City-Data: Colleges and Universities

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by decimon, Aug 1, 2016.

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  1. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Have they gotten better? It used to be a wasteland of crappy advice.
     
  3. curtisc83

    curtisc83 New Member

    The advice is hit or miss. When it comes to distant education programs or schools it's like 90% miss. Most posters don't understand accreditation.
     
  4. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    @SteveFoerster

    @curtisc83

    The negatives would apply to any forum. But I at least see there replies from people who've attended the discussed schools and/or work in the discussed field. With that, it's up to the interested reader to filter the info.
     
  5. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    On this forum people are generally well informed about accreditation. There are certainly areas where we are not (like international accreditation) and there are certainly differing opinions (as in the NA vs RA discussions). But the foundation under both is a fairly solid understanding of U.S. accreditation.

    A lot of the opinions there that I've glanced at since you posted the link are very personal (i.e. "I did this thing therefore it is good. Had I done this other thing it might have been better."). That's great for what it is. The problem with that sort of approach is that you can always find someone who had a positive experience. Go to the worst call center in the world and you are bound to find one employee who loves their job and really cares about what they do. Just the other day I was watching an episode of Undercover Boss where a call center worker said she would keep doing what she did even if the company cut her pay.

    I find that the conversation here is a bit more nuanced. I work in HR. And I can tell you how I approach HR. I can tell you about the conversations I've had with HR people in my region. I can tell you things that HR people have said to me about education. But I can't tell you that a degree from School X will help you get a job in Wichita Kansas. I have an NA Masters. But I am also aware that an NA degree might not help you achieve your career goals. I have both positive and negative things to say about every school I've ever attended. I have positive and negative opinions on pursuing advanced degrees, certificates, diplomas, internships and apprenticeships etc.

    I'm willing to put my name on any advice I give. A lot of people here are willing to do the same. But when I look at gems like this:

    I find myself wanting to unplug my computer, take up residence in the wilderness and never speak to another person again. Are people so daft as to think that all of our skilled tradespeople today are non-millennials?

    To me, websites like this are like reading Yelp reviews. They are pointless. Some of the best restaurants in the country have some of the worst Yelp reviews because people give poor ratings to a place for being "too expensive" or not having something they wanted. Anonymous haters will sling all sorts of mud against a school on a forum. Go onto LinkedIn and find the people who went there and see how they talk about it. I'd trust that over anonymous trolls.
     
  6. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Kizmet says this too, but I'm not sure why, since we also have quite a few people who do (or are at least familiar with) non-U.S. education.
     
  7. cookderosa

    cookderosa Resident Chef

    See, that's a reason I wouldn't spent 2 minutes there. I'm not into peddling/selling/advocating/ DL to the masses. Not my yob man.
    If I have a question, THIS forum is filled with very educated well read DL experts who will answer me (correctly) and <hang on> frequently even SITE their answer. It's a beautiful thing.
    EDIT to add: when members disagree? Love it. I have my own brain, I like hearing passion on both sides of an issue.
     
  8. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    If you come onto this forum and say "Is School X Accredited" you are going to get, more or less, the same response from all of us. If it is we will invariably touch upon RA v NA. If it is not, we will say so.

    We have some individuals who are more familiar with non-U.S. accreditation processes. But we aren't WES. We don't have a database of the stuff. And the people here who are gifted in that area seem to limit their expertise to some specific locations. Most recently Stanislav had some great insight into a Ukrainian school. Others have weighed in for British schools. But things start to get hazy around South and Latin America. And I don't recall seeing anyone claim to have a solid handle on Africa.

    When we were discussing Italian universities there was quite a bit of debate over one of them (I don't remember the school but they were also accredited by ACICS). And Switzerland's canton approved schools are still divisive, in part, because none of us have the personal experience to say what makes a degree legitimate in Switzerland.

    So we have some good people who know a bit about non-US accreditation. But the strength of our collective knowledge on the topic is not, in my opinion, nearly as strong as it is when it comes to U.S. based education.
     
  9. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I think that City-Data.com is an extraordinarily good resource if you are thinking about moving or even visiting somewhere in North America. It offers no end of information on just about every city and town in the United States (and Canada too). There's maps, photos, data on demographics, income levels, home prices in various categories, rents, commuting, kinds of work residents do, crime rates, radio and tv coverage, hospitals, local business, schools, nearby colleges and universities, libraries and lots more.

    City-Data.com - Stats about all US cities - real estate, relocation info, crime, house prices, cost of living, races, home value estimator, recent sales, income, photos, schools, maps, weather, neighborhoods, and more
     
  10. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    Curtisc83 and I have pointed out the many misses on distance learning on that sub-forum. That would absolutely be the last place I would recommend to anyone looking at online degree programs or asking questions about accreditation. Accreditation applies to online and ground programs, so it's an important thing for all college students to understand. One of my favorite posts was someone claiming that she could tell if a school is fully accredited by looking at the campus.

    When it comes to questions about professions, the answers can be bad on those, too. I like to cite surveys. Some of the surveys may not be the best, but they are a lot better than anecdotal evidence or uneducated guesses. Usually, if it's not STEM or business, most of the answers will tell you that you can't get a job with that degree or that you will be making near minimum wage. Sometimes, that is sort of true. Sometimes, it is completely wrong. I remember a thread on social work where most of the posters claimed that most social workers with master's degrees were making around $30,000 or less. Social work doesn't pay that well, but the median pay is not that low.

    City-Data is great for asking locals questions about a city, but the Colleges and Universities sub-forum is awful.
     
  11. curtisc83

    curtisc83 New Member

    I remember the thread about the campus on CD. It got so crazy I just couldn't post anything that would make sense to the CD folk. If it's not a top 50 tier 1 school you might as well live in a cardboard box and give up on life. This is a common theme on CD.
     
  12. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Certainly there are people on the board who know a lot about "accreditation" in other countries but I also know that we get a lot of questions from people about it. For example, it's not uncommon for someone to name a relatively well known school like Teeside or Limpopo and ask "Is this a legitimate school?" So we, meaning the entirety of our membership, do not always know a lot about accreditation in other countries. Fortunately someone else either knows the answer or knows how to easily figure it out. That's what we're good at.
     
  13. catlin0915

    catlin0915 New Member

    I learned about RA and NA accreditation when I researched my MBA. This was the same forum that I read most of what helped me to understand it. I'm just lucky that my bachelors was from a RA school without even knowing that there was anything else out there. I remembers years ago when first looking at universities with my dad when I was in high school and he explained to me that it needed to be regionally accredited, but after a number of years I forgot about it. When I was reading it here I got curious and googled my old school.
     

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