ARTS, Accreditors in General, and CHEA

I have wondered from time to time whether there was any point in approving more accreditors. It seemed for the most part that we had hit saturation point in terms of institutional accreditation. We have RA, DEAC, TRACS, ABHE and a few lesser known entities of which one went down the drain very publicly. Most professional fields are covered such as ABA, APA, Business and so on.

It would seem that people starting alternative acreditors would be duplicating accreditation.

Then along came ARTS. I can see with their very specific theological and institutional requirements that they make a good case for filling a niche.

I recall some entity that was much talked about called something like the National Association of Private something or other. Dr. Bear talked about them and how (if recall correctly) they had managed to tick off somebody in the Department of Education and battle with them and never got approval. I contacted them once and got a really large packet of material and documentation. They seem to have tried hard but I don't know what exactly they were supposed to be doing differently than anyone else was doing. I think they're defunct now.

 

I will say that I have been a fan of the states themselves regulating schools within the state and accrediting them. In general, that can be done fairly efficiently and at less cost for the school. That opens up more opportunity or educational institutions of these potentially. I cannot recall the specific objections but I believe here people have posted several objections or concerns that could occur were states to try and do that. We have an odd system with private accreditors with approval from the US Department of Education and CHEA. But on the other hand we are massive in terms of population and size. And this leads to a lot of regulatory issues and lack of informative. Certain bodies have tried to get together and form reciprocity agreements for ease of transfer between states.

 

Oddly, enough, I think I might agree with the states regulating higher ed. If Trump succeeds, that may become a reality.

 

It would potentially allow more schools to try and become accredited. Right now I think the cost is fairly prohibitive for many educational institutions that are starting up. Perhaps it would even bring back something like the heyday in California where there were innovative schools operating under state approval.

I wonder if the states themselves could get together on some kind of standards or generally agreed upon standards for accreditation?

Excuse some of my above posts as I am using talk to text and it gets words wrong and autocorrects them incorrectly.

 

About 7 or 8 years ago, I was involved with a school that was pursuing accreditation from one of the Christian accreditors. It was about $25k just to achieve initial accreditation and a significant amount to renew it. They raised money from various benefactors and employed a ten-year financial plan that involved tuition increases commensurate with student body growth. They also spent thousands on consultants who prepared them for the process. After having gone through the ordeal, the school, which had a relatively small student body (130-50) lost a significant amount of enrollment due to the increase in tuition to account for the expenses related to accreditation. The school no longer exists. It would still exist if they ditched the desire to become legitimate in the eyes of whomever while focusing their investments on what they did best (i.e., educating their students). A cautionary tale, I suppose.

I was thinking about the for-profit debate. Wouldn't permitting underwriting/advertising lower HE costs, even among non-profits?

 

For some of these schools that are not accredited but attempting to offer a comparable education there is certainly risk to pursuing accreditation. Often their niche is the affordability. When that is no longer there then they are simply one of a number of schools offering education at comparable prices.

Opening an educational institution to offer a Master of Business Administration under the assumption that people will line up for the degree program is probably not a wise business move. There are hundreds of schools offering MBAs. The same thing for religious institutions.

Some of these entities need to think in terms of the Shark Tank approach and really have somebody grill them over what they're trying to do and what is unique about it.

Schools like the University of the People are offering degrees that are available elsewhere but their model is different and price is different.

For a while these for profits offered something to students in terms of convenience and accessibility. So corporate entities snapped up these things or created them and marketed them. In some cases this worked for students especially when mini-mesters and other non-traditional options were not as readily available at bricks and mortar schools. This isn't the case anymore.

Unfortunately some of these entities became predatory and marketed very expensive doctoral programs to people. I knew someone who was shocked when friends of hers were enrolling in a very expensive PhD program from one of these MacUniversities (may have being Argosy). The amount of debt they were going into was crazy in terms of what they were going to get out of it.

 

One of the hard things for unaccredited schools even if they have faculty with accredited degrees and are trying to offer something with comparable standards to an accredited program is the perception in many people's minds that an unaccredited degree equals a diploma mill.

There is no end of examples of that on news items about political candidates for various offices or sites attacking various people such as Rationalwiki. James White was always being attacked for having an unaccredited doctorate from Columbia Evangelical Seminary ( logical fallacy aside). It was fodder. White seems to have dropped all mention of the Columbia Evangelical Seminary degrees from his website. He was at one point pursuing a doctorate in textual criticism from a South African School but suddenly there's no more mention of that.

 

Right, and there are not a few people on this board who perpetuate that nonsense for reasons that are statist to their core, or for reasons stemming from a worldview not shared by evangelicals. My view is that the education matters. The credentials of the institution, while helpful possibly, are entirely tertiary, especially in the realm of theological education. Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary operated successfully for decades apart from accreditation. So did CES and many others despite what some pontificate. Christians, whose values do not accord with popular culture, should not be looking to the establishment to legitimize theological education.

Consider the source.

And? Cultists and purveyors of false religion will find anything to attack those who dismantle their erroneous views. They have a transparent motive. Are any evangelicals doing that to White? How about any within his segment? Not many. You should see the regular hate mail I receive and the horrendous things cultists write about me on the interwebs. I couldn't care less that someone was angry because I dismantled their ungodly views and didn't value my educational credentials. I suspect White feels much the same.

His website still lists three degrees from CES and his candidacy at North-West. By the way, North-West accepted CES' work for transfer or entrance into doctoral programs for years. Here's the list:

• Ph.D. Candidate, Northwestern University, Potchefstroom, South Africa (Textual Criticism)
• D.Min, Apologetics, Columbia Evangelical Seminary, 2002
• Th.D., Apologetics, Columbia Evangelical Seminary, 1998
• Th.M. Apologetics, Faraston Seminary, 1995
• M.A. Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1989
• B.A. Bible (Major in Biology, minor in Greek), Grand Canyon College, 1985.

 

@Michael Burgos

Can you provide a link to the web page for James White that provides that information. When I looked on his Alpha and Omega site under his bio it had disappeared. Perhaps it is back or he moved it somewhat place else and I missed it.

I do hope he's still pursuing his South African doctorate.

 

https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/about/#link_tab-articles

 

If it's okay, I'm going to appeal (a little) to expertise here.

I was present when all that went down. I don't recall anyone upsetting an official at Education. What I do recall is that the NAPNSC was small, accrediting only a handful of schools. Its real purpose was accrediting Western Colorado University, with whom they shared office space (and, likely, ownership). (NB: That name is now used by a fully accredited state school not connected with the previous unaccredited DL school). The NAPNSC was soon overcome by DEAC when that agency got into accrediting degree-granting schools in a big way. Then the regionals woke up and the need for an alternative agency was nil. It accredited just a few schools when it faded away.

 

Not solely. A degree acts as a proxy, "speaking" on behalf of the graduate. Thus, the source of the degree matters as much (more?) than the education drawn from it.

In the rest of the world, central governments decide what is and is not a university, as well as what credentials are or are not recognized. This is not quite so simple in the United States.

In the U.S., the field of higher education is largely self-regulating. That's what accreditation is all about. But this is complicated by two factors. First, it is the states who determine what is and is not a legally operating degree-granting institution. Thus, we can have schools that are licensed by the state (or exempt from such licensure) awarding degrees that are utterly useless in many situations because the school is not accredited by a recognized agency.

Complicating that further is what is considered a "recognized" accrediting agency. There are two forms of recognition: one private (CHEA) and one public (the Department of Education).

And....complicating things even further, the Department of Education is tasked with maintaining a list of recognized accreditors for the purposes of managing the Title IV student aid process.

You can get an education from many sources, but you go to a recognized university to get a degree that has general acceptance. There are always niches and exceptions, of course, but that basic axiom applies.

Finally, we can get all caught up in what is and is not a degree mill and/or diploma mill. I'm not generally interested in such labels being broadly described or applied. But 40 years ago there was much stronger reason to avoid this because so many really innovating schools couldn't get recognized accreditation. That simply isn't true today. There is NO excuse for a school not being accredited today.

 

There is an odd mentality that I have encountered among some religious people and others that a degree is almost some sort of right and it shouldn't be too difficult. It is as if there isn't some sort of academic expectation or standard to adhere to in terms of what scholarly work is or what a degree is. So, a dumbed down version of it is good if it meets my needs in terms of convenience, cost, and not taxing my abilities too much. When confronted with it religious people tend to say that the Lord is using that education mightily and secular people simply say that you get what you put into it. All kinds of justifications. People even know what they're doing because they seek out or create fake accrediting agencies to make it sound like their degree is accredited just not by a "government accreditor".

It is annoying because academics must mean something. Scholarship must mean something. And we do need gatekeepers of some sort to ensure that people issuing degrees meet certain standards. It is such nonsense to pretend like you just wanted to learn from some substandard unaccredited entity and didn't really care that there was a degree attached to it. People want that degree or in the case of a doctorate that title. And unfortunately look for the most expedient way to make that happen that doesn't cause them too much stress.

That isn't to say there aren't some unaccredited schools out there that are producing quality work. I know the Graduate Theological Foundation gets grief from time to time but it appears they have established some credibility with their constituency. They have become in my opinion rather expensive for an unaccredited school. I wouldn't go there. I am not sure I would go to any unaccredited school. But if Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson were to establish an unaccredited school I might study astrophysics with him especially if Dr Brian May were on the faculty. And wouldn't that degree even if it was an unaccredited doctorate have some credibility due to the faculty supervising.

 

And I'm sure it would be good stuff.

Here's an interesting (I hope) contradiction: I have a PhD from Union with a concentration in Nontraditional Higher Education. Union has always gotten some grief on this board. Yet, it's most esteemed member, past or present, has been John Bear. I studied for my PhD at Union under John's supervision (as a member of my committee). No one else on this board can make such a claim. I normally don't bother, but your post triggered my thinking along these lines. Yes, I got my PhD under the supervision of one John Bear. Yippee!

Back in the 1970s and '80s, there was a fascinating school in L.A. called International College. Nontraditional and unaccredited, International was designed to match luminaries in various fields (like Linus Pauling) with students to study under them, 1-on-1. But, as it turned out, those big names had very few students, if any. But no one seriously challenged the rigor of earning a PhD at International, even though the school remained unaccredited throughout its life.

 

I love this post. It is certainly cool to have the great Dr. John Bear on your committee.

Plus, to hear about this school in California. That was a very innovative concept. I can't imagine having someone like Linus Pauling as your doctoral supervisor. That would be amazing!

The combinations could be mind-boggling depending on the willingness of the professor to lend themselves to a project like that. For instance, having Friedrich Hayek be your doctoral supervisor in economics or political philosophy.

 

Let's give it a shot.

In an ideal world, that would be true. However, we live in a world that is far from ideal. Moreover, North American society is so far from monolithic that this sort of thing is not remotely possible. I had someone come to me for a position once with an AB from Harvard and an MDiv from a PhD from YDS. I didn't even offer an interview, and it wasn't because of the individual's educational credentials. It was because of his apparent lack of skill.

I suppose this may have been accurate at one time or another. Unfortunately, when the gov't began handing out legitimacy and access to money to educational institutions through its proxies (i.e., recognized accreditors), the self-regulation of higher ed went away along with the freedom it would have afforded.

So we have, on the one hand, big gov't and, on the other hand, a cabal of university and college presidents and others whose employers have (mostly) USDE-recognized accreditation constituting their own form of recognition.

Notice, you said "there are always niches and exceptions" to pursuing higher ed for "general acceptance." But then you said, "There is NO excuse for a school not being accredited today." Setting aside the fact that innovation is progressive by nature (are you suggesting we've arrived?), I can think of several reasons why certain educational institutions shouldn't be accredited, at least by those who have garnered approval from USDE/CHEA. As I have noted many many times to you and others, one can have worldview considerations that preclude such relationships and the associated strings. Fortunately, the majority of the states agree and view the Constitution to provide a basis for such exceptions. Further, the statement, "There is NO excuse for a school not being accredited today," simplifies things to the point of absurdity. Do you really believe that if a school believes that ponying up the cash and jumping through the predetermined hoops (whether or not they happen to agree with them) is not in the best interest of either its mission, students, or institution, that they are without excuse? What about new institutions that do not yet qualify for the process? It seems to me that this kind of bald assertion does not account for the spectrum of HE and the varied approaches therein.

 

Forgive me if I do not respond. I'm not interested in an argument with someone for whom I have little respect. I'm not interested in trying to change your assessments.

 

Allow me to kind of respond.

The exceptions form the rules? Okay, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

 

@Michael Burgos

Our system is expensive. And some of it is certainly justified in that there are reasonable expectations about faculty and measurements of what is being done and so on. But the application and other factors involved with it are costly for startups. Then there are additional factors for online schools in order to operate in other states that also cost money.

At the end of the day the accreditation equals credibility for most utilitarian situations. But it is a system that gives more weight to someone whose degree is from the University of Phoenix and has the stamp of an accreditors approval than it does for someone who studies with a Nobel prize winning economist for an unaccredited Masters degree (fictitious situation).

And I do know that it is easy to criticize it but much harder to develop a workable solution.

Perhaps State control of the education accreditation process could help make
getting accredited a much more affordable endeavor.

 

History suggests not.

Because the U.S. has no agency within the central government determining what is and is not a degree-granting institution, and because the states have been very hit-and-miss in this area, universities banded together to form accrediting associations.

It is this situation that saw highly regulated states (like New York), highly innovative states (like California, also home to a ton of diploma mills back in the day), and highly indifferent states that became havens for diploma mills. (It was the development of the internet and World Wide Web that ended that--no longer did diploma mills require a physical presence to receive payments.)

The federal government, by maintaining a list of approved accrediting agencies, has created a quasi-centralized system, but it is not mandatory for schools not participating in federal financial aid. Thus, it once again falls back to the states.

New York's system (the Board of Regents) went so far as to become recognized as an accrediting agency, but the door was closed behind them, so they remain the only state to do so. Even California, the country's most-populous state, has a degraded system that has devolved to a point where schools must be accredited to operate--the state no longer does any real evaluation itself.

There have been other, failed efforts to give more responsibility to the states.

TL/DR: Accreditation exists because state governments didn't do their jobs. I'm not sure there is any reason to think that would change.