Education for Sale!

Most of the Australian and UK schools also don't ask for the GMAT as requirement for admission. I believe harvard also don't ask for GMAT. Most australian universities don't ask for a minimum GPA for admission, however, they ask sometimes for an honours degree. The main filter for admission at australian graduate schools is the dissertation or thesis proposal and letters of recommendation. In Canada, the major business schools just raised the minimum GMAT from 550 to 600 given the high demand of MBA students, as consequence, a lot of the canadian students are going to the US looking for lower admission standards. Curiously, French speaking schools don’t ask for GMAT in Canada.

 

Harvard Business School does require the GMAT, as you can see on their admissions requirements page.


Bruce

 

Frankly, this whole thread puts me off.

Perhaps it isn't what our academic snobs intend to say, but the clear implication is that DL won't be credible until it excludes people like me.

The suggestion is that unless I attend Berkeley or Stanford, I shouldn't be in graduate school. "Go home, pop open a beer, turn on your TV set, and shut up".

Well, I'm 54, I don't plan on becoming a professor, and if I continue on with advanced education, I will be doing so purely out of personal interest.

Both Berkeley's and Stanford's philosophy departments only accept 7% of their applicants. (Source: Peterson's 'Graduate Programs in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences', 1998) They want young academic careerists. There isn't a chance in hell that either school would ever accept me.

If I were to enter a doctoral program (very unlikely at this point), it would be precisely in one of those programs that accept less conventional students like myself. The kind of students that apparently ruin graduate programs.

What got me interested in distance learning in the first place was that it seemed to offer the opportunity to pursue my intellectual interests while maintaining a life. But what I find appalling is that professional educators seem to dispise students like myself for pursuing it.

So go ahead, shit on me. But I will continue to learn, whether you like it or not. Some of that learning might even take place in a class, somewhere.

 

Re: Why not?

There seems to be a belief that there is a prejudice against someone who earns all their degrees from one school. But, that prejudice disappears when the school is a well-known, B&M school, which leads me to believe that the prejudice is more against DL in general than against "inbreeding".

In past threads, it was suggested that someone who earned their B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from, say, The Union Institute & University would be looked down upon for "inbreeding". However, in another thread I gave an example of one of my graduate school professors who has his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from SUNY-Albany, and that seemed to be okay.

My opinon is that, among people who worry about such things, the person who has a B.A. from COSC, M.A. from TESC, and Ph.D. from Walden is no better off than the person who did all their degrees at TUI&U. In spite of all the advances DL has made in the last few years, we still have a long way to go before we have a level playing field.


Bruce

 

One of my first Internet friends (back in the dark days when I used Compuserve) was an Illinois State Trooper who was picked for a pilot project. She, along with some other IL Troopers and Chicago Police Officers, were admitted to the University of Chicago Law School. In case anyone doesn't know, Chicago is one of the premier law schools in the country, not much behind Harvard and Yale. My friend was the first one to admit that she (and all her fellow classmates) probably never would have been accepted to Chicago, were it not for this program.

The lucky few who were chosen for this program were paid by their police departments to attend the law school. The theory was that these Chicago graduates would then go forth and help professionalize their police departments, and pass on what they had learned.

Unfortunately, the state, the school, and the police departments all failed to get a written agreement that the graduates would stay with their police departments after graduation. After graduation, most were snapped up by big law firms for major $$$$$, thus ending the project.


Bruce (still hoping that Harvard Law will have the same idea for Boston-area cops)

 

Well, Bruce, here's hoping you *do* receive such an offer. Two things, though:

1) Although you may have to sign a contract, most courts would be loathe to enforce a personal services clause (i.e. order you to continue working for the department). The most that could be exacted would be disgorging payments made on your behalf or, if included, payment of an amount under a stipulated damages clause.

2) When the department picks up the tab, you have taxable income to the extent the payment on your behalf (or any reimbursement) exceeds $5,250 per year. Bottom line is it won't be entirely free.........TANSTAAFL still applies somewhat.

 

That is very interesting. A friend of mine with his Masters in CJ mentioned to me last night that he would like to do a Ph.D. via DL. Do you know a good, accredited program?

Wes

 

Bill - No one dispises people who want to learn. But the point is that DL institutions have to make some sort of choice on the "quality" versus "accessible" dimension. If they want high quality and acceptance from others - they have to exclude some folks. If they want maximum accessibility, they risk being perceived as academically weak. I don't see how you can have it both ways.

It would seem that what many in this NG want is a school that is as well accepted as a traditional B&M school - but operates with open admissions and graduates almost anyone who comes. If so, you're dreaming.

I would think that there is some balance point in the middle. Certainly a 7% acceptance rate isn't what anyone in DL wants. DL is bent towards accessibility. A 7% situation is reserved for the truly upper crust institutions. But 100% acceptance isn't very credible, particularly at the graduate level.

I have no quarrel with students pursuing lifelong learning - that is one of the great opportunities that DL schools offer. That's why I'm atteding a DL school today. One can do this in a degree program or learn on his/her own.

There is plenty of rrom for schools that aren't a Berkeley or Stanford. There are B&M schools that aren't of this caliber. But DL schools have to put in some sort of "floor" in admission requirements - if they want to be credible at all.

Students have to pick DL programs with this in mind. If it is easy to get in and complete a program - the reputation of the school after you graduate is likely to be suspect.

Regards - Andy

 

I don't disagree that a school's credibility is important. Despite degree mill apologists' statements to the contrary, advocates of RA schools can see differences between even accredited institutions. But your sentence has two different statements in it, and they are distinct.

A truly competitive school--one that has more qualified applicants than slots available--has to raise its admissions standards sufficiently to cut the list and admit the most deserving (theoretically). But admissions do not equate to the quality of the program. We all know that, while there is a good correlation between past academic performance and future academic performance, it is hardly a perfect predictor. Some people admitted with marginal qualifications can and do go on to academic success and graduation.

I firmly believe a school should admit all of the qualified candidates it can. If someone is able to complete the program--and there is a slot available for that person--then he/she should be admitted. Schools that would deny an opportunity to an applicant--and let a slot go empty in the process--simply because of a desire to keep their average GPA or GMAT score up are wrong. It is snobbish, and defeats one of the three tenets of a university: service.

(NB: Again, I'm not suggesting schools admit unqualfied applicants. But they should give the benefit of the doubt to the applicant. This will undoubtably result in more students failing to graduate. And it will also result in more success stories.)

 

Admission Standards vs. Graduation Standards

You raise an interesting point, Rich. There are many people who really goofed around (perhaps because of immaturity) during their undergraduate years. As they get older, they do sober up and have the potential to do well in graduate school.

Such was the case with Admiral Barry C. Black, Chief of Naval Chaplains for the US Naval forces. He graduated from my alma mater, Oakwood College, with marginal grades. He once told students at a commencement exercise, "If I had believed my GRE scores, I would have never gone on to graduate school." Well, sufficed to say, Admiral Black ignored his immature years, went on to earn three masters degrees, then a Doctor of Ministry and a Ph.D. All of his work was done at respectable schools. Check out his dosier at this US Navy site:

Rear Admiral Barry C. Black, Ph.D., D.Min.

Perhaps the real test should be the graduation standards. The only concern I have is whether or not institutions that consistently lower the admissions standards aren't likely to lower their graduation standards as well.

 

Andy seems to be exceedingly obsessed with admission standards used by DL schools. Just as Rich Douglass and others have pointed out, there is nothing wrong when a DL school admits all qualified applicants as long as the school has enough slots for them. It is an established fact that DL schools receive fewer applications than elite schools. Top-tier schools do not admit all qualified applicants only because they usually have limited slots for all applicants. It will also be very wrong to speculate that DL schools admit everybody that applies. Accredited DL schools reject applicants that lack the entry qualifications.
I believe that most distance learners are aware that they will reap only what they sowed. You cannot graduate from a fourth-tier or unranked DL school and expect to be offered tenure by Harvard the next day. This issue has been over-flogged in this forum. If anybody wants a well-respected degree, just quit your job and apply to Harvard or Yale. I suppose that people that hang out in this forum already know that their degrees will not have the same regard as a degree from Harvard.

 

Hello. I thought that maybe I would add my two cents to this thread. Now I cannot prove this, but it seems to me that based upon the history of postings to this forum (and going back over time to AED), the reason most cited for attending distance learning programs has pretty much been attributed to practical circumstances such as family and work obligations.

Dare I say this even though it will anger some of you? Many distance learners, particulalry on the graduate level, have another reason: they have few other options. I know of applicants to traditional schools who have adequate GPA's and excellent references based on years of work experience but who are rejected by doctorate programs exclusively due to GRE scores. Apparently the GRE scores tells the admissions officer that the student cannot do what they already have done---earn a graduate degree.

Recent well- publicized law suits have also shed light on another issue: use of racial quotas at some schools exclude certain students from being accepted.

For students who truly want to advance their education, distance learning sometimes becomes the only possibility. I imagine most would prefer earning their degree traditionally.

I, as most of you, am also concerned with the reputation of distance learning schools. I had concerns before entering NSU's Ed.D. program including the school's negative press, particulalry by US News and World Reports. (Yes, I know that pertains to undergraduate programs only). I was also taken back by what seemed like their near-open admissions policy. That could not possibly help acceptance of the degree. By the way, despite popular notion, NSU is not exclusively a DL school. Most programs are actually on-campus or require attendance at off-campus sites. maybe Nova would be more accurately described as an alternative-delivery-of- learning school.

After completing the program, I realized that I worked as hard as any one earning a traditional doctorate, at least compared to those attending third and fourth tier schools. Now I have to admit, many of my fellow students really did not belong in a doctorate program, but I also got to thinking that many of my classmates may have been similar to those students I mentioned before. Traditional school just could not get beyond GRE scores or GPA (low OR high) from academic work completed years ago.

I personally would like to see distance learning schools tighten the admissions requirments. I would also like to see standards (quality) improve internally as well. As another poster stated, the quality of the education is often relative to the student body. But I would not like to see such schools cu-off the educational opportunities to people who, honestly, may just miss meeting a traditional program's admissions criteria by just this much. Those students succeed via DL and they would do exactly the same if accepted into a traditional program.

Jeffrey Levine, Ed.D.

 

It is my understanding that the RA agencies look at a wide variety of metrics during periodic reviews. Based on the evaluation of a local Cal State school (which was placed on some kind of watch status) by WASC these metrics include percentage of students graduating, time to earn a degree, and post graduation performance of graduates*. Therefoe it would be unwise for a school to accept too many applicants who subsequently fail to graduate or take too long to graduate.

*A few years ago I heard on national public radio that an east coast RA agency was puzzled when the average salary of a schools (N. Carolina?) geography graduates was over $100,000. Upon review it turned out a big time basketball player (it might have been Jordan) returned a questionaire with a large enough salary to skew the results.

 

There isn't much. Capella and Walden both offer a Ph.D. in Human Services with a concentration in Criminal Justice, but it's not a pure CJ degree, which makes a difference sometimes.

Of course, there is always Union Institute and University, where you could design your own progam, but again the degree is in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, with a specialization in whatever your major may be.

I'm hopeful that someday one of the premier CJ schools like CUNY-John Jay, Florida State, or Michigan State offers a short-residency CJ doctorate.


Bruce

 

Peterson's 'Graduate Programs in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences', 1998, contains admissions figures for 79 American doctoral programs in philosophy. (I believe that there are about 100, total.)

Here's some examples, and the pecentage of applicants that they admit.

Princeton 6%
Harvard 6%
UC Berkeley 7%
Stanford 7%
Notre Dame 9%
U. Michigan 11%
U. Illinois 16%
UCSD 17%
Duke 18%
BU 20%
MIT 24%
Johns Hopkins 25%
U. Chicago 27%
U. Oregon 28%
U. Texas Austin 34%
Columbia 34%
U. MD College Park 40%
NYU 48%
U. Hawaii 49%
USC 50%
Boston College 53%
St. Louis U. 56%
Fordham 59%
CUNY Graduate School 62%
Vanderbilt 64%
Marquette 70%
Syracuse 75%
SUNY Albany 77%
New School U. 85%
CIIS 89%
U. Nebraska 100%

None of these schools is truly open admissions. CIIS, which I am familiar with, wants a degree in philosophy or religion, letters of recommendation, a writing sample and so on. But they apparently accept pretty much everyone that can meet their requirements, and few apply knowing that they can't. (They took 25 of 29 applicants.)

Wheras a place like Berkeley gets far more qualified applicants then they have openings. (They took 13 out of 187 applicants.)

My position is that there is a place for both kinds of program. None of the schools listed here is a joke, all provide valuable education, and none deserves to be summarily dismissed. There is no more reason for New School to emulate Princeton than for Princeton to emulate New School.

If you want a highly selective program, then apply to one. But do so with the knowledge that you have only a small chance of ever getting in. The kind of people that choose distance education are not the young academic careerists that the top schools want. You are going to have to be in your twenties, be contemplating a teaching career, and attend full-time/on-campus to catch their eye.

Or you can apply to a program that will probably be more apt to welcome you. But if you do that, you will probably need a thick skin, at least on the internet discussion groups.

Frankly, I see no reason why DL can't serve both markets, just as bricks and mortar schools do. Some DL programs could go for the "ivy league" approach: putting in tough admissions requirements, hiring an all-star faculty and so on. Duke's 'Global Executive' MBA is probably an example. Other schools could follow Nova's or Capella's path, making higher education accessable to all qualified applicants.

The "down market" approach is probably more practical right now. The "up market" clientele prefers full-time on-campus programs. And unfortunately, many university faculty still sneer at DL, considering it inferior.

DL specializes in educating people with additional priorities besides education, who may be non-traditional age, whose career goals may not resemble those of their teachers, who attend part-time and who have been out of school a long time and so on. That stuff won't turn a professor's head.

So if people would like to see some "top quality", "ivy league" style DL programs, I say fine. They would do a lot to give DL as a whole more credibility. But if anyone wants to go beyond that, to denouncing all higher education that deviates from the "ivy league" model, then I stand in opposition.

On the undergraduate level, I'm a big fan of community colleges, despite the crap they consistantly take from prestige school snobs. This is the same argument, just transferred to a higher plane.

 

Rich - I guess we don't disagree - You're right that sometimes marginal applicants surprise schools and suceed, and schools should admit all students they can.

I don't mean to be overly concerned with admission standards - I'm really concerned with outcoomes. But I can't help but see some problems with the way DL programs admit students and the subsequent quality of what goes on in the classroom. The challenge comes in what "qualified" means and how many students a school "can" serve.

Perhaps part of my "fixation" on this topic is due to the fact that I'm currently working with an institution that is in the startup phases of a new DM program - and is wrangling with admission standards. Some are arguing for no GMAT. Others of us are arguing for the GMAT as a "leveler" and as a tool to help appraise quantitiative and verbal skills.

For example, does "qualified" for an MBA program mean a student who has no college level math and is ill prepared to take a course in quantitative methods? I don't think so - but I see it from time to time. And effectively I'm forced to find a way to get the student through a course. Higher quality MBA programs require college level math at the calculus level. When I work with these sort of students I don't have the same sort of problems as when I teach at an "open admission" program.

Even at my beloved NSU, at times I have to wonder. NSU has some 500 students in their DBA program and typically they look for 500+ GMATs (some are admitted with lower scores) and 3.0 GPAs. Given the coursework approach at NSU, the quality of one's peers is especially important - you spend a lot of hours in class with these folks and your instructors tune their message based on the caliber of the folks in the room. I realize that at programs that are more individualized (such as Union, I think), this isn't as big an issue.

If you look into traditional business doctoral programs, you'll see 600+ as the norm for the GMAT and 3.5 GPAs at many schools - with even 4th tier looking for 550. College level math is typically required. Further, most traditional doctoral programs have far fewer students than NSU (30-50 is much more common, with the largest being 250-300) and are much more selective.

Does this make a difference? 100 points on the GMAT is a lot. Sure there can be some pretty goofy folks with these sort of credentials. And student motivation (and a host of other factors) are certainly part of the equation. But consider a quant methods course at the two institutions. All other things being equal - a class with students having stronger entering skills will go further than the other.

As for size, can NSU offer the same sort of attention to student needs with 500 students that a traditional school can with 30? NSU meets this need with a mix of full-time and part-time faculty. They frequently supplement their faculty with outsiders when it comes to forming dissertation committees. I'm not saying NSU isn't credible (I'm favorably impressed), but surely as enrollment goes up, personal attention can't keep up.

I repeat my earlier concern - I think that many in this NG have inconsistent expectations for DL doctoral programs. It is as though people want DL programs to:

1. Be accepted equally with traditional programs.
2. Offer open (or nearly so) admission standards.
3. Alllow students to complete studies in 3 years or less of
part-time study (versus 5 years or more of full-time work for traditional programs).
4. Allow students to complete studies from the comfort of their home with little or no travel to class.

You can't have it all. As for "outcomes" - they don't appear by magic, they require appropriate "inputs". DL institutions are destined to be recognized as 5th tier unless something gives. If points 2-4 are important to students in DL programs, point 1 will suffer. If point one matters, points 2-4 will have to change.

Regards - Andy

 

Andy:

How about setting your admissions standards, then allowing provisional admission to those who, while they don't meet the standards by the letter, show promise. Require them to complete a certain number of courses, say 3, before final admission is granted. Require that they complete each course with a B or above. Perhaps, because we're talking about a doctoral program, you could also require them (everybody?) to submit a writing sample that indicates their preparedness to express their ideas on paper.

Get rid of the GMAT. Or, at least, make it optional. (Or offered as an opportunity for those with weaker admissions qualifications to othewise get in.)

Stick to reliable measures of performance, like GPA, writing sample, admissions package, etc. (I hate the GMAT; I feel it gives greater weight to people who can perform well on it but not in real situations. I scored well on it, so I don't have a personal axe to grind. I just think that its predictive ability doesn't compare with those other factors.)

 

Here are the figures from Petersons for all the doctoral programs in Criminal Justice that had numbers available. Percentage of applicants accepted:

U. Delaware 21%
UC Irvine 23%
(U. Toronto 39%)
Temple 39%
CUNY Graduate School 44%
(U. Montreal 45%)
Florida State 48%
Rutgers- Newark 50%
U. Md. College Park 52%
U. Nebraska Omaha 54%
SUNY Albany 55%
Indiana U. of PA 65%
John Jay C. of Crim. J. (CUNY) 87%
American U. 88%
U. Portland 100%

 

I think that people are looking for legitimate and credible programs.

But few of us are naive enough to think that *any* DL doctoral degree would ever be considered prestigious. Even if the DL methodology could provide everything a top on-campus program provides (I'm still not convinced), a lot of things would have to change in professors' minds before that could happen. It's decades off.

Does this ever happen in real life, or is it just a straw man? Is there any accredited graduate program anywhere that takes all applicants, regardless of their previous preparation? No admissions requirements at all? I've never heard of such a thing. (Except H-W, perhaps.)

Even those departments that accept 100% of their applicants in a given year, are accepting 100% of the people that meet the stated requirements. (There may be some probationary admissions, but not of people grossly unqualified. And these admissions usually prescribe additional coursework or something, before 'classified' status can be attained.)

I agree that's troubling. Some of the no-coursework doctorates (just pop in and write a dissertation), seem more prone to that failing, in my opinion.

But keeping it in perspective, Stanford University requires a minimum of 9 full-time quarters of residency for its doctorates. And that's for people entering directly from a bachelors program. They allow people to transfer-in up to a maximum of 3 quarters of graduate work done elsewhere. So for people with MA's or the equivalent, the minimum f/t residency seems to be two years. I suspect that very few people progress that fast in real life, though.

That's the whole point of distance learning.

Has anyone ever suggested that one could earn a widely admired prestige degree by DL, with less work than conventional degrees, while meeting no admissions standards at all?

Or are we a little more realistic than that, realizing that we can earn a low prestige degree that is still not fully accepted by the academic profession, by meeting the same standards required by many bricks and mortar universities, except that we do so remotely?

Calling for all DL schools to emulate the ivy league is a pretty draconian solution. The whole *point* of DL is that it extends educational opportunity to those unable to follow the more exclusive path. If widening educational opportunity is not desirable, then why does DL exist at all?

Again, I see no reason why DL can't resemble on-campus education by providing a wide range of options. Scholarly degrees and practitioner's programs. Programs that restrict admissions to a small core of future researchers and professors, and those that take as many qualified applicants as possible. DL or no DL, that already describes bricks and mortar education.

 

Rich - you have some good ideas here for what is a perplexing problem. Provisional admission is one approach. I've seen it done before. Hopefully, early course work is an indicator of potential to do research. However, what I've seen elsewhere is that this isn't always the case. At NSU I saw more than a few ABDs that could do coursework under the instruction of a faculty member that couldn't direct themselves in research.

Part of the problem is that there are many more applicants then can be accomodated. The school has to say "no" to a bunch of folks. Further, to avoid complaints and/or possible legal action you have to have a basis to say "no".

As for the GMAT or GRE, it isn't perfect but if you believe the GMAC folks has been shown to correlate with first year grades, at least as well as undergraduate grades. Further, these tests give a measure of quantitative and qualitative skills and are a way of "leveling" applicants that come from a wide variety of backgrounds and undergraduate schools. For example - how do you compare an applicant with a 3.2 GPA in engineering from the University of Michigan with a 3.8 from an "open admission" business program? It would seem that the GMAT could help here.

A writing sample is a good idea and is required. But how can a school know if a student has the quant ability to learn advanced topics - like multivariate statistics? Trying to overcome weak quant skills is an absolute nightmare - I've never seen any school that can do this well at the college level. Of course, demanding the GMAT/GRE may well lead to some candidates, possibly weaker ones, walking away - which may not be all that bad.

Also, realize that the GMAT is part of the reputation puzzle. Virtually all AACSB MBA program requires it. Virtually all of the doctoral programs in business require it. For a new program the lack of a GMAT requirement may give the wrong appearance.

Thanks for your post. It is a little different than I was thinking - but certainly gives one food for thought.

Regards - Andy