DEAC in Canada - need help ASAP

It's a denial. Reasons contain a couple of obvious falsehoods and a killer argument "it is the view of the Panel that the College's assessment, which was conducted by trained Assessment Analysts, has substantially more merit than the Applicant's personal comparison". I'm filled with white rage now. Next step, I'll get hold of her lawyer and we'll see what needs to be done to bring this to Divisional Court.

Also, I plan to submit a complaint to the Fairness Commissioner. It is obvious that the appeals process is just for show. Think about it: the whole thing is three guys meeting 10 times a year to resolve 65 appeals. They didn't even have time to thumb through our submission. They in all seriousness write that "Ashworth College is not recognized in its Province of Jurisdiction to offer Early Childhood Education training" - based on WES report, so it seems, that says no such thing. Completely ignored are the documents from, you know, GEORGIA STATE AGENCIES IN CHARGE OF RECOGNITION OF ECE CREDENTIALS, for cryin' out loud! Also, they inexplicably parrot College's claim that AS in ECE is "not a diploma or degree program of at least four-semesters in length", when even WES described it as a diploma program precisely four semesters in length. Oh, and 24 years of professional experience is not an equivalent of a few weeks of field placement.

 

Well, keep fighting the good fight.

I always recommend against NA schools when it comes to licensure or regulation to avoid this type of scenario. What's especially peculiar is that when we played around with the WES estimate thing it lists Ashworth among its schools and the preliminary output shows that degrees from Ashworth are, indeed, equivalent in Canada.

Naturally, the College could avoid the whole issue by basically changing their regulations to say "Yeah, so, if you have U.S. credentials, we only accept RA." That's really all they have to do to win the day (going forward). Instead, they require that the school be authorized to award degrees. Well, it is. The state of Georgia gives Ashworth authority to issue degrees and DEAC is a recognized accreditor. Just out of curiosity, aside from the letter from John Bear, did you include an assessment from a company other than WES?

 

An Update and an Experiment

So, there are really two issues at play with the issue Stanislav has presented:

1. WES evaluations of DEAC accredited degrees

2. The acceptance of DEAC accredited degrees by Canadian regulatory authorities

One of the reasons I've been following this matter closely is that I expect, within 2-3 years, a position with one of my company's largest subsidiaries will open up in Toronto. It's a position that I'd be very interested in applying for and exploring the possibility of even if I ultimately decide not to accept it.

Without going into terribly too much detail, it would be a VP of HR position at a smaller company. I'm likely never to reach the VP level where I am. Frankly, it is likely my best shot at ever sitting in the executive suite (based upon current career trajectory). Where I work is great but the director position above me is slated to be eliminated after the eventual retirement of the incumbent. It's one of those flattening of management hierarchy situations. It will basically be a bunch of mid-level managers reporting directly to an executive with no more senior managers. Times they are a changin'.

To that end I've been exploring the possibility of applying for permanent residency in Canada to make myself an eligible candidate for the Canadian job. The express entry skilled worker route appears to be my best shot. The two things I don't have readily available are an evaluation of my education and a language test (either English or French, but one is required).

Language test? I'm pretty much banking on not failing an English proficiency test.

Educational evaluation? I won't lie. What held me up to this point was my imagination running wild with me about what WES might say about my MSM. Will they say that my degree simply doesn't cut the mustard and comes from an "unrecognized" institution (as they did with Stanislav's acquaintance and her Associates by declaring it equivalent to a Diploma from an Unrecognized School)? Will the review of my degree look identical to the review of a diploma mill degree?

I don't know.

So, I decided to get my evaluation for two (and a half) reasons:

1. That discomfort is a stupid reason to hold up something I want to do with my life

2. I contacted WES before dropping the money on an evaluation. I asked if DEAC was just regarded as a non-entity and if I would get the same result as if I had a diploma mill degree. Now, all of this could have been sales talk to try to just get me to commit, but I was told:

a. Degree level matters - The associates degree is not as common in Canada as it is in the U.S. Bachelors and Masters degrees are common, however. Things that we award associates degrees for might only be equivalent to a Canadian diploma. A masters degree, however, generally speaking will be regarded as some sort of post-secondary qualification. So, there's a chance my MSM could be labeled a Graduate Cert or Diploma. But that doesn't mean I can't "use" my degree in Canada. My employer would ultimately have to weigh the opinion of WES against things like the fact that the company's parent paid for the degree and recognizes it as a Masters.

b. Admission, transfer and terminal degrees- This was interesting. A terminal degree is naturally going to be regarded somewhat differently than a degree that may be used for admission or transfer to a university. Likewise, a bachelors degree might be viewed more favorably than an associates degree or an incomplete bachelors degree. Once the B.A. is awarded it is up to the university if they will accept it for admission. But admission into grad school is a different animal than credit transfer (which is actually what you do when you use an associates to apply for a bachelors program). This, I was told, is also why the degree checker does not contain "Associates" in its list of degrees.

c. Diploma Mills - If you put in a diploma mill degree, WES uses some pretty strong language to indicate that it shouldn't be accepted. While the review of a DEAC degree may not be favorable it is really nothing compared to what you get when you try to throw out an Almeda degree.

d. Regulated professions - If a degree ties to a regulated profession it might be analyzed differently than a degree that isn't tied to a regulated profession. While they didn't provide an example, the first one that comes to mind would be Massachusetts School of Law. They are RA but are not ABA. Graduates qualify for the bar in MA but you're at the mercy of other states bar admission guidelines. If you went to Canada with a JD from this school the RA might not prevail in having your degree recognized as "equivalent" to a Canadian JD because the degree lacks the thing that makes a JD widely recognized in the U.S.


So, none of this will help Stanislav's friend. But I think, regardless of the outcome of the evaluation, this will all be useful information to members of the board. I've already requested all transcripts to be sent to WES Canada and I will post the results as soon as they are received.

It may come out that no DEAC degree is going to be favorably reviewed by WES and anyone hoping to cross hte border with a degree from a DEAC school would be wise to reconsider their educational choice. Or, perhaps, there is simply more nuance to some of these decisions. The preliminary degree tool states that a PhD from Rockefeller would be the equivalent of an Earned PhD in Canada (Rockefeller is NA through NYS Board of Regents). So, are these reasonable returns from the checker or is the checker just trying to sucker me in to buy evaluations that will come out drastically different? No idea. But, since I need the eval anyway, maybe we can all learn something.

 

Neuhaus,
Good luck with your career, and with becoming a fellow "new Canadian".

FWIW, I'm pretty sure Bachelor's is an acceptable entry point for the Express Entry. Moreover, under new rules, a job offer amounts to half the points, so you'll be a shoo-in and will be invited to apply. Other items on the list are almost irrelevant. Just make sure the company goes through the Labour Market Opinion (LBO) process with CIC for your position.
It will be interesting to know what WES will say about your degree. My friend could easily knock out Ashworth's Bachelor's in ECE, if that would be in any way helpful. But at the moment, it appears it won't help at all.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get someone at WES to respond? We weren't as lucky. An explanation of their report, coming from them, could help enormously. The Review Panel interpreted WES report to conclude that her degree "is not recognised in its Province of Jurisdiction" and that "it doesn't meet College's criteria". I'm pretty sure WES is not implying any of these things. It would be comically wrong in the first case and seriously overreaching in the second. My opinion of WES professionalism propped a few notches through this process, but they simply cannot be (and in fact are not) that clueless. I'll ask her attorney if he could reach to WES to obtain an official letter of clarification.

 

My bachelors degree is sufficient for express entry. That's one of the reasons why I decided to go ahead with the evaluation. I suppose I was holding back because I was concerned that a negative evaluation of my MSM would appear to be like I was trying to pass off a diploma mill degree. That doesn't sound like it will be the case but we'll see.

I will post the results when I receive them. It's interesting to note that while the accreditation issue did come up with ECE, their letter seems to indicate that the WES opinion was only part of the reason for their decision. So, it's possible they might have taken issue with an ECE Associates from an RA school as well if they didn't like the side-by-side course comparison. It's hard to say.

Ashworth has articulation agreements with Western Governors and APUS, however. So those might be potential avenues to complete the bachelors. Having an RA bachelors might push things in a different direction.

I submitted a contact form with my questions and I received a pretty thorough response. It's worth noting that I send my request very shortly after submitting a preliminary form (which included my email address). So, it's possible that I received "expedited attention" because their system might flag inquiries from the same email address that recently submitted a preliminary tool check (as it would be a "warm" lead). Or, it might just have been their normal processing time. It took them about 4 business days to get back to me. However, from the WES website:

While it's possible that WES indeed says "RA or the highway" there are simply a few instances where doing that would not be appropriate. The most obvious one I mentioned above. Rockefeller University is NA through the NYS Board of Regents. Their PhDs are well represented on the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical School. Likewise, Sloane Kettering has a graduate program accredited by the Regents. So, it's possible that WES has a general rule about "RA or the highway" but they also have an expansive database with school information. They could very easily just treat these exceptional instances on a case-by-case basis.

It's also possible that WES's assessment of the Ashworth AS as being equivalent to a Diploma from an unrecognized school may have simply been saying that it was unlikely to transfer to a Canadian university (and thus, would be treated like a non-credit bearing certificate).

I just find it a bit odd that WES would include Ashworth in its list on the preliminary checker, kick out results that a Bachelors or Masters from the school would be equivalent in Canada and then have the real evaluation say they are completely worthless, wholly unrecognized and basically a useless credential. I mean, if they feel that way about Ashworth it would stand to reason that their preliminary checker should be adjusted to return a negative result (or simply don't include it at all).

It sounds like they definitely prefer RA. But it also sounds like ECE had some creative interpretation of the evidence presented to them. Their report includes weird phrases like "we acknowledge that Ashworth College has DEAC accreditation through the State of Georgia." So it's a bit difficult to determine where WES leaves off and where ECE picks up.

We can also speculate until the end of time what WES says. Ultimately, hopefully my evaluation will shed some light on how useful a DEAC degree is outside of the U.S. I don't know if the PMI accreditation will alter those results (but it may). All I can do is sit back and wait for them to do their thing. I hope we all are able to learn something from the experience.

 

There is nothing worse that believing your own hype or looking for confirmation to believe it. In the US, RA is the gold standard in accreditation. DEAC is not quite there as yet but it may get there in the future. A DEAC education is fine, however, within the US itself, DEAC does come with some perceived limitations which may change over time.Changes are when rules are written asking for an accredited degree RA is the intended standard even though not spelled out. There are always exceptions.

 

I don't have hype, per se. I have insecurity that comes from a traumatic childhood spent with an alcoholic with a severe inferiority complex.

I could have completed an Ivy League degree and I would likely still sit at my desk gnawing on my fingernails for fear that the Oxford grads were making fun of me behind my back.

There's nothing "wrong" with either of my degrees. The rational part of my brain acknowledges and accepts that. The emotional part of my brain sweats when people come into my office and, out of sheer boredom, look at the things on my wall (my diplomas being included). Rational brain says "They're probably looking at the photoset of your European travels." Emotional brain says "They are looking at your degree and thinking they are better than you."

It's a problem. Fortunately, it is one that I am able to keep in control relatively well. While I do compulsively take courses I've been able to ween myself onto MOOCs. I still get the learning experience. I don't get the credit. I also save a lot of money.

And yet, I have a good career and I teach as an adjunct at a community college. I acknowledge my demons and I do my best to work through them. But lingering in the back of my head is lots of doubt. As you said, my degree is "fine" within the US for so many things. I might run into a problem if I wanted to work for NYS. But I would have no issue whatsoever in federal employment.

But an opportunity in Canada? Is this the time when someone will flip their desk over and point an accusatory finger at me?

The answer, most likely, is "no." Nor is my current degree configuration fixed. If I buckled down for a year I could earn an RA (perhaps better yet, a degree from Athabasca?) Masters degree.

But I also know that I'll feel the same insecurity about any future degree. Earn an EdD? Well, it isn't a PhD. Earn a PhD? Yeah, but it wasn't from a top ranked program. Earn a PhD from a top ranked program? Well, the other candidates produced better research than me.

Recognizing the potentially destructive pattern is useful as it helps me to interrupt it (i.e. just get the damn degree evaluation and apply for Express Entry so you don't miss the opportunity when it comes up). But it's still there. I worked with people struggling to maintain sobriety. It took me years to realize that, like an alcoholic, I will always have this little temptation in my brain trying to lure me to the dark side. Their "dark side" was drugs and alcohol. Mine is self-doubt.

The reality is that while someone might not respect my degree my degree was undeniably legitimately earned and conferred by a legitimate institution. You can question UMT. But it is beyond the sort of questioning that we subject a school like Atlantic International to.

Let's be real, it also wasn't just hte MSM that held me back from getting this evaluation. It was a convenient excuse to not challenge myself and explore the world outside of my comfort zone. Moving to Toronto would be exciting. It would also involve a lot of work. The long term benefits would be immense but the short term impact on my family would be stressful. So I get that I was finding convenient reasons to not put forth the work.

The plus side is that this evaluation is going to answer a lot of questions for me (i.e. Do I stand a shot of selection through Express Entry?). But it can also answer some questions for the rest of us which may be helpful.

For example, I noted that the preliminary checker does not have UMT listed. But, when you are filling out the actual application UMT auto populates. Just for fun, I also checked and found the University for Peace and Swiss Management Center also auto-pop. The results of those evaluations? Your guess is as good as mine. But the fact that they are in the database is a good sign.

Schools that didn't pop? Atlantic International and Almeda. Interpret those results however you like.

 

You know, I joined this board in 2002. I a well aware of perceived limitations of a DEAC degree. I am also aware, and shared in this very topic, that the CECE requirements do not amount to being "the gold standard". They say, quite explicitly, "recognition in its own jurisdiction". And, in the great State of Georgia, NA is, quite explicitly, recognized. Their own state system of technical colleges, every one of which offers ECE training, was entirely COE just a short while ago and is not fully RA to this day. Plus, Ontario has one private career college recognized for ECE, and accepts Alberta credential where you can get your training from a friggin' CDI College campus. We're not asking for something unreasonable here, just consistent application of their own rules as currently stated. Bear in mind that CECE is not a school or employer - they are a professional regulator empowered by statute.

 

My feel for EE is that if you have a LMO offer, you're in; if you don't, you need to be young, supremely educated and fluent in English or French (and preferably have a spouse to give you additional points) to even stand a chance. The scale is completely lopsided in favor of the job offer. I'm lucky to get in when I did.
Perhaps you should apply sooner rather than later, because rules might change again. The reform the Cons implemented was ideology-motivated, and our brand-new Government led by the hunkiest head of Gov't in the friggin' world will probably tinker at least a bit at some point. I am encouraged by the fact that the new Minister is a highly accomplished and educated person. My Citizenship app was handled when Mr. Jason Kenney was minister. I'm not a fan of him.

 

From my reading of the process there is no real penalty to applying now (without an offer) and waiting in the pool for selection. If I get called, hey cool! If I don't, I can sit in the pool a while longer. If I get an offer while in the pool I can update my status accordingly and potentially get called sooner. If my time in the pool expires, I can try again.

The vacancy will not exist for 2-3 years. It's also possible that the job will disappear in that time or other circumstances will arise. But there's no penalty for getting the paperwork in now and being ready to seize an opportunity.

I like NYC. But I honestly don't picture myself moving back there (as much as my mother would like me to do exactly that). Toronto "feels" a bit more accessible to me and the presence of a major airport means I can visit sweet home Brooklyn much easier than I can from here.

So, just in terms of long-term career viability and opening up doors in places I'd really like to work, this is probably a good move beyond the single opportunity that may be available in two years.

I also might get the permanent residency invite, get a job offer and ultimately decide to stay here. But the possibility is pretty exciting at the very least.

 

What he/she said. Plus this: DEAC has been accrediting schools awarding academic bachelor's degrees and higher for 35 years now, and they're not even close to comparability with RA. Yeah, it might happen. But not in your lifetime, it seems.

 

Thanks for the clarity. That is what I was trying to get to, DEAC is not quite there as yet. This is not a knock on DEAC but just an acknowledgment of a point in time in Deac's progression.

 

No one is suggesting that DEAC is equivalent to RA. Frankly, it's irrelevant. Degree evaluation, for purposes of immigration and employment, tends to deal more with whether a degree is lawfully granted and issued under appropriate regulation in the home country. You can take the USMLE if you've graduated from a medical school that appears in the World Dictionary of Medical Schools. So, if we flip open that dictionary are we to believe that every single one of those medical schools, if we were to pluck it from its home country and plop it into the middle of the U.S., would meet all US accreditation standards?

Certainly they need to be fairly close. But some of these schools are frankly dealing with facilities that would be considered sub-par for training nursing aides let alone physicians.

If I receive a degree from a university approved by the ministry of education in a tiny country somewhere remote my degree evaluation is reflecting that my degree was granted under the laws of that country. WES doesn't send evaluators to the school to line the curriculum up to US schools and compare and contrast.

Nor does equivalency tell us a full story. Again, a degree in economics or political science from a soviet era university is not going to be "equivalent" to the same degree taught by a more objective institution. At issue is whether the bearer of the former degree has a degree from a legitimate institution awarded lawfully under the laws of the country governing said institution.

The acceptance of that degree, particularly for purposes of licensure, is a different situation entirely. I might very well have a legitimate medical degree from the Congo. WES can easily say it is equivalent. But if inclusion in the World Dictionary was sufficient, then we likely wouldn't even have the USMLE.

The issue is, do I have a Masters degree and did that Masters degree meet a standard which enables me to hold that Masters out as a legitimate credential in Canada? We shall see. While WES maintains that a diploma mill degree would be strongly noted, I can see how simply stating my degree is "unrecognized" would potentially create an issue, particularly since NA degrees are accepted for federal employment purposes.

But, as I said, there's no clear indicator of what my evaluation will say or if they qualify it in the report. It would be accurate to say that my degree was lawfully granted but with the usual caveats. To say that my degree is unaccredited would be inaccurate. Again, USDOE recognition either means something or it does not. If my masters comes across wholly unrecognized well, then, DEAC has very little utility to anyone outside of the US. That's useful information. If it comes through as being equivalent to a Canadian Masters, well, then the limitations on utility aren't as bad as many of us imagined. And the possibility that the results will fall somewhere in between those two extremes shouldn't be discounted either.

 

Thank you!
...well, logically, it is equivalent - "recognized by federal Ed department" is an equivalency class. "Legitimate" is also equivalency class. It's just weaker than what is usually talked about here.
Frankly, the whole idea of demanding top-flight accreditation in context of the childcare workers (not exactly a lucrative field) is unjustified. But the real question here is that it is in fact NOT required in the rules in question. They're being arbitrary (when they're not simply wrong, such as claiming that AS degree is somehow not a 4-semester program).

 

I'm thinking of the Italian Laurea (pre-Bologna). In some countries it is considered to be equivalent to a Bachelors. In some countries it is considered equivalent to a Masters. In some countries it is considered equivalent to a doctorate.

So, if say, Romania, accepts a pre-Bologna Laurea as a Doctorate but the U.S. only considers the Laurea to be equivalent to a Bachelors does that mean that the U.S. only considers a Romanian doctorate to be equivalent to a bachelors? No, because no one is actually comparing these things side by side. Legal authority plays heavily in the decision as does length of program.

And, let's not forget, the vast majority of the world (including academia) simply doesn't spend nearly as much time thinking about the nuances of accreditation as we do. If they did then what would be the odds of us finding someone with an unaccredited doctorate holding a full time faculty appointment at an accredited school? It happens.

In any case, WES says the standard processing time for my evaluation is around 20 business days (longer depending upon how long it takes for transcripts). So, let's wait and see what, exactly, is said.

Back to Stanislav's issue. So I went poking around looking for related issues and I found this. Though five years old, it appears that at least one province claims to have specifically reviewed Ashworth and decided that it wasn't sufficient for certification. What's curious is that they don't mention the specific program at Ashworth and include it under a heading indicating that "As a general rule, if a program promises to
be shorter through distance education than the program would be through full time study at an approved College or University, it is likely not an equivalent certificate or diploma."

Ashworth has a childcare diploma program. They also have the A.S. It is possible that they consider the A.S. to be insufficient because it is self-paced thus it can be completed in less than two years. It's hard to say. Remember that the CECE is not a university. So their understanding of actual student contact hours are not the same as they might be were they a university. Also, I'm pretty sure Thompson Education Direct became Penn Foster before 2010 (someone correct me if I'm wrong). So it doesn't look like they revisit these evaluations very often.

Incidentally, if one of these schools was going to really stand out and secure higher level approvals, I would put my money on PF before Ashworth. Penn Foster's Vet Tech program is licensure qualifying in a good number of states because of their AVMA accreditation. Their ACE recommendations for a large number of their degree courses also mean that you have a fair chance of flipping those credits over to an RA bachelors at one of the big three. So, PF seems to be a bit ahead of the curve in terms of securing some key programmatic approvals for some of their degrees.

If your friend was interested in finishing a bachelors degree I would probably recommend taking advantage of the Western Governors pathway offered through the Ashworth/WGU articulation agreement.

 

PCDI Canada markets Ashworth's career programs. It doesn't offer degrees. This refers to the Child Care Diploma, almost certainly. BTW, Ashworth is very careful not to promise that AS will be shorter than two years.

 

But you'll notice that it is listed as "PCDI Canada (div Ashworth College)." So, the problem with that statement is pretty obvious. Though they are likely referring to the childcare diploma Ashworth College (which is not PCDI Canada) gets an "honorable mention." So, perhaps they have a difficult time separating the two entities and the potential for confusing these credentials exists.

 

You are right. This may have contributed to the situation. Throw in Stratford Career Institute, unaccredited entity from Montreal offering similar diplomas (their thing is actually called "Diploma in ECE") that apparently burned more than one childcare worker.
Still, "trained evaluators" from CECE can't claim ignorance - especially considering the amount of information we sent their way. Besides, while they are not a university, they are actually approved to become a college ACCREDITOR.

 

If government ignorance were illegal then the world would be an anarchist's paradise.

 

Clearly. On the other hand, if citizens weren't allowed to challenge government ignorance, we'd all live in Putin's Russia.
I really hope you're successful in your immigration and career goals, as well as your WES application (though I wouldn't have high hopes on the latter thing). Toronto really has a lot to offer. Brace yourself for some low-grade anti-Americanism mixed it with the trademark Canadian "politeness". Very common.