??? Yes, Northwestern- of all my schools- he picked Northwestern because I'm attending the "moron division", that is what he calls the school of continuing studies. So you see, wether you attend a world-class institution or a backwater school, you will always have insecure jerks.

 

That guy sounds like a tool factory.

 

A fine example of academic snobbery and ignorance regarding the varied pedagogical models embraced by non-USA institutions. UNISA is every bit as credible as Washington State.

 

I think that regardless of the University of your choice for a doctorate, at the end it comes to accomplishments. Most people in the academic field never ask me where I went to school but they ask me where I work and publish.
You work for a fine school so my advice to you is to make sure that you publish in journals of good caliber. You will be judged by the quality of your work and not by the tag of your degree.

UNISA is not Harvard but neither Washington state, I wouldnt think less of a UNISA graduate as long as the person does serious work and able to publish in journals or conferences.

In the academic world, most people are respected by the quality of research and not by where they went to school.

 

There is a lot of this type of snobbery, more so in academia than anywhere else, in my opinion. Fortunately for me, I am able to avoid it all. The people that I associate with every day don't care where I got my doctorate from. My daughters, who are Ivy League girls, don't care either, or at least they never say anything that would indicate they care. I have heard them make remarks about "lesser" schools and my Princeton daughter and her friends all put down Yale, Harvard and the other Ivies, and refer to them as "safety schools." I believe it is mostly in fun rather than serious snobbery.

I will say that when I was first interested in choosing a school for my doctorate, I did a little investigating about UNISA. I found the communication about what was involved and what I would be getting myself into to be horrible and so I dismissed the idea rather quickly, feeling I would personally be better off getting an RA degree in the United States. I certainly respect anybody who pursued it further and is successful in doing what is needed to earn a UNISA doctorate.

I did not choose NCU because I could not get into a better school although I'm sure there are plenty of snobs out there who choose to believe that is the case with most, if not all NCU students and alumni (even some on this forum, based on things I have read in the past!). One of my daughters has her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. The other is working on hers at University of Washington (not Washington State, if it matters). Anyway, I am 100% confident if my daughters could get in those schools for their Ph.D., so could I. However, I have traveled a different path in life than my daughters, and the only way I would have been able to actually earn a Ph.D. and do the other things that were at least as important in my life at the same time (family, job, etc.) was to do it online as I did. I would not worry about the ignorant snobbish attitudes. It is what you accomplish after earning the degree that will matter more since the UNISA degree is legitamate and it will take more than ignorant academic snobs to change that fact.

 

Well, at least this particular doctorate holder proved himself to be one.

 

I would not worry about him. He will have a rough time if he ever leaves the states with that attitude. if he is consistent, then he should not use any overseas research information otherwise he is a hypocrite.
Obviously, he has no real education at all. He is too arrogant and obviously going to struggle in global society that now exists. He has "backwatered" himself or perhaps more correctly sidelined himself from any meaningful participation with his ethnocentricity.

 

I hate when people go this route about Africa. Africa is a great continent, at least before the Europeans went and mess things up. In any case, most times education standards in most developing countries are fairly strict especially in Universities.

I would not even consider Washington State as any big name school, so that person does have issues..

 

Well, it was a REAL grind, and I'll happily stack my thesis up against anybody's. How many people from other schools had to face the ENTIRE faculty lobbing tough questions at them for three gruelling interim defenses, and then had to go through three distinct external reviews?

 

I wouldn't bother attempting to justify the school. Academics who research/publish will survive no matter what the school name. Just publish offshore or onshore. Get known in the field by publications and the school where you earned the degree drops off the page.

I am often surprised by the preoccupation with the school name. Ultimately, it is what you know that counts. Those that continually shove the school name under your nose must arouse suspicion that they cannot perform. You would think if they could they would be pushing their work, not their university.
Gates may be a good example of the work speaking for him. He failed to complete his degree at Harvard and went on to revolutionise computing. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies. Wikipedia;"Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies." I wonder if he mentions that he went to Harvard and failed to complete his degree or does he just say,"I'm Bill Gates". His work speaks for him and he does not have to lean on any university.

Get your doctorate from a recognized university and then pursue your field with passion, or just pursue your work with a passion. The statement I am clever because I went here or there won't ultimately cut it.

 

I agree, the name of the school helps at the beginning but then most people will put more emphasis in your work rather than the name of the school.

There is indeed bias against schools from less developed nations. A degree from SA, Mexico, India, Malaysia, etc would suffer from bias no matter what arguments you use, this is life and we cannot change the world. However, if the OP in question works for a good school and publish in good caliber journals, then the skpetics would have less reason to put you down because the degree from a University from SA.

No matter what, remember that a PhD from UNISA is better than no PhD at all. Most people in this forum want the PhD but are unable to spend a fortune nor can afford to take the many years off that require to do a PhD at a traditional school.

 

Another setback of having a degree from a place where you have never lived is that anyone who looks at your resume would instantly infer that you earned it by DL. Remember, there is no compulsion to disclose that you earned your degree online and, whether we like it or not, there still exists an anti DL bias especially among the elitists, the old timers, and those who are ignorant about DL (i.e. the majority). But if you are living and working in, say, Los Angeles, the entire time and your degree is from South Africa, then it is the same as telling your prospective employer that you got it by DL. That you obtained your education that way may already harm your standing a bit, but the fact that you chose to do it "that way" with a South African school could make it even worse.

 

And this is why I have always advised people to,

1) Get a degree eqivalency certification that you can provide to prosective employers.
2) Prepare for questions about the legitimacy of DL degrees as well as non-US degrees.

Every job interview is a sales pitch and if you have such a degree you HAVE to be prepared to sell it too.

 

A PhD from UNISA would be regarded as an equivalent to a US RA PhD by WES and other foreign credential evaluators. This could be good enough for those wanting to work as an adjuncts or as full time faculty at schools that would value distance education experience (e.g. Walden, Kaplan) or in fields with shortages (e.g. accounting and nursing).


Just to let people know that some Americans do well with a UNISA degree, I found some faculty teaching with a UNISA degree in the US

Dr. St Onge
http://troy.troy.edu/nursing/pdf/profiles/St-Onge-Judith.pdf

Dr. Afridi
mehnaz.afridi | Manhattan College

 

I would never hide that my degree was DL and I think it's an impossibility at the Master's level and certainly at the doctoral level if one is in higher education or research. The quality of one's scholarship, what one has published, what one researches are all important but it's also who you know and who you studied with. If one were to try to hide a DL degree, it would be disasterous.

Now if someone is a consultant or an engineer or something else, I'm less certain. But I for one would never hide how a degree was obtained. If I get a doctorate, it will be from South Africa (likely UNISA) and I've done enough research to satisfy myself that it would be accepted for the purposes for which I intend it.

 

I am an "educationophile" (I know there isn't such a word but I am feeling inventive), but it is interesting how much mavericks with passion but no degrees have changed the world. A couple of bicycle mechanics from Kittyhawk taught the world to fly, when graduates from the major universities in the world could not. It must have been galling to some to see them in the air and know that they were inferiorly educated in a bicycle shed. It is a wonder they were not shot down.

The world's academia believed at one time if a railway train travelled at a speed greater than 28 miles per hour the air would sucked out of the carriage and the passengers would perish. Apparently, some engineer had not read that book and the theory perished, not the passengers. How many great writers actually studied literature in the formal sense? Where was Hemingway educated? Apparently he wasn't at Ivy League Colleges or indeed any college. His resume would have gone into the bin with a disdainful note to him for wasting the recruiter's time.

Henry Ford, for example, was a machinist but did some studying of bookkeeping. No formal university education in engineering. here are heaps of examples. The common factor seems to be the passionate embrace of their chosen field and knowledge of their field no matter where it came from.There is a PhD in this if I could only find a university of excellent reputation and get admittance!!! Then again I might go to the garage and start tinkering with my bicycle or pull that old typewriter out. What I won't do is worry about what anybody thinks of my education or where I received it.

 

Good examples, Ebbwvale! I've encountered several PhD holders who make me wonder just how they manage to survive from day to day in the real world. They seem to have tremendous knowledge in their chosen fields of study but very little common sense outside of academia.

There are many highly successful people who have little (or no) formal training. The Cooper guy who founded the Cooper Union had very little formal education and he was a prolific inventor (the blast furnace, the steam locomotive, etc). Also, wasn't Thomas Edison mostly self-taught?

 

I'd start wearing my UNISA t-shirt. Every Friday.