Acceptability of Unaccredited Degrees

A riding lawnmower is a "motor vehicle" in the eyes of the law, the same as an automobile. However, you can't drive a riding lawnmower on an interstate highway, can you?

The Universal Life Church offers degrees upon payment of a fee, no work involved, and they are totally legal. Should their degrees be considered as on par with legitimately accredited degrees in your opinion?

 

They are honorary degrees (given, not earned), and are just as legitimate as any honorary degree other schools give away.

Kermit the Frog was given an honorary doctorate from Southampton College in New York.

If Kermit's honorary degree is legitimate, then so is everyone elses honorary degree.

Arminius

 

The ULC Doctor of Divinity is honorary. The Doctor of Metaphysics is not; it is "earned" and requires going through eight pages of text. At least they are no longer doing the Ph.D. in Religious Science.

Any degree, honorary or otherwise can, of course, be misused. The "sex therapist" arrested in upstate New York a few years ago was a high school dropout calling himself "Doctor" based on his purchased ULC degree. (His white Cadillac had the vanity license plate "DOCTOR 1."

 

The ULC operates out of California, right? (I seem to recall them in Stockton or someplace like that.)

The CA education code requires that religious-exempt schools only grant degrees with explicitly religious titles: D.D., Th.D., D.Min. etc. (D.Christian Counseling is a really popular one these days, which isn't reassuring.) Religious exempt schools are prohibited from offering generic academic degrees like B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. (I gather that the law isn't always enforced.)

 

Hi Tony,

I enjoy your posts because they are level-headed and do not get into the name-calling business that is so popular here. Nonetheless, your analogy of the Indy cars is not valid. You are comparing performance, not the essence of what they are. That is what I meant by not arguing "quality" issues. Both of the vehicles you mentioned are "cars." Even you acknowledge that. That is all I am saying when I say that a legal degree is a legal degree (a car is a car). Period. I am not comparing quality.

 

Re: If it's legal, it's legal, unless it's not

Thanks for the suggestion but I think I will stick with "if it is legal, it's legal." I think that says it all even with the convolutionary laws you cited.

 

If the doctorate is legal - it is legal. If the person obtaining the doctorate has the legal right to call themselves a "doctor" then they have that legal right. It is fine with me. Everyone has the ability to check to see where the doctorate came from and decide for themselves if they wish to consider it the quality of professional training they are looking for. In the case of an honorary degree - an honorary degree is an honorary degree as long as it is legal.

IMHO, there should not be any honorary degrees since many are given for the wrong reasons. Since they exist, however, an honorary degree from Harvard is the same as an honorary degree from ULC.

 

"If the doctorate is legal - it is legal. If the person obtaining the doctorate has the legal right to call themselves a "doctor" then they have that legal right" says nothing. "If A then A" is a tautology and is a pretty meaningless one at that. According to propositional logic, the statement "If I am a million miles tall then I am a million miles tall" is valid and a tautology, but it is still absolute rubbish.

Now assuming you do not mean that only people claiming to be doctors need to have their degree qualifications verified, could you please list your academic achievements in a verifiable way? After all, you do believe that everyone has the ability to check where someone's degrees have come from and decide for themselves.

 

Re: Re: If it's legal, it's legal, unless it's not

Perhaps then you should more accurately state that "If it is an unaccredited legal degree, it may or may not be legal depending on where you live and perhaps what you would like to use it for. In those areas and situations where it is legal an unaccredited degree's utility is based primarily on people mistaking the unaccredited degree for an accredited degree."

 

Re: Re: If it's legal, it's legal, unless it's not

Many things are technically legal, but are still wrong, inadvisable, mistaken, dumb, etc.

In higher education, it is unwise to stick to such a low standard, one that has landed people in jail, seen them lost jobs, etc.

There are people in prison for operating legal schools. There are many famous cases of people losing their careers over their legal degrees.

You're entitled to any standard you wish. But expect others to refute it when you set the bar so low.

 

If a graduate presents a diploma and claims a degree, but if nobody else is any wiser about what educational standard the graduate actually met (if any), then the diploma fails in its purpose and the degree claim is essentially meaningless.

In some jurisdictions it isn't illegal to sell meaningless diplomas or to boast of false educations. That doesn't make the degree on the diploma's face any more meaningful, informative or real.

Educational meaning is the relevant variable for degrees. Legality is essentially irrelevant.

You are arguing that as long as a graduate has been legally awarded a degree, then he or she has been awarded a real degree. I'm arguing that's simply ridiculous.

 

Originally posted by russ

Hi Tony,

I enjoy your posts because they are level-headed and do not get into the name-calling business that is so popular here.

Thank you, Russ. It has been my experience that name calling does not accomplish much that is good or useful.

Nonetheless, your analogy of the Indy cars is not valid. You are comparing performance, not the essence of what they are. That is what I meant by not arguing "quality" issues.

Actually, I am reacting to the topic of the thread, which is: "There has been some discussion on another thread on this board about the acceptability of doctoral degrees from DETC-accredited schools." (Quoting Rich Douglas, the thread's orginator).

Both of the vehicles you mentioned are "cars." Even you acknowledge that. That is all I am saying when I say that a legal degree is a legal degree (a car is a car). Period. I am not comparing quality.

I do not deny that in my analogy, I compared two vehicles that are both "cars". Your point that a diploma from state-approved non-accredited degree is as legal as one from a regionally accredited degree is, of course, correct. I really do not think that there is any controversy about that.

Now, this is why I think that my analogy of the Indy cars is, in fact, valid to this discussion:

If you attempt to enter a stock Kia Rio in the Indy 500, you will be rejected. "But", you might say, "this is a car race and the Kia is a car, just like the Dodge. In fact, the driver of the Kia may be even more skilled than the driver of the Dodge". This official would likely say, "that is all well and good, but the Kia is not designed to withstand the rigors of this type of driving. It cannot go fast enough (even with the most skilled driver behind the wheel) and its components are not up to the standards required for racing. The Kia is just fine for getting you to and from work, but there is a good chance that it will blow up or cease to function during Indy 500 competition."

The issue that Dr. Douglas brought up is not legality, it is utility. Non-accredited degrees have worked for many, many individuals in situations where legalilty, not accreditation are required. However, in those instances where accredited degrees ARE required, there has been no compelling research or practice to show that employers or graduate schools have any assurance whatsoever that the holder of an unaccredited degree has graduated from an institution that meets minimum standards comparable to an accredited institution.

In my opinion, until a Kennedy-Western, Century or Knightsbridge can demonstrate that their institution and graduates perform at a level comparable to RA institutions, the "legality" issue will remain an uncompelling argument.

 

It would be nice if the acceptability of DL unaccredited degrees by the student was zero. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the workplace. Too many DL school listing websites contain unaccredited schools to confuse prospective students.

Dan

 

Agreed. Although not all non-accredited degrees are bogus, most of them are. As long as the market for bogus degrees exists (and, according to Ezell & Bear, it is thriving), there will be scam artists that are more than happy to separate people from their money.

 

Tony, this is certainly the common wisdom, but where do you think we could get an authoritative percentage on this? Do we know for certain that more than 50% are fraudulent? What percentage of non-accredited degrees are approved by the state indicating they are not bogus? I wonder how many degrees are from schools licensed by the state and require completion of an academic curriculum, which indicates something other than bogus? I think it's fair to say "many" are bogus but I haven't seen the data that supports "most".

 

Kirkland said:

How about 99.9%? How can anybody really know? Mills have been licensed,authorized and approved. What is the standard for making such a determination? Opinion?


Thanks,
Dan

 

Hi Tony,

 

Unfortunately, degree mills do not report statistics on the number of fake degrees that they issue, so it is impossible to determine the percentage of unaccredited degrees that are completely fraudulent. However, the available information clearly shows that degree mills are capable of cranking out thousands, or tens of thousands, of bogus degrees.

For example, the Pennsylvania DA has claimed that the recently-busted "University of Berkley" issued more than 12,500 fake degrees. John Bear has claimed, based on an inside source, that the "San Moritz Group" issued 70,000 fake degrees over a four-year period. And there are many, many other degree mills out there.

A respected recent study by Allen Ezell and John Bear is titled "Degree mills: The billion-dollar industry that has sold over a million fake diplomas." If there are indeed more than 1,000,000+ bogus degrees in circulation, it seems likely that they significantly outnumber any legitimate unaccredited degrees.

 

The most authoritative figures would be those citied in the Senate hearing on diploma mills conducted last year (very enlightening in their investigations into Columbia State and Kennedy-Western) and by the most widely recognized authorities in this field, including Allen Ezell, Alan Contreras and John Bear, whose experience over many years has indicated that the legitimate non-accredited institutions are currently in the minority.

The estimates for currently operating non-legit unaccredited entities is around 2,000. Since many of these schools come and go (or change identity) regularly, a precise number is impossible to generate. Taking the non-accredited state-approved schools that do not award degrees (e.g. trade and technical schools) out of the mix lowers the amount of state-approved schools for consideration.

The fact that some states award licenses with little or no assurance that a school "require(s) completion of an academic curriculum" provides virtually no protection against bogus degrees. We, of course, know of instances where schools are licensed by states with minimal standards and their degrees have been illegal to use in other states.

 

Hi, FWD