California College of Health Sciences

Here are my experiences...I have monitored what has been said on the Alt Distance Education for some time concerning this school and if it is legit or not.

1. It is not a diploma mill (i.e. I cant send in my money and get a degree)
2. The courses do require effort. However, they do not require the same amount of effort as a traditional Masters program. If you did stuided as they suggest, you would get alot out of it. If you do what you need to pass with a "B", you will certainly learn, but not as much as a traditional course.
3. Their price of around $5000 for a Masters degree is outstanding. This includes books and materials. If your workplace has tuition cost sharing, you just can beat this deal.
4. Technology speaking, they seem to be a little behind the times. For example, you cant check your grades online, etc... They would save alot of money by going to this format.

The one question I have for this group is their expereince in transfering credits from DETC accreditated institutions like this to traditional institutions. I have always heard that you cant do it, but never heard from anyone who tried.

J nate

 

*IF* the school has submitted courses to ACE for evaluation, the credits may transfer. And a few RA schools *might* on an exception basis accept credits from a DETC school. But both of these seem unlikely with this particular school.

OTOH, a *degree* from this school would probably be accepted by another DETC school toward a masters, and, as Paul Coverstone has shown, occasionally an RA school will accept a DETC bachelors degree toward a postgrad program.

But, all in, I think you'd be better off at an RA school.

 

It's not a big deal, but to set the record straight, I have a BA from Marshall University (RA), an MS from ISIM University (DETC and a good program regardless of who accredited them), and am now in a RA doctoral program with Capella University.

I have always agreed with Chip on the issue of difficulty in transfering DETC credits to an RA school. There are a few that accept DETC as a policy, some more that accept based on individual review, and probably many that do not accept at all. As Chip has indicated, the ACE review (American Council on Education) is the best ticket to credit transfer.
http://www.acenet.edu/calec/corporate/guides-U.html#NationalGuide

"National Guide to Educational Credit for Training Programs"

And last I recall, CCHS has quite a few courses that have been ACE reviewed. There is a rather large book put out every year that lists all courses that have been reviewed and their recommended level and number of credits.

Paul C.

 

The matter of acceptability of various kinds of schools by other schools has been the subject of a large research project we've been doing. (The 'we' includes Rich Douglas, who has been handling the data in sophisticated ways (Analysis of Variance followed by Tukey T tests accounting for Bonferroni adjustments, etc. etc.).

We'll be presenting the findings at the national registrars' convention in Seattle in April.

A preliminary look at the data show that there is a highly significant difference in acceptance between residential regionally accreditation and EVERY other kind of schools, from non-resident regionally accredited to the South Dakota dreadfuls.

DETC schools were 47% as acceptable as residential regionally-accredited, but 'only' 27% of the respondents said they absolutely would not accept them.

Bear in mind that DETC-accredited schools whose coursework has been evaluated (positively!) by the American Council on Education, are likely to have a higher level of acceptance.

More on these matters as we continue plowing through the data.

John

 

I realize that your data is preliminary. However, if the above figures bear out (no pun intended), we may continue to debate the issue of acceptance, but the degree to which we might define terms such as "limited acceptance" or "minimal acceptance" or "generally not accepted" or "significant difference in aceptance" might all have to be better quantified.

In my opinion, 47 percent as acceptable as residential RA in transferring credits is "pretty darn acceptable".

Obviously, this is conjecture, but I do look forward to your published data.

Paul C.

 

Paul writes, regarding DETC acceptance by RA schools: <<In my opinion, 47 percent as acceptable as residential RA in transferring credits is "pretty darn acceptable".>>

We'll be debating this one till the cows come home. But for a school-chooser, the crucial fact is that this is an all-or-nothing situation. Any given school either will or won't accept a certain degree or credit; there is no 'maybe' here. Which is simply a reminder to people to be as sure as they can that any given school will meet their present, and predictable future needs.

No, wait. Having said that, there *is* a 'maybe' situation. My wife did her MA by DL from the regionally-accredited Cal State Dominguez Hills. However, when she was accepted by Vanderbilt for the Ph.D. program, Vandy said, in effect, "We're not certain that your MA properly trained you, so we'll reserve judgment on whether to give you credit for it until you've completed the first year of your Ph.D., and we have seen what kind of work you do." (She did her usual brilliant work, and they gave her the credit. My sense is that this was a rather unusual, but entirely sensible, approach.)

John

 

Did you catch the part where the CCHS VP (now a Harcourt Higher Ed administrator) said their programs "were designed to make money, not to help people" when asked why their programs don't pass California muster?

1. It is not a diploma mill (i.e. I cant send in my money and get a degree)

Have you sent for their "Bedmaking" course yet? For just a few dollars, you can get a certificate of completion for this higher education.

2. The courses do require effort. However, they do not require the same amount of effort as a traditional Masters program. *Snipped* If you do what you need to pass with a "B", you will certainly learn, but not as much as a traditional course.

True. Another reason to avoid them.

3. Their price of around $5000 for a Masters degree is outstanding. This includes books and materials. If your workplace has tuition cost sharing, you just can beat this deal.

Have you read ExitQuietly222's horror story of going through their graduate program? Trust me when I tell you that story is quite unembellished. The situation at CCHS is much worse than he knows.

4. Technology speaking, they seem to be a little behind the times. For example, you cant check your grades online, etc... They would save alot of money by going to this format.

You have to understand that Harcourt is not putting any serious money into CCHS because they're not sure what to do with it. Don't bet the ranch on CCHS being around too much longer.

The one question I have for this group is their expereince in transfering credits from DETC accreditated institutions like this to traditional institutions. I have always heard that you cant do it, but never heard from anyone who tried.

CCHS faced legal action on this one when their promotional materials had the words "credits transfer easily". When graduates found this quite untrue, CCHS was forced to pulled the misleading marketing copy.




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H. Piper
http://harcourtbites.tripod.com

 

I'm sorry, what was all the turkey tests and Beefaroni I'm supposed to be doing? Maybe it's just time for lunch....

Rich Douglas, who never met Bonferroni, but has all their CDs.

 

Seeing that I'm in the middle....

I'm dismayed at the 47% (way lower than foreign schools meeting GAAP, for example), and with the 27% "rejection" rate (again, way higher than foreign GAAP schools). But it tells us something: a lot of RA schools will consider someone with a degree from a DETC-accredited school. And the applicant will eventually chose but one. So the selection pool is shallower, but the outcome can still be as nice.

Rich Douglas

 

But Rich, you've been around aed long enough to have seen the many opinions, stated as near fact, that there is such limited acceptance of DETC credits by RA institutions that it may as well be 0%. I have seen many many posts over the years where the mere mention of acceptance of DETC by RA has brought a veritable wave of responses claiming it is all purely anecdotal and unfounded and that the reality is that it doesn't happen. I was once acused of "sounding like Les Snell" during discussions suggesting acceptance, albeit limited, of DETC by RA. By a different poster, I was once asked "how can you sleep at night" when I suggested to an inquiring post that there is some level of accetance of DETC by RA out there.

No, I say if the 47% number bears out, it is a very significant number when placed in the context of the many opinions previously offered in this forum on the subject.

Paul C.

 

I'm just saying that I wish it was much higher. I do indeed agree with you that many posters have likened it to zero. But fully a fourth rejected them outright, so that hurts. I just think this shows that DETC-accredited degrees will find some acceptance (and far above the 10% level of state-approved degrees, with almost all registrars rejecting them totally). It looks like graduates of DETC-accredited schools will have to do a bit more shopping to find schools that will accept them.

Rich Douglas

 

Rich, I do agree that the choices are still less than for RA transfer. But I would contend, opinion here of course, that 470 out of a thousand is still probably far more than is practically necessary. I mean, the reality is that most people attending a DETC accredited school are already in a very flexible mode and are likely not locked into only a couple of RA's to transfer in to. 470 out of a 1000 is a significant plate from which to choose. And just to reiterate, it is a universe of choice compared to that which has been opined about in this group.

Paul C.

 

We agree in principle. I just wish the numbers were higher. (But they are far and away above how this subject is portrayed anecdotally or emotionally.)

What some people fail to realize, or admit, is that this is a complex subject. The survey numbers give us some insight, especially in the extremes. (Non-GAAP forms of approval were utterly useless, RA was head-and-shoulders above.) But in the middling areas (USDOE-recognized, non-RA like DETC; listing in the International Handbook of Universities) there will both success and failure. As in life.

Rich Douglas

 

Your efforts in this area are valuable to many. Thanks

 

While everyone is talking about DETC, I'm much more interested in the comment about "non-resident regionally accredited".

As I understand it, graduate admissions are usually a two-step process. The admissions office screens the incoming applications and weeds out those that don't meet university-wide admissions criteria. Then the applicaions that pass are forwarded to the relevant departments, where they are subjected to more subjective scrutiny.

So if a non-resident RA degree has a significantly lower chance of acceptance, where does that added rejection occur?

How does a clerk in the admissions office even know that applicant A from University X earned the degree by distance education, while applicant B from the same university studied on campus?

Even in the case of schools that are overwhelmingly non-resident, can university admissions clerks be expected to have memorized all of their names? Or do some universities keep a list of RA schools that they will not accept?

Personally, I'm skeptical. I would think it much more likely that the admissions office would pass any RA degree with a GPA of 3.0 or whatever is required by the university, and let the departments select from among them.

In which case, you are probably looking at other issues as well, and distance education may not be very high on the list.

I'll address that more directly in my next post.

 

I'm a CSUDH graduate who has had some off-the-record conversations with a friend on the staff at a doctoral program in philosophy. What he told me may cast some light on this.

He did predict that if I made a full application, there would be a problem. The problem was not with CSUDH, nor was it even with distance education. The problem is simply that the CSUDH masters is not a masters in philosophy. It is a masters in interdisciplinary humanities, which is something quite different. The problem was that I was in effect changing majors in the middle of the graduate program.

What I was told was that while I most likely would be admitted, I would probably be admitted at the level of a person holding a BA, and would be required to earn a second masters focused specifically in philosophy.

OK. This suggests to me that once an application gets past the admissions office to the department, things get fuzzy. All kinds of considerations enter into the equation, and distance education may not be the most important by any means. They are going to be interested in what courses you took previously, who you took them from, what your proposed dissertation area is, whether you have published anything, what recommendations you have, and (yes) your age, race and gender.

Person A may be admitted to a doctoral program at the masters level, person B may be required to take some additional coursework, person C may be required to do a second masters, person D may be on some kind of probationary admission...