BA in 4 Weeks. NOT recognized in Italy !

That is the crux of the matter, I guess.

If a person has had a serious and extended interest in a subject that has involved substantial (if informal) past study, then I have no skeptical doubts. Those are the people I have termed as having "previous exposure" to their subject.

But to suggest that simply living an average person's life is all the preparation one needs for a degree in the social sciences trivializes both those academic disciplines and the degree itself.

If a degree is to have any credibility, at least in my eyes, one would have to display a lot more than basic layman's level knowledge to earn it. One would have to demonstrate some specialist knowledge and have done some serious reading and thinking first. I think that's as true in psychology as in physics.

If it is possible to pass a set of examinations based only on layman's knowledge, without ever having devoted any serious study to the subject either in the past or immediately before the test, then my opinion is that the examinations are suspect.

I think that we have all gotten to the point of repeating ourselves and that my position is already clear on this issue. So this will probably be my last post in this thread.

 

But if we say outright that living an average person's life doesn't prepare one for a degree in the social sciences, aren't we trivializing the importance of experiential learning?


Peace,

------------------
Tom Head
www.tomhead.net

 

Yes, well, just before you toddle off, Bill, could you tell us in what way us lesser lights are inferior to you in terms of undergraduate education? I see nothing here but your prejudice and unsubstantiated, opinionated hand waving. Where did they teach you that method of analysis? Was there an exam? And on a related matter, how did you fare in Humility 101?

It is possible to pass the exams if you have the requisite knowledge. It is not possible to pass them if you do not.

Only a layman's knowledge? If I or another, pass a GRE above the 96th percentile, beating 96% of the other examinees, did those other examinees possess less than "[a] layman's knowledge"? And if those other examinees (in the case of Political Science) were politics and government majors, what does that say of their traditional education, that *this* layman's knowledge was superior to their formal education in the subject, as assessed in the examination?

 

quote: Bill Dayson

Cal Tech is filled with students with astronomical IQ's, and they *work hard*. Nobody gives them degrees just for being there.

Exactly right. As I've said before, it seems to me this issue is one of general higher education standards, rather than whether an intelligent motivated adult earns credit in a proficiency exam. The standard tests are set relative to the the performance of the general college student population at the particular level being examined (upper lower division, or some combination thereof in the case of the GREs).

Ah, controversy! Astonishment! Now here your going to have to provide some detail - 'cause that's where the devil hides.


1)

(a) Precisely *which* GRE subject exams did you take and what were your *scores*?

(b) What, if any, previous formal study did you have in the subjects of the two GRE exam you wrote?

That information will allow others to gage the relevance of the original statement to this discussion. That is why I provided my personal data. It will also add to the rather shallow pool of data on the issue.

2)
You say that for a subject like Psychology, many examinees are not Psych majors.

(a) How many are not Psych majors (percentage and numerical total)?

You go on to say, many of those who *were* Psych majors went to poor schools.

(b) *Which* poor schools, precisely, did the "many" attend? Any how many were "many" (percentage of total and numerical total)?

(c) Most importantly, *where* did you obtain the information/data (citations please)? I have not been able to corroborate any of this.

I wouldn't disagree with that at all, and, if I remember, for "practical" subjects, Excelsior will not allow graduation without the requisite lab time credits. That is, you gotta do the hands on. I'm not certain "practical" includes Computer Science and Biology, but I seem to remember, it does.


I agree with the thrust of your argument, and I'm not getting on your case with the request for more info, and I am not saying you are not correct, but those particular statements could do with clarification and substantiation.

 

That could be. Never thought of it. Another alternative may be to do with volume (number) of examinees. Maybe as the number in any diet is reduced, there is a disproportionate attrition rate in the less-than-wholly-committed would-be examinee. I'd offer in evidence the GRE Political Science exam, tragically no longer with us.

At my exam diet (the last ever but one), there were only about 450 people who sat the thing world wide (I did have the source of the figures and that number surprised me). As stated elsewhere, my score of 680 yielded 96 percentile. That score in previous years where the volume of diet examinees was greater, would have yielded *well* into the 99th percentile - i.e., we see a 3 percentile point drop as number of examinees drop.

My theory is that the 450 examinees left when I sat the exam were the ultra committed budding Henry Kissingers in the world....... and this one poor USNY adult learner several times mistaken for the exam proctor by youngsters who hardly appeared old enough to have completed high school, let alone college. They kept asking me if they could go to the bathroom!

[I told them they couldn't ]

 

This reply will be short--I just spent an hour writing a reply, went to the regent's website in another window and managed to wipe-out my post in progress. I'm just going to ask for clarification before I reconstruct a curriculum and figure out how much is project based, and how much is exam based. Anyway:

Does this mean that if I get a degree in liberal arts, 30 credits of which are based on a CS GRE, I'll be required to take the lab courses, or only if I try to get a CS degree? Same question for BIO, for Chem???

 

I just checked. Labs are required for all the "practical sciences". Number of labs varies by subject and how you construct your concentration in addition to the GRE. Subjects I checked: Biology, Chemistry, Geology, and Physics. I could find no entry for Computer Science, though I always thought it was there when I was a student.

Excelsior do a CIS degree (completely different) and I *thought* they'd dropped any lab requirement for that particular degree. I haven't checked the Technology catalog. However, other degrees in Technology do still required a lab component (kind of important in the case of Nuclear Technology I'd have thought).


Go here for the catalog PDF file: http://www.excelsior.edu/exold/pdf/larts4.pdf

and here for the Technology catalog: http://www.excelsior.edu/exold/pdf/technology4.pdf

 

To make that clearer: I could find no entry at all in the Lib Arts catalog for a Computer Science concentration. (might have appeared I was saying there was no entry regarding the need for labs in a CS concentration)

 

OK, that's what I thought. Here's my critisism of this:

lets look at the Computer Science exam (my PhD is in CS):

Let's break this down:

35% software: 24.5 questions: intro programming (3 credits) OS (3 credits) compilers (3 credits) OO design (3 credits)

20% architecture: 14 questions: architecture (3 credits) circuit design (3 credits)

25% theory: 17.5 questions: Computability and complexity (3 credits) Formal languages (3 credits)

15% math: 10.5 questions: Discrete math (3 credits) linear algebra (3 credits)

5% advanced: 3.5 questions: ??? free elective (3 credits)

This comes out to 33, not the 30 credits you would get from the GRE--BUT:

all the software courses, the circuit design course, and the free elective are all project courses: understanding LALR, LR(1) etc grammers is only 1/2 of a compilers course, the other half is a knowledge of how to write scanners and parsers for these languages. The test only checks the latter (and not very well if you all you get on compilers is about 6 multiple choice questions). If someone comes to me for a job with a degree in anything (liberal arts) but has 30 credits of computer science, I expect certain skills. The GRE CS does not (and cannot) test this. Note this is not only in regard to students with a CS degree. Also if you discount the practical side of the credits I think you will find far less than 30 credits in the knowlege "covered" by the exam...

A similar argument can be made for Biology. A person with 30 credits of Bio is assumed to know how to use a pipet, how to perform certain lab procedures.


this, BTW, is the same critisism I have of the HW MBA. I think thew HW MBA is rigourous and a credible indication of knowledge, but falls short of an MBA
because it has no requirement or assessment of collaberative work or of in-dept work (thesis, project). A look through the archives can find my comments on the HW MBA.

 

Anyone wants to assay a GRE sample Math test?
You can download it here for free: http://www.800score.com/gre-download.html

Enjoy,

Dennis Siemens

 

This of course should be scanners, parsers and code generators

A similar argument can be made for OS, etc.

 

This is NOT the GRE SUBJECT exam in Mathematics. It appears to be a sample test of the math component of the GRE general test.

Once again, it has nothing to do with the GRE subject test in Mathematics.

 

For more on the REAL GRE subject exam in mathematics, go here:

ftp://etsis1.ets.org/pub/gre/990067.pdf

For ACTUAL test questions in the GRE subject exam in Mathematics go here:

ftp://etsis1.ets.org/pub/gre/math.pdf

 

Hello,
I've just recieved a reply to my inquiry from the Schweizerische Zentralstelle für Hochschulwesen( Head office for higher education in Bern, Switzerland). It was about whether Switzerland recognizes Bachelor's degrees that were obtained through examination like CLEP, DANTES and GRE.
Below you can see the question and answer. I don't intend to translate the whole answer but in a nutshell it says, that

1. There are no official rules concerning the recognition of foreign(US) degrees.

2. To recognize or not to recognize a Bachelor or Master degree from a foreign(US) institution it is up to individual schools(of higher education) or employers.



Sehr geehrte Frau xxxx,
>
> Wir diskutieren gerade in einem Internet-message board, die Frage der
> Anerkennung von US-Abschlüßen in Europa und auch der Schweiz. Vielleicht
> könnten Sie so nett sein und die folgenden Fragen kurz beantworten:
>
> Wird ein Bachelor Abschluß, der in den USA an einer
> akkreditierten Schule absolviert wurde, und zu dessen Bestandteil
> Prüfungen wie CLEP, DANTES und GRE gehörten in der Schweiz anerkannt? Wird
> es möglich sein mit dem oben erwähnten Abschluß an einer Schweizer
> Hochschule weiterzustudieren?
>
> Vielen Dank im voraus,
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
>
> Dennis Siemens


Sehr geehrter Herr Siemens,

Bezüglich der Anerkennung ausländischer Hochschulabschlüsse in der Schweiz
gilt es zu beachten, dass die Schweiz bisher nur mit Österreich und
Deutschland bilaterale Aequivalenzabkommen abgeschlossen hat. Diese Abkommen
betreffen jedoch nur die akademische Anerkennung, d.h. die Anerkennung zum
Zweck der Fortsetzung des Studiums an einer Schweizer Universität; sie
betreffen nicht die berufliche Anerkennung. Dies hat zur Folge, dass unsere
Stelle für eine Arbeitssuche keine offiziellen Bestätigungen, sondern nur
Empfehlungen ausstellen kann.

Was die akademische Anerkennung von ausländischen Hochschulabschlüssen
betrifft, so wird diese von den einzelnen schweizerischen Hochschulen
autonom geregelt. Die Hochschulen beantworten solche Anfragen allerdings
meistens nur, wenn ein Kandidat eine akademische Weiterbildung anstrebt. Was
die Anerkennung ausländischer Hochschulabschlüsse im Bereich der
Berufsausübung betrifft, so ist hier die Bewertung Sache des Arbeitgebers.

Für berufliche Zwecke stellen wir Anerkennungsempfehlungen aus. Da wir jedes
Diplom einzeln evaluieren, können wir keine allgemeine Aussage über ein
Master- oder ein Bachelor-Diplom machen.

In der Hoffnung Ihnen hiermit weitergeholfen zu haben, verbleibe ich mit
freundlichen Grüssen
xxxxx

 

Cool! Thanks Dennis. Just about leaves us with what many thought was the likely position, at the start of these longgggg threads. That is, on the question of recognition ....... it depends.

 

Bachelor degree by tests not acceptable to Italy

Maybe I can inject here some testimony.

I am a Canadian fluent in French and English and I did pass a year studying in a French Faculty of Law. All French students who crammed and passed their High school examinations are admitted to Law School in France in first year, not so in Canada and the United States.

I had an Italian girl friend from Milan spending a year in Canada as a paid lab technician in the Faculty of Medicine. Now, that Italian friend was also a Medical student in a Milan Faculty of Medicine and all she had to do was to study the theory in heavy encyclopedic tomes for an exam sometime in June or July ; if she passed these medical exams ( book knowledge) she would be admitted to 4th year Medical school in Milan.

Is that better than credit by examinations for a BA or a BS ? You be the judge.

Victor

 

Ah, one of my favorite goldie oldie threads.

Tony

 

At first I thought why has this thing been resurrected after more than 3 years? But the information is quite valuable. Also, what I found more recently dovetails with this in an oblique way: the illegality-of-use and nonrecognition of Swiss "free university" "degrees", not only in Germany but in Italy as well.

Millists like to get very righteous in defending illgotten recognition by, say, warlord states, but they wind up with their thumbs in their
noses when legitimate governments in legitimate countries like Italy and Oregon say nothing doing.

BTW, before anybody is bothered, I have no beef with credit-by-testing, although I have never had occasion so far to go that route, and so have never entered into the discussions of the method. More power to you if it works for you.

 

I always find it intersting that people are down on the idea expressed in BAin4Weeks concept (eg. using stnadardized tests) and how unusual it is when Univeristy of London has it used it for how long? Of course UofL uses theri own tests while Excelsior, TESC, and COSC use some of their own and other stnadardized test.

Some how if a US school does it it's not quite right, yet if a UK school does it, why that is the way it is supposed to be.

There have been several discussions on masters levels testing out programs, when the whole principal of the Herriot-Watt MBA is to test out (yes they supply study material and you take their tests, but I consider that a detail).

 

After all a degree from Excelsior could be made up of individual courses taken at Harvard, Stanford, Yale et al. I agree with the last poster. American degrees are not automatically validated in Europe, but I don't think they reject schools per se either (Germany being the hardest as Triggersoft said).

Greetings