12 State Attorney Generals Ask Feds to Dump ACICS

I look forward to their reply.

But I think situations like this also highlight how nuanced the whole "will x accept my degree" situation can be.

If Oxford recruited a top research scientist from Tufts, we must also ask if NARIC's opinion on the matter would actually matter.

An adverse WES assessment might impact your immigration to Canada but that doesn't mean that an employer in Canada is bound by that same evaluation. And, at the doctoral level, how much that evaluation would impede your entry to the UK or Canada, especially when a job offer is already in play, is another consideration.

If I score a job in Canada where an employer chooses to "accept" my MSM, then WES's opinion on UMT is really of very little consequence.

My original point when addressing the UK situation is simply that there is no universal rule about what is, or is not, accepted in the UK. NARIC's answer is good information. But they aren't the definitive answer for acceptance in all situations. They have a fairly limited scope in the grand scheme of considering a degree's utility.

 

Oh, and this guy didn't seem to let NARIC stop him.

And WES either has an exception on the books or our neighbors to the North were willing to look past the non-RA degree of this guy.

Since we're anecdoting anyway.

 

Oh, Lord - do we have to go over the NA / ASIC differences again?

Because UK-NARIC doesn't recognize NA degrees doesn't mean that a British University is bound by NARIC's decision. AFAIK, the school is still free to make up its own (collective) mind about an individual applicant - and some have, in individual cases, admitted applicants with DEAC degrees.

ASIC is a different thing. ASIC is a UK company and in the UK "accreditation" doesn't necessarily mean quite the same thing as it does in the US. In ASIC's case, it denotes nothing re: degree-granting authority or validity of a school's degrees. ASIC says so itself on its web-page. Do I really need to quote that again? No, I don't. Instead I'll offer a quote from one of our resident experts, mbwa shenzi:

"Where I work, we also pay attention to the quality of education , and are not bound by any recommendations from our ENIC-Naric office, so at times we admit graduated of nationally accredited US universities too. In the event that a university is also ASIC accredited, we say "well, good for them" but it doesn't influence our decisions at all."

J.

 

We're not talking about ASIC (UK). We're discussing ACICS, the US based accreditor.

Somehow we shifted gears to talking about the UK because Lerner argued that a non-RA degree would have difficulty receiving "acceptance" in the UK even if its accreditor was USDOE recognized. I disputed this because I don't feel we should be applying our knowledge of how ACICS and DEAC is treated to how groups like NYSBOR or the faith based accreditors might be treated.

 

Sorry - you wrote ASICS (post 19) and (amid the discussion of UK acceptance) I confused it with ASIC. My bad.

J.

 

update

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/21/cfpb-lacks-authority-over-profit-college-accreditors-judge-rules

 

Thanks for reaching out!

I suppose we could always try to track down a foreign born, Rockefeller educated, researcher presently living in the UK and just shoot them an email and ask if NARIC gave any pushback on their degree.

 

I don't understand the interjection of Rockefeller into an RA/NA kind of discussion. I'm pretty sure that schools like this aren't RA because they don't need to be. They represent a tiny exception to the rule and prove almost nothing.

Oh, and their acceptance isn't universal. When I was at UoP, I had an instructor with a doctorate from Central European University. At the time, it was accredited by the NY Board of Regents, but not RA. So I wanted to get her recognized at the doctoral level--instructors get paid more if they have a doctorate. Nope. NY Regents wasn't good enough. (Nor would any NA, either.) But when CEU became a candidate for RA I was able to get her approved immediately.

The point is, we can find exceptions to almost any rule. But finding these nits don't change the bigger picture for almost everyone else.

 

That isn't what I did. I was actually making a completely different point when someone interjected that people with degrees accredited by USDOE accreditors couldn't get their degrees recognized in the UK. My point was simply that we cannot know that and we shouldn't draw a blanket rule based upon anecdotes from DEAC and ACICS accredited schools.

The point was to prove that exceptions to the rule exist not that such exceptions overturn the majority of things on their head.

Again, no one said anything about universal acceptance just that exceptions do, in fact, exist.

If there is a gem in this tangent it is that school reputations, at times, transcend accreditation. Rockefeller is a small school. But just a little bit of googling shows quite a number of professors at respected UK universities who did their post-doctoral work there.

Perhaps, in time, we'll see an ACICS, DEAC or ACCET school pull off something similar (though almost certainly in another field) and we may find those exceptions crop up elsewhere. Part of the obstacle there would be that ACICS accredits a lot of schools with many of them being a bit shady. NYSBOR accredits a handful of programs with three of them being internationally recognized doctoral programs one of which has a close relationship (both academically and geographically) with an Ivy League medical school. So when your program keeps such good company and there are so few in the pool it is easier to start carving yourself out as an exception to the rule than if you are the single serious research university in the whole of ACICS.

With respect to your friend at UofP, I think the issue is that CEU was not accredited by the NYSBOR. Here is a list of all institutions (past and present) accredited by NYSBOR.

CEU received its charter from the NYS Board of Regents, as is required of all educational institutions in the State of New York. The charter system in New York is how schools, libraries and other educational institutions actually incorporate. It is a simple process. After receiving a charter you must register your programs. But registration, what New York calls its state approval to award degrees, is also separate from accreditation.

You'll notice also here that the NYS Board of Regents speaks only of degree registration, not accreditation, and here the Board of Regents in summarizing the history of CEU mentions its charter and its RA but nothing about being accredited by the Board.

 

The distinction you make between being registered/approved by the Regents and accredited by them isn't relevant to my point, which is that Regents accreditation would not have been acceptable. So, while I appreciate the distinction you're making, it is without a difference.

Exceptions are fine to talk about, but the do not disprove the rule. That's all. Rockefeller's acceptability has no bearing on, say, a school accredited by ACICS. You might not be making that point--and note that I didn't quote you--but lots of posters do.

 

My friend who is a CEng in UK had his DETC accredited Engineering degree evaluated by NARIC.
NARIC responded that they will not evaluate his degree because it wasn't accredited by the one of the RA's agencies.
Their response indicated that there are multiple accreditation agencies in the USA but they only consider RA's to be compatible to the UK degrees.
He still has the letter and failed the appeal.
luckily for him a major European University accepted his degree and in a short time he had recognized degree that didn't require NARIC services for the purpose he needed to use the degree.

I know of additional similar refusals to evaluate NA degrees by NARIC UK.

 

Yes, we know the limitations of DEAC and ACICS with NARIC. My point was that there are other accreditors who are not RA but are USDOE recognized and we don't know what NARIC's opinion of them would be. Some might be exceptions. Some might not.

We can't just take the treatment of DEAC and ACICS and say "Well, then that automatically applies to NYSBOR, ABHE, ATS, ACAOM etc"

 

I understand what you are saying.
From the langue that NARIC used in the number of letters that I seen personally I came to a conclusion, many a wrong one that their statement excluded everything from USA that is not RA.
Also the instances I mention go back at least 6 to 10 years.
So today maybe its different.

I think its worth trying.
NARIC UK offers a nice certificate of compatibility for extra XX BP

This is an additional document which confers no greater authority than the Statement of Comparability already received. ts a different format that is designed solely for framing and displaying.

 

Well, I never set out to say anything about NARIC. I simply disputed the notion that a non-RA degree, that ALL non-RA degrees, would have "a hard time getting accepted in the UK" you brought up NARIC. I found at least a half dozen UK professors who did their post-doctoral work at a non-RA school and at least one person with a non-RA (Rockefeller) PhD working at prestigious research institute in the UK. I feel that my point has been made.

 

As Neuhaus has shown us, just because UK-NARIC refuses to evaluate certain types of U.S. degrees or accreditation doesn't necessarily mean these types can't be used in the UK. British Universities (or any other institutions, for that matter) are free to make up their own minds as to what's acceptable to them in individual cases - and of course, they do.

J.