The Illusion of the B&M Degree

1/3 of black men will serve time in prison in their lifetime; 49% of black men will be arrested by the age of 23. This is a cause for concern whether you think it's a cultural issue or the government/criminal justice system's fault. Dismissing the problem by saying that most black people aren't incarcerated is just sticking your head in the sand. The incarceration rate is co-occurring with other social issues such as 67% of black children living in single-parent homes, 72% of black children being born out of wedlock, and 40% of black children living in poverty. This is not saying that all black people are bad; I'm black. This is just acknowledging that there is a problem. Problems don't get solved when they aren't acknowledged.

Obviously, the non-resident students aren't being subsidized.

 

I never said it wasn't. I'm just pointing out the risk of entering into a payment plan with a college vs. taking out student loans.

That's fine if you don't mind having limited options for graduate school, or if a license you're trying to obtain doesn't require regional accreditation. DETC and other NA accreditors should work fine for most jobs.

Why would the homeless not benefit from more education? If the homeless person is mentally ill, then the school should take caution; but, most homeless people aren't mentally ill. Maybe the person just needs to be more competitive in the job market.

Community colleges might have open enrollment, but most have placement exams.

I wasn't talking about competitive admission; I was talking about screening out prospective students who aren't prepared for college-level work. I also did not say that all for-profits don't offer placement exams or remedial courses. I said it was rare. Bringing up one school doesn't prove that placement exams and remedial courses aren't rare at for-profit colleges.

 

Some one said it above - You have to believe in your degree and the quality it offers in comparison to alternative DL programs from B&Ms near you. Ultimately, you'll have to show that your new skills will add value to the organization. Yes, accreditation is a big deal in the US and I assume UND is accredited. If you have interest, quality, accreditation, reasonable cost, and desire, then go for it. It will not matter after you show good results in your work. My B&M is in Barcelona, Spain and I'm in NYC. No one cares I'm a DL student but they do care about my ideas and contributions to my field.

 

Very insightful. The color of the skin isn't the cause of the incarcerations rates, but social, familial and spiritual causes are. The introduction of drugs in the 1960s exacerbated the issues.

IMO the high incarceration rates are rooted in the enslavement of blacks several hundred years ago. It was a complete disaster. The slave owners also had studs (strong black men who reproduced and were then sold to another owner who repeated the process). After a stud sired offspring, the owner would sell him off to another owner... and so on... and this introduced the social concept of having children without a responsible father. The introduction of Americanized slavery has been a thorn in the United States from the beginning. Greed and ignorance was the genesis of slavery and the consequences are being felt hundreds of years later with generational problems that are being manifested in social (or criminal justice) symptoms such as high incarceration rates.

 

In-resident students who attend online courses pay the full $895 per credit, but if they take a non-online course, then it's only $431 per credit. The state university is price-gouging online tuition rates for in-resident students, even though the university is subsidized with taxpayer monies.

 

^^^This is right on the money. Too many times on this forum we get all puffed up about for profit vs. non profit, known schools vs. unknown schools and yes, RA vs. NA. The problem that comes from this is that the same people keep saying the same things over and over. Sadly we've lost valuable posters over the years probably by this occurrence. By saying "No one cares I'm a DL student but they do care about my ideas and contributions to my field" this truly adds something to this stale debate. A DL or BM degree adds an arrow to your arsenal but it's not and should not be the only arrow in your quiver. If you don't have imagination, vision and talent you're not going to push your particular industry forward.

 

I didn't read your post properly. That's what happens when I don't get enough sleep.

 

That sounds like a fun curriculum.

 

It was important to me to not have some sort of distance learning designator on my diploma and/or school name. I have 20 years experience in IT. I don't need a degree to do my job, but I do need it to get hired. If I can remove one more opportunity for the HR person to pitch my resume in the bin, than I want that. Not having 'online' on my degree was one of those things. The ongoing discussion on this thread is enough to prove that people, even people highly informed in the topic, have opinions about online schools, or for-profit schools, or state schools, or private schools. I wanted a degree that presented as few hurdles towards acceptance as possible. That's why I didn't want any 'online' designator.

Now as for knowing that you weren't there in person, sure, if they think about it a bit they would see that. For me I've moved around so much both in the states and the world, that I think that where I was exactly at what time will get lost in the mix and they won't notice unless they worked at it a bit. Ultimately if it's that important to them then fine, it's probably best to pass on working with someone that uptight.

Most of the folks here know that there is nothing lesser about an online degree, but what we think means little to what a particular HR employee, or an admissions reviewer might think. As a life long learner, the learning is for me, the degree however is for them. As such I wanted it to blend in, not stick out.

I do agree however that attitudes are changing... but it just takes one old attitude to ruin a job prospect.

 

I've read quite a few studies that have found no sentencing disparities between blacks and whites when controlling for various factors such as prior criminal record. Blacks are more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession even though whites use it at a similar rate. This could be because of racial profiling or just because high-crime neighborhoods have more police patrol. There was a disparity between crack and cocaine sentencing that has been corrected, but way too late.

Black fathers in the home have been found to be more involved than white and Latino fathers in the home. Black fathers not living with their children have been found to be more involved than white and Latino fathers not living with their children. However, no group of fathers living outside the home were found to be as involved as any group of fathers in the home. That means that black children and any other group children not living with a father are not getting as much attention as Latino, white, or black children living with a father. Most Latino and white children live in a two-parent home while most black children live in a single-parent home. Overall, because only a minority of black children live with their fathers, they are receiving less paternal involvement than any other group of children.

 

I agree that the violence of slavery against families has more to do with the present state of things in the U.S. than many want to admit. I concur with Steve though that the jump from the wholesale scrambling of family ties then, to the active fatherhood rate today, and then to the crime rate today is all together pretty speculative.

For the record, we should note two other great moral offences of slavery that screwed up fatherhood at the time: An enslaved man who was ready to be a responsible father had desperately little power to do so in the ways we'd recognize. If he was sold away from his family or any member of his family was sold away, he could expect to never see them again.

Further, I think it's evident that the group of men least likely to accept paternal responsibility under slavery were white. Mary Chestnut, Confederate diarist: "like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives & their concubines, & the Mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children – & every lady tells you who is the father of all the Mulatto children in every body's household, but those in her own, she seems to think drop from the clouds or pretends so to think."

 

I'm going to have to say that it's a jump to link slavery to the number of children born out of wedlock today. IIRC, less than 15% of black children were born out of wedlock in the 1940s. In the 1960s, a little less than 30% of black children were born out of wedlock. Some people blame the New Deal making it easier for single mothers to raise children on their own on welfare, but then we would have to explain why this disproportionately has affected the black community since everyone has access to welfare. Some people blame feminism, but again, we would have to explain the disparity. I don't want to go too deep into this because we have gone way off topic.

 

I'm white and I dance like a stereotypical white guy. It's ugly.

 

When my wife laughed at me when I began dancing, I knew that something was seriously wrong with the flow of my movements. She said, "You dance like a white guy." I was deeply ashamed and hurt. Me? Me dance like a white guy? I thought my movements had flow and rhythm, but apparently not...

 

A local school can help with local name recognition and local access to student services that might include a job bank that can be useful at the beginning of your career.

However, once you start working, the experience and professional certifications seem to be more important than the University degree. I agree with others that an RA degree from a non for profit works for most cases. Unless the degree is from a top school (e.g. Harvard), is not going to change much if is from Dakota State or any local no name school.