Columbia Southern University

I think that's what he meant. It was from his survey of 335 registrars. Maybe I'm not understanding correctly what "registrars" means. I took it to mean RA schools. Below is the quote from the thread "Columbia Southern University...online? DETC accredited"

 

This is correct. A few years ago I spoke with NJIT, who said they would accept transfer of up to 9 credits from other universities of equal or better standing. When I asked if this meant that they would reject transfer of credits from an RA school that they considered inferior, they said explicitly yes. They would also not allow transfer of credits from a non-U.S. university, regardless of its excellence.

 

Want to see a difference? Look at the spelling, grammar and syntax of the DETC graduate!

 

I guess that was directed at me. Since I'm not a DETC graduate yet it doesn't really apply. I guess they didn't learn me right at that RA school (National-Louis University) that I received my BA from in 93. Actually, for having a learning disability, I think I've come pretty far. Much further than most people ever expected of me. But I suppose you're right; I still have some things to work on.

 

As you've conceded, DETC degrees may be a problem for "well known and big" companies; they're just not as portable and have no advantages (except for the common exceptions of certain religious programs or unusual subject matter).

I also do not accept the implied assumption that small or not-well-known companies accept DETC degrees more than large and well-known companies. Why should they? They have a smaller staff and must be even more judicious about hiring deadwood.

I also disagree with your Amberton comment. While it is true many companies will not have heard of Amberton (or a DETC program), that is not to say they will simply shrug their shoulders and say, "I've never heard of them so there is no reason to check them out." More and more, even small companies are using credential evaluators to check on the criminal and educational background of applicants. (My company does that.)

Really, all these posts are just dodges around the issue that DETC and unaccredited degrees have no concrete advantages over RA degrees and have major disadvantages. If they have concrete advantages, spell them out. Yout basic argument against this is "maybe you can get by with it sometimes," but that is hardly a convincing argument.

 

DETC is a recognized national accrediting body. Lets not confuse DETC schools with unaccredited ones. As for advantages over RA degrees, there may be none. "Major disadvantages," I don't see many disadvantages for future employment.

The only employment disadvantage is that major companies (Fortune 100's and Wall Street) do not hire upper management MBA's from schools that aren't part of their core recruitment list. That leaves not only DETC schools out but also the MAJORITY of RA schools. Mr. Highsmith, I think you pointed out that you would simply throw away the resume of an applicant from a DETC school; so we can just add you and your company to the list. I won't apply there either.

If there are any "MAJOR" and "CONCRETE" EMPLOYMENT disadvanates of an MBA degree from a DETC school, other than what I listed above, please spell them out.

 

From CSU's website it states:
"Columbia Southern University is an institutional member of the American Council on Education (ACE)."

Is this the samething as submitting their courses for evaluation. If it isn't, how is it different?

 

The problem is that most mainstream colleges or universities are RA. Therefore, DETC is measure against all of these schools. Obviuosly, this makes it more difficult to be considered equal in the minds of schools administrators, as well as potential students.

 

Drew you make some good points and some incorrect ones. A DETC degree is, of coarse, an accredited degree. It does have serious disadvantages as many employers, large and small, won't see it as a regular degree. DETC is more vocational than academic. That is why it is not accepted at nearly all Universities. That said it is a great deal better than an unaccredited one.

 

I just went to the American Council on Education's website (www.acenet.edu) and discovered the purpose of ACE's College Credit Recommendation service. The purpose of this service is stated on their site at http://www.acenet.edu/calec/corporate/what-we-do.cfm:

"We use college faculty to determine if formal training programs are equivalent to traditional courses taught by accredited colleges across the country."

As I looked through the "ACE-Reviewed Training Course Providers" they are mostly all non-degree granting institutions providing professional training.

There are several DETC accredited colleges and universities that are institutional members of ACE. These ACE member schools are more likely to be listed as a cooperating college; several DETC colleges are listed that way. "Cooperating colleges are accredited colleges that agree to consider your ACE college credit recommendations for courses, apprenticeship programs, and examinations."

An ACE institutional member such as Columbia Southern has a completely different review process. There are some cases where an ACE member school may also request to have selected courses reviewed and recommended for college credit by ACE's College Credit Recommendation Service. Customized cooporate training programs and non-credit / non-degree certificates would fall under this evaluation.

Because Columbia Southern is an institutional member of ACE there is no need for them to have individual college credit courses evaluated -- these college credit courses are already recognized by ACE.

 

Hmmm... Not quite. To get it "from the horse's mouth," so to speak, I suggest the following article by Jo Ann Robinson, Director of the ACE College Credit Recommendation Service: Education to Earn a Degree" target="_blank" class="externalLink" rel="nofollow">. In particular, the follow Q&A should be of interest:

• Q. How can I better my chances of getting my distance education work or other nontraditional learning accepted at a college?
  
  A. There are various procedures in place which make a favorable decision more likely. For example, when requested by the institution, the American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendation Service (formerly ACE/PONSI) reviews courses offered by Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) schools and, based on a team of college faculty members’ evaluations, makes credit recommendations for the courses. These evaluations ascertain that the learning acquired through distance education courses is comparable to that acquired through courses offered on a traditional college campus.

 

Somehow I wrecked that URL. Should be: Using Your Distance Education to Earn an Academic Degree

 

Hi Drew

I guess I am scratching my head a bit after reading your posts.

First, both you and Peter French come here and post to discuss ideas and then after going back to AED you make rather slanderous comments about degreeinfo.com . In both cases it seems based more on lack of agreement than any legitimate beef with the forum. Do you really want people who disagree with what you've written and clearly see the lack of validity to falsely agree with you? Do you think agreement with a spammer, Dan Peters AKA a thousand other names, shows any validity to your thought?

Second, in your AED posts you repeatedly comment on the research you done that shows DETC accreditation to nearly equal the utility of RA in the business world. What exact research have you done that shows this? I certainly have seen nothing that even suggests this.

 

Dave,

I made no slanderous comments about degreeinfo.com. Maybe you would like to quote what I said. However, there are a few people at this forum that I think are trying to mislead myself and others in to believing things that are not true. If I find this to be the case then I would say that's a "legitimate beef." I am hoping to have one particular issue regarding ACE solved tomorrow. I will post the results to my query and my source regarding this issue as soon as I get an answer.

Over the last 19 months I have asked several company HR managers at 4 different recruitment fairs what their company policy's are and their opinions regarding DETC accredited MBA programs. I was usually the first person that they had discussed accreditation with. Most HR managers were not educated on the subject to any degree. And, most companies had no policy regarding accreditation. This information has helped shape my decision process. I'd thought about doing hard research and publishing my results but since I am now a student at a DETC accredited school my work would have a distinct bias to it.

For the record...the AED posts had nothing to do with degreeinfo.com.

 

1) You've "shaped your thinking process" based on HR managers not being educated on the subject and not having a policy. Does that make sense? If they become educated and decide against you, what then? Banking on the ignorance of HR managers is not exactly a huge endorsement for DETC.

If you look at DETC's well-designed website, you will find that there are only about 40 degree-granting institutions accredited by DETC. Roughly a third of the programs are health and law paraprofessional programs, granting terminal associate's degrees and certificates. Another tenth are religion programs or miscellaneous programs. I leave all the above from the discussion. What is remaining is roughly only 20 institutions offering programs in business, CIS, ET, and undergraduate health programs. For all the discussion about engineering degrees on AED (not ET degrees), there is but a single DETC institution that offers engineering degrees (unless UNISA does, but that is another discussion altogether). Compare this to the 3000+ other institutions in the US. Is it any surprise that companies don't have a policy on DETC? Many of them may never have even come across someone with a DETC degree or didn't distinguish it from an unaccredited degree. (Don't get out your abacus on the percentages above; they are based on eyeballing, which was complicated by the fact that many schools had programs in several categories.)

2) You should be able to do research regardless of your opinion. That is the hallmark of advanced degrees. An MBA graduate should be able to rationally how much his company's products stink compared to the competition no matter how unpleasant the result. That is how companies improve their products and survive...unbiased research by a biased party. You should also know the difference between bias (caused by a stakeholder position) and opinion.

Even though I'm not a stakeholder in any sense of the word that would result in bias against DETC, I'm sure you think that I am based on the completely silly AED nonsense, so you should be impressed by the research on the "National versus Regional" thread, which shows the DETC acceptance of a large, diverse group: all the Florida public and private institutions that I could find.

 

Actually, I was banking on the fact that the companies I'm interested in have not formed a negative opinion regarding DETC accreditation. They don't seem to have an opinion on RA vs. NA accredited degrees at all. As for the HR managers lack of knowledge on RA vs NA / DETC, I have found a similar lack of knowledge/opinion among college faculty as well. Basically, outside of this forum, there are a lot of people who don't care or don't have an opinion regarding the RA vs. NA debate.

You say you have no stake... Then why do you care? You are cetainly going out of your way on AED for someone who isn't a stakeholder. Things must be slow at the firm.

 

Not according to the Bear survey of college admissions officials, which included 322 respondents. (A considerably more relevant group than faculty members when it comes to degree acceptance.) There was a significant difference between the acceptability of RA degrees and NA degrees. It wasn't even close. Even degrees from foreign universities were significantly more acceptable than NA.

Most--almost all--of the major DL schools do not accept credits and/or degrees from DETC-accredited schools. Check out my article at www.degree.net for more information.

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence pointing to less acceptance of NA degrees in the workplace, especially as described in companies' tuition reimbursement policies. Many explicitly require RA.

Rich Douglas

(Edited to change an adverb.)

 

The actual number of respondents that do not accept or almost always do not accept DETC was 38%. Dr. Bear has even conceded that acceptance in the work place is most likely higher.

I read your article and I'm sure everything you wrote is true. But you only interviewed 7 schools and here I'm not sure how you interpreted "most--almost all." Based on what I read, it looks like 6 don't have a specific policy towards the acceptance or lack there of regarding DETC. Strayer, for instance, requires an "accredited" degree and makes no specific reference to RA vs. NA at their website.

 

What I'm going to say is unscientific and based only on my anecdotal experience.

But I have talked to a number of people in professional contexts who have referred to "accredited schools". When I pointed out that there is more than one kind of institutional accreditation, they were surprised. They didn't really know much about the subject, but were intending refer to schools that have the same kind of recognition as the usual suspects here in Northern California: UC, Stanford, Santa Clara and USF, the various CSUs and so on.

That's RA, and its the only kind of accreditation that most people without specialist knowledge in higher education are acquainted with. So when employers specify "accredited", they probably often mean RA pretty much by default.

It seems to me that most people are aware of two things: RA and degree mills. If they are aware of any other kinds of accreditation, it's professional accreditation like the ABA. They don't know about non-standard forms of institutional accreditation. They haven't stopped to think that some non-accredited schools may not be degree mills. To most people the words 'acredited' mean 'regionally accredited', and the words 'not accredited' mean 'degree mill'. It's kind of an either-or thing in many people's minds, I think.

Perhaps the small but mighty DETC and TRACS contingent can educate people. But do you really want to be the one to have to do it?

 

You are mistaken. (Or I misled you.) Of the schools I contacted, only one said they would consider credits and degrees from DETC-accredited schools. All the others flatly refused to consider it.

Turn it around: develop a list of major DL schools that DO accept credits and degrees from DETC-accredited schools as a matter of published policy. Or, contact schools and construct such a list. Then share it.

What I wrote was an article, not a scientific survey. But go ahead and contact as many major DL schools as you'd like; you'll find the same thing: credits and degrees from DETC-accredited schools are not generally acceptable to RA schools, even nontraditional, DL schools.

While about a third of respondents to the survey flatly rejected such credits and degrees, the rest rated their acceptance rather low (as a whole). The acceptability of credits and degrees from NA schools was less than half (quantitatively measured, 47%) of that of RA schools with some residency component.

When asked, Strayer was an emphatic "no" regarding DETC credits and degrees, BTW. (That doesn't mean they wouldn't do it, of course. But they say they don't.)


Rich Douglas