Ashworth College now part of the National Transfer Network

That doesn't tell the whole story. What I pointed out is that many employers have become aware of accreditation over the years, certainly many more than there were 10 years ago. 10 years ago, it wasn't quite as common to see an employer even post anything about accreditation at all, but that didn't mean it didn't matter to them. Same thing with accreditation types. Most employers today will simply post "accredited", that doesn't mean regional accreditation isn't what they're mainly looking for, it can just often mean that the type is secondary to them; simply having legitimate accreditation is primary.

I checked indeed myself and found 226,080 job results asking for an "accredited" degree.

 

I agree with you on this point but this is not because UoP is "for-profit" but because of the bad name recognition. This supports my argument that going to an unknown NA school would be the same as going to an unknown RA school, as all that would really matter is if it is accredited or not.

Yes this is true in certain fields but I would still argue that ranking and prestige are two different things. I am willing to bet very few people follow the rankings of schools outside of those in academia and those enrolling in them.

Name recognition and prestige are two different things as well. Many people will have heard of various schools due to their athletic programs but the ones everybody considers "elite" in education are the Ivy League schools.

Maybe but AW offers 15 associate degrees in the fields of Business, Criminal Justice, Education, Healthcare and Technology. I do not see the 43 bachelor degrees options at APU or the 22 at WGU as in any way limiting.

 

You were talking about limitations on transferring. I know that TESC does not have much of a campus, but I was referring to the cost of completing an associate's there and transferring vs. completing an associate's at Ashworth or Penn Foster and transferring. Ashworth has a construction management program. None of its regionally accredited partner colleges have a bachelor's in construction management.

 

The only thing that mattered to employers was that you had a legitimate degree, using accreditation was simply a tool to confirm this. I cannot see how an employer (outside of academic snobbery) would not accept a degree as legitimate from a school recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as accredited. I am also incredibly skeptical that private employers asking for accredited degrees mean only regionally, even as a secondary requirement. I am sure there are exceptions but am willing to bet these are in an incredibly small minority.

I did this as well but I am not arguing that your degree does not need to be accredited. The irony here is that is still only 6% of employers on Indeed. IMO the ones asking explicitly for regionally accredited degrees tells the whole story since it is almost entirely academia.

The messaging here should change to...

RA degrees are required for academia and some public sector jobs.

 

There is correlation between ranking and prestige. Stanford and MIT are seen as very prestigious, but they are not Ivy League schools. Many Fortune 500 companies recruit directly from the top schools and those include non-Ivy schools. It is very difficult to get into a Big 4 accounting firm without having attended a highly-ranked program. Students who come from the top psychology schools have a much higher chance of being accepted into APA-accredited internships than those who don't. That is very important because you need to internship to become licensed. There are high rates of underemployment among law school graduates, so it's advised to attend a T14 law school. Those graduates tend to be picked up quickly by law firms.

 

Completing an associates entirely at TESC is no where near the cost of AW or PF.

But that is effectively a business degree and I would argue that you would be more versatile getting a regular B.S. in Business Management and using your associates as a specialization.

 

I agree with those two but you still IMO have a fairly small number of these types of schools that most people would recognize as "prestigious".

 

There are only eight Ivy League schools. Most people would see these schools as prestigious: Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago, Duke, California Institute of Technology, John Hopkins, Vanderbilt, University of Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, University of Virginia, Carnegie Mellon, etc. There is a reason why some use the term "Public Ivy." These schools are seen as competitors to the "elite" education offered by the Ivy League schools.

 

I agree with the idea behind your post but feel the need to point out that most of the schools you listed are not "public" schools and so can't really be considered as part of a list of "public ivy" schools.

 

I didn't list the Public Ivies and wasn't referring to that list as Public Ivies. Sorry for the confusion. I should have added an "additionally" or something to indicate that I was moving on to another point.

 

Alright so you have about 2 dozen or so schools out of the over 4000 colleges and universities in the U.S.

Ivy League: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Yale

Elite: Stanford, MIT, University of Chicago, Duke, California Institute of Technology, John Hopkins, Vanderbilt, University of Notre Dame, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon etc..

Prestige drops off fast after these.

I only removed the University of Virginia even though it is an official "Public Ivy" school as I would argue at how well known it is nationwide. Either way I am sure you can add or take off a name or two but I do not believe the list is going to change drastically based on a school being known for educational excellence rather than their athletic teams.

Now if we get back to the original argument, no one is referring to any of these named schools when they talk about considering schools here for "prestige". Even if you look at the schools from Straighterline none of these are on there. Don't get me wrong I consider many of those schools on their list good just not prestigious.

So I would argue that I do not believe "prestige" is a legitimate condition for consideration as none of the popular schools recommended here really have any. I would also argue that a school like Norwich University has as much "prestige" as any on the list from Straighterline. Even still I would feel that unless your employer was an alumni they probably would be unfamiliar with any of those schools anyway.

 

Here's the original list of public ivies from 1985.

College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
University of California (campuses as of 1985)[6]
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Texas at Austin
University of Vermont (Burlington)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)

Here's a more recent expanded list

College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
University of California (campuses as of 1985)[6]
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Texas at Austin
University of Vermont (Burlington)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
Western[edit]
University of Arizona (Tucson)
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Davis
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Colorado Boulder
University of Washington (Seattle)

Great Lakes & Midwest[edit]
Indiana University (Bloomington)
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
Michigan State University (East Lansing)
The Ohio State University (Columbus)
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
University of Iowa (Iowa City)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis–Saint Paul)
University of Wisconsin (Madison)

As to the question of prestige, I believe you have to create a bit of context with that question. Are we talking about the average "man on the street" or are you talking about "people who know?" I believe that "people who know" are well aware of the good schools, public and private. Executives, hiring managers, etc. This is especially true of schools that have a very good regional reputation despite the fact that they may be relatively unknown in other parts of the country.

 

This is why I am arguing that name recognition is not the same as prestige. Of the well known public-ivy colleges I would argue they are recognized because of their athletic programs. IMO almost every school with a state name or the word "State" in their school name is classified the same by employers with a handful of exceptions (e.g MIT, Caltech ect...). Also how easily do people confuse names like Penn State with the University of Penn?

I have dealt with a lot of hiring managers and executives and believe their knowledge of schools is completely hit or miss trending towards not knowing much in this area. Sure they have all "heard" of these schools but place educational weight towards the ones I classified as Ivy League and Elite. So my argument is these people are largely not in the know.

So now you have a new problem - you can have regional prestige vs national. I would argue that the ones classified as Ivy League and Elite would be well recognized nationally while the public-ivy schools mainly regionally. These leaves the following options for prestige to matter IMO,

1. Go to an Ivy League or Elite school recognized nationally.
2. Go to a public-ivy school recognized in the region you are applying for employment.
3. Go to a school that has a nationally recognized athletic team.
4. Go to a school that your future employer is an alumni of.

Otherwise go to the cheapest accredited school.

 

And my question is quite simply this, is the abstract sense of prestige that is gained from attending an elite school worth the price that you pay for it? Clearly this must be judged on a case by case basis and there is a whole field of subjective value that must be accounted for in the calculation but my opinion is that the answer is no, especially if you're paying the bills on your own. Obviously there are many others who disagree with me and that's OK, I don't need to changed their minds. The importance lies more in asking the question than with coming to any particular conclusion.

 

There are two separate issues being discussed. The first is that Ashworth only having 4 RA partner schools limits one's options to schools that might not fit one's needs. These needs could be low cost, self-paced format, degree availability, programmatic accreditation, etc. WGU is self-paced, but their degree offerings are rather limited. There are a lot of common degree programs they do not offer. WGU might be cheap and offer the format someone wants, but it might not offer the degree. APUS might offer cost and the degree, but not the desired format and so on.

One is not limited by their associate's major. Many people complete an associate's in one thing and go on to complete a bachelor's in another. I had a CJ student who wanted to study social work for her bachelor's. I was once in an associate's in CJ program and ended up finishing a BA in Social Science. I don't consider any of those drastic changes because they all lead to similar types of jobs.

The second issue being discussed is prestige. This might be an issue for some, but usually not for the same group of people who would choose Ashworth in the first place. I never implied that Straighterline's partner colleges are prestigious. It's just nice that they have almost 80 regionally accredited schools one can transfer credits to. With all of that said, Ashworth students are not limited by their partner colleges. As I mentioned before, these partner colleges already accepted NA credits before the partnership. Liberty University, Bellevue, and University of Phoenix accept NA credits as well as many other RA schools. You just have to spend a little time searching. I wouldn't limit myself to Ashworth's tiny list of partner schools.

 

I think it also highlights why, given a choice, people are often advised to go with an RA school.

 

The great debate continues. I think both sides have some great points.

If I was starting over from scratch I'd go to Ashworth and finish at Norwich. But that's just me.

 

I'd add most if not all to your quote. "Most if not all people are often advised to go with an RA school". Someone mentioned earlier that a young person fresh out of high school is never advised to go to a college with NA and/or DEAC accreditation. Certainly in my daughter's situation (she's a sophomore at UT-Austin) it was no question that she would attend an RA school, same as her older brother as he did in attending and graduating from UT-Dallas. It just makes/made the most sense for them at this stage in their life. But there are lots of adults that visit Degreeinfo that want other options. And they want advice from us. They work long hours, are business owners, are disabled, are (you name it) etc. and for whatever reason do not want to attend an RA school and to them an NA/DEAC school is fine. I'm one of those students. And what I'm afraid of is that this site is getting away from what its intended purpose was. I believe it was founded on the principle that not everyone is a round peg that fits in a round hole. If we want to say that RA is the best and only choice, then it may be time to wrap up this experiment and go home. Still I prefer to think that we're on the cutting edge of all distant learning and we should consider all potential learners. Sure we have our differences but please be aware that there are others, and you can call them outliers if you choose, that feel and think that NA/DEAC colleges fit their particular situation.

 

There is almost always an RA alternative to an NA school, especially now. Take Patten University, for example. They are RA, self-paced, cheap, and offer payment plans similar to Penn Foster and Ashworth. The number of RA schools offering cheap, competency-based programs is growing rapidly. If you need to use financial aid (there is nothing wrong with using the Pell Grant if you qualify and many people can't afford $300 per month), there is WGU, Northern Arizona University, Brandman, College for American (SNHU), and many other schools that can accept financial aid for their self-paced, competency-based programs.

 

I believe that the general attitude expressed on this site now is more accepting of NA degrees than in the past.