All state-approved degrees are legal and legitimate

Re:State-approved degrees are legal and legitimate

Yakthumba:First of all,my sincere apologies to BillDayson.In my post of February 8,2003,I should have said it was Bill Grover and not BillDayson who said state-approved degrees are legal in some places but they have less worth.

Bill Grover: Think I said worth less,but not worthless.But it would be worth less than the accredited as its acceptability has geographical and other circumstantial limits.Besides, my Cherokee grandfather, Spotted Horse, could outshoot your prince Eklabya anyday.

Yakthumba:Yes,you may be right that state-approved degrees may have geographical limits than RA degrees.As for your Cherokee grandfather,Spotted Horse,who couldn't even outshoot(or shoot) the great Sitting Bull(a siting dummy) or Geronimo or Rain-in-the-Face or even Pale-in-the-Face, how could he outshoot Eklabya.What a joke!HAW!HAW!May be Natty Bumppo and his brave, noble Indian friends might have been a match for Eklabya.I just loved their action-filled adventures.

Bill Huffman:It seems to me that you're argument has shifted. Earlier you seemed to be arguing that legal and legitimate had a much stronger connection. If the degree were legal then it must be legitimate.

Yakthumba:I have always stood by my scout's honour.I have not shifted my arguments anywhere.We're still in the legal and legitimate topic.In my last post I had quoted a passage from Oregon Office of Degree Authorization(ODA) web page to prove this.I would again like to quote it for you:"Credit earned at ODA-approved institutions may be more difficult to transfer unless the institution is also accredited. However,degrees earned at ODA-approved institutions are legitimate within Oregon and will be recognized by many other states." Do you see how proudly the ODA embrace the word "legitimate".In fact CA's BPPVE is saying the same for their state-approved degrees.But you may be right in saying that state-approved degrees,although legal and legitimate,may have less utility than RA degrees.

Timothyrph:This may be a stupid question.But if California was concerned about recognition of their degrees, why could they not apply for their state to be an accrediting body recognized by the department of education?

Yakthumba:Very good question.Why doesn't the federal government just let the states handle this business instead of the independent,non-governmental accrediting agencies.These RA agencies have been found to be incompetent in their job and criticized many a time.There are instances of schools being readily accredited by one RA agency when another RA agency has refused them.

Mr.Yakthumba(Kirat)
Thirty-two Kirat kings ruled in Kathmandu Valley and the last king fled to the eastern region of Nepal when the more powerful Lichhavi dynasty invaded the Valley.There,he established his own kingdom and thus began the Ten Limbuwan Kingdom.

 

Re: Re:State-approved degrees are legal and legitimate

My ancestors raised nice fat pigs in the Volga Valley and the ones that couldn't leave were for the most part killed because they spoke the wrong language. My grandfather came to America where he established his own pig farm.

 

Re: Re:State-approved degrees are legal and legitimate

 

If unaccredited (but state-licensed colleges and universities) are so bad, why do many states license such institutions by the respective state-by-state Depts. of Education? (Maybe, such institutions are not so bad.) You tell me.
Gracias.

CBM, MBA, BS, BA, AAS, AAS, AA

 

State regulatory agencies enforce minimum standards set by the legislature and written into Administrative law. These can vary a great deal from state to state. In other words it can be nothing short of a business license in some states and in others some sort of oversight based on meeting minimum standards that are more than a business license. This does not mean that it in any way equals accreditation as far as standards.

The organization I work for will recongize RA & NA but not UnA for employment purposes. Same way with the military. I suspect as Rich has pointed out that the fact that there are some employers who do take UnA degrees for employment has more to do with the fact that they do not know accreditation from a hole in the ground (ie a school sounds good). Truly most people do not. I have heard a number of people seriously ask if the U of Phoenix is accredited because they heard it was not.

North

 

Too bad, how sad (about licesning of institutions that award undergraduate and graduate degrees.) Do the state governments need to raise taxes in order to bolster their Depts of Education?
Thank you for the input for my research paper.

 

I think that most state governments simply aren't interested in duplicating the work of the accreditors. Why should they spend money doing a job that's already being done by others?

Another thing to remember is that some state approval processes (certainly Califoria's) are primarily aimed at regulating the post-secondary vocational education world. There are more than 2,300 California approved institutions. Of these, about 10% offer degrees. The other 90% are things like barbers and cosmetology schools. They teach skills like truck driving and dog grooming. There are lots of vocational schools that teach office and computer skills.

The nature of the regulated community, both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of type of school, suggest that their regulator (in California that's the BPPVE) isn't likely to resemble a conventional higher education accreditor.

Another consideration is politics. Non-accredited schools often have influence. For example Alvin Ross, chairman of the board of Ryokan College (one of the better CA-approved psych schools) was a member of the BPPVE advisory committee in 1998-2000.

When our attention turns to explicitly religious schools, we find that the states can't regulate them. The courts have held that religious education is an integral part of religious practice, which is constitutionally protected from government interference.

And there is the matter of philosophy. Deciding what constitutes a good academic program is a very controversial question. It varies from field to field, and between different orientations within a field. Traditionalists of various kinds disagree with a whole array of educational innovators. Lots of the ideas being promoted may seem flaky to us, but who is really to say?

So some states take a laissez-faire approach. They take minimal action to ensure that some kind of education is taking place that at least superficially resembles a university curriculum, that faculty actually exist and seem apropriate to their mission, that the school is tangible enough that it won't dissappear overnight with its students' money and that things like refund policies are in place. But these states don't try to dictate what a good education should be. They just let the schools do their own thing and trust the relevant educational and professional communities to sort it out and to make their own decisions about how valuable it is.

Those decisions often take the form of various kinds of accreditation.

Personally, I think that some state approved schools are surprisingly good. Others are simultaneously flaky but fascinating. Some offer kinds of programs that can be found nowhere else. But most are pretty lame...

I like the innovation aspect, the willingness to experiment on new subjects that might not yet (if ever) be accepted in conventional academia. I love the sort of grass-roots scholarship that they represent. "Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let a thousand schools of thought contend."

But since the conventional arbitors aren't signing off on these things, there is usually a question mark hanging over them. The burden of proof falls squarely on them to demonstrate their own credibility.

 

No at all. My experience is that at least with some regulatory processes, it is not a proft making issue for the government body at all. What fees are raised are often minimal compared to the cost. I know of one case specifically where government regulation is a bargain.

One of the issues is that state governments have oversight over a particular area and some responsibility for a minimum standard as determined by the legislature. This can be really minimum. Caveat emptor. As Bill points out the government regulates everything from cosmetology to Counseling and it is necessary for some level of consumer protection (what level that is is determined by the legislature). I recall being posted here that Texas regulates the use of the name *university* and *seminary* and therefore the Higher Education Coordinating Board (??) went after Tyndale when it was calling itself a seminary in Dallas (??) and fined it (350,000 ??). If I remember correctly Oklahoma is similar and you cannot isse degrees unless you are accredited by a US Doe/CHEA agency.

Rather than too bad, we should hope for some tightening of regulation in very lax states in order to protect consumers. California has probably done a better job than many states balancing A & UnA schools. There are examples quoted here in regard to a California Approved school in particular to indicate that it is not up to par with RA schools in terms of requirements but it does meet some minimum standard. It is a difficult issue. But regulation is the only way to keep out and out shoddy mills from operating within the states borders.

North

 

Keep in mind that the "real" higher education system in this country is accredited by the Regional Accreditors (RA). The fringe system outside RA schools is made up mostly of frauds and con-artists. There's a part of that "fringe" that is DETC accredited and an even smaller (very miniscule) part that is unaccredited but attempts to be a serious school.

The bottom line is that some states have decided to ignore this rather fringe problem. Most simply have laws severly restricting or eliminating the unaccredited colleges in their jurisdiction. California is one of the few states that tries to accept unaccredited colleges while weakly attempting to regulate the quality.

 

Bill Dayson:

You wrote--

"Personally, I think that some state approved schools are surprisingly good. Others are simultaneously flaky but fascinating. Some offer kinds of programs that can be found nowhere else. But most are pretty lame..."

I agree entirely, but you know more about the CA-approved schools by far than I do.
Which would come into your first two or three categories?

 

I can give a few examples.

CA-approved schools that are surprisingly good:

1. National Test Pilot School. This is in a category by itself. It is the only civilian test pilot school in the world recognized by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. NTPS provides contract courses for NASA and for the FAA. It is specified in USAF special operations manuals for training SOF T&E aircrew. It is the only foreign member of Australia's Defense Teaming Center, and it trains RAAF as well as Canadian Forces officers. It has a cooperation agreement with the National Research Council of Canada. It shares Mojave Airport with legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites as well as companies like BAe/Tracor. It operates its own airforce of several dozen aircraft, including supersonic jets. It operates a commercial flight-test branch that tests things like smart bombs and EW pods. The NTPS Director was chairman of the First Flight Readiness Review Team for Lockheed Martin/Korean Aerospace's new T-50 supersonic trainer for the ROKAF. It is associated with one of the private manned spacecraft ventures and will apparently train astronauts to fly it. NTPS is also, to my knowledge, the most expensive college in the world, with a tuition of $225,000/semester for the whole package. Nevertheless, it has a waiting list. (I have heard that post-9-11, US intelligence agencies quietly vet foreign applicants before they are admitted.) No DL.

2. Soka University of America. This is an American spin-off of Japan's Soka University. It is building an impressive new campus in Orange county and it comes with an endowment of $250 million. It has a solid faculty including the former head of the University of Hawaii's religious studies department and a former US Ambassador to Brunei. It's associated with Sokka Gokkai, a huge Buddhist lay organization in Japan. (The head of Sokka Gokkai's American branch has an MBA from CSUDH, I believe.) No DL.

3. San Francisco Law School. This is accredited by the California Bar Association but isn't RA or ABA. It is the oldest law night-school in the West. It maintains a pass rate on the California bar exam of about 70%, which is pretty good, overlapping some ABA schools. Its alumni include former California Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown (Jerry Brown's father) and former CA Lt. Governor Leo McCarthy. A recent head of the California Bar Association is an alum, as are many Bay Area judges and attorneys. No DL.

4. Hsi Lai University. I've talked about this one before. It is associated with the Hsi Lai Temple, the largest Buddhist monastic complex outside Asia. (This is the temple where Al Gore had his fundraising embarrasment.) It is well funded with Taiwanese money and has a physical campus. It has put together one of the more impressive and comprehensive Buddhist Studies curricula in the United States. You can take classes in Pali, Sanskrit or Tibetan here, on particular sutras or nikayas, or on things like Buddhist hermeneutics. There are doctoral level courses on comparative topics and on Buddhist psychology. Its dean is a former Sri Lankan Ambassador to the US, and its faculty includes luminaries such as the former head of UC Berkeley's Buddhist Studies graduate group. Scholars from places like the Claremont Graduate University moonlight as adjuncts here. It has recently been granted candidacy by WASC, so it may not remain in the CA-approved ranks for long. No DL.

Moving down the food chain a little, we get to schools that might be considered slightly flaky by some, but which are fascinating to others (like me):

5. Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. This one offers short residency Ph.D.s in Sexology. One can laugh, but it's an important subject that we all are interested in and which probably receives too little mainstream attention. The people here actually do research and publish papers on things like bondage and discipline, fetishes and transsexualism. Public health authorities consult them on underground sex practices. Their faculty have lectured at UC San Francisco. They are active in the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and own what is said to be the largest collection of pornography on earth, housed in 8 warehouses and including 150,000 films. (This school should not be confused with Bob Jones.)

6. University of Philosophical Research. This is an outgrowth of Manly Hall's (an old-style LA occultist) Philosophical Research Library. The library contains one of the country's best collections of obscure works on the Western occult tradition. UPR offers a DL M.A. in Consciousness Studies. Its dean of studies is Jeffrey Mishlove, the only man ever to earn a Ph.D. in parapsychology from UC Berkeley. (It was an interdisciplinary self-designed major.) Its faculty includes Fred Alan Wolf, a well known scientist/crank, and Phil Ellwood, a well known religious studies scholar from USC. This is one of the few schools out there that takes things like alchemy seriously.

These are some of the CA-approved universities that I like. Unfortunately, most of the CA-approved DL schools are pretty lame, in my opinion. They may not be horrible, but they have little to recommend them.

To catch my eye, school has to jump out from the pack by offering something unusual, or by offering something especially well. Schools have to perform well on my Google test, showing participation in the scholarly and professional worlds, and receiving recognition by those whose opinion counts. The best, the CA-approved "ivy league" like NTPS, do all of these things very impressively.

 

T'anks. I knew that SUA did not do DL (maybe does not yet do DL). Perhaps they will appoint a komeito to look into it. I even looked at UPR--but I was thinking more of the Middle Stoa than of Manly Hall. Oh well...

 

Because someone has to do it, and the federal government does not.

Perhaps you're asking why some states allow unaccredited schools to operate? Some states are lazy. Others don't have the resources. Still others--like California--have embraced the notion that such processes allow for innovative and small schools to thrive. Others, like Louisiana, tolerate unaccredited schools, but require they eventually become accredited. There are many answers.