Defending the Non-Wonderful, or Seeking the Wonderful?

Ugh, hm, what's your point?

OK, I'll try to debate your points as I understand it. So you seem to defend "the sufficiency of internal measures in a consumer-driven market", right? Internal measures are just that, internal. They don't communicate anything outside of the organization (by definition). So your point is that internal measures can somehow support the legitimacy of a degree (not education - degree as credential), the whole REASON for wich is communicating something outside of the organization. That's just false. Surely a man with your intelligence can recognize that.

 

BTW, Quinn, since your example of legitimate self-validating institution seems not to be self-validating: care for another example?

 

NONE of your points has anything to do with simple, clear facts:

EITHER the degree a person claims accurately represents his academic achievements OR it does not.

The burden is on the degree holder to demonstrate that his degree is what he claims it to be.

"External validation" (your term) is the ONLY reliable way to demonstrate that a degree is what it claims to be.

All other arguments, from philosophy to civil rights are millspeak smokescreens because they do not, and CANNOT, address these fundamental points. No free market talk can make a bogus diploma anything other than what it is; a bogus diploma.

A thing IS what it claims to be or it is NOT. If it is NOT, saying that it IS is a lie.

 

BTW, Nosborne, I hope you understand when I call to the floor the use of such phrases as "personal dishonesty" that I am doing so not to avoid debate, but am trying to follow etablished debating/logical guidelines, per:

http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/pl.htm

Because these debates can get heated, I am trying to avoid the introduction of such fallacies by referring to that site as a guideline. If I err towards one of the fallacies, please be specific as to which one, and I'll endeavor to avoid it.

 

We can quite easily agree on this point of burden.

Now to agree upon the means of demonstration.

 

They may not communicate directly, but they communicate if they improve quality. Internal measures and process control can do that, and quality is an external product attribute.

Please see my short note (and link to logical fallacies) about such statements as "a man with your intelligence". I'd much rather argue from my position of ignorance than from a position of my intelligence.

 

It's an interesting debate, but, dear God! - Quinn, are you trying to maximize your number of posts or something? I mean, do you actually need to be ASKED what's your proposed "means of demonstration", except "external validation"? Sheesh!

 

Observed how, exactly? I mean, without an "external evaluation" of some sort?

 

Observed in the final results: the dissertation and the scholar.

 

OK great. So let's take it one step further. Let's pretend that the three tier system comes into play. Let's pretend that the layperson on the street knows the three tier system exists. They now want to know how the three tier system works, and how to choose between each of them. At the same time, the members of the three tier system need to maximise revenue and differentiate their products from their competitors (members of the other two tiers). I would see this as a natural progression (unless you see another scenario emerging). What do you see as happening next?

 

1. How is this process different from self-publishing?
2. What is the purpose of the degree in this scenario? You can always give people your book to read.
3. What about those who are not qualified to judge dissertations (many employers are not)?

 

I would also add that such terms and phrases are often the precursors to more aggressive negative statements. Since this thread is, by design, something of a test case, it would be nice if we could all avoid the historical pitfalls. Thanks.
Jack

 

kinda

.......................kinda late, it already started.

 

What if somebody wanted to undertake a degree program totally independent from an academic setting. They just followed a program set forth by a university by themselves and did all work required but it was not with under the auspices of a university.


Should they be allowed to claim they have a degree based on this effort? Could they take this work to an independent evaluator for an assessment thereby allowing a person to have a stand alone degree sans any university affiliation?

Dan

 

Who would grant the degree?
Jack

 

An external evaluator just as was offered for the unaccredited. Why not include the self educated in the conferral of degrees? Why do degrees have to be tied to a university?

Now I'm not sure if I believe that but it seems they have as much right to a degree as an unaccredited degree holder.

Dan


my previous post:

Oops! Should read not under.

 

In a related but diferent subject I am amazed of the double standards applied to higher education sometimes. For foreign educational institutions the GAAP standards only mean that the school is properly licenced by the state in question. The problem with this is that licensing for schools in most third world countries is based on political or economic influence and not on academic merit.

I am going to give you the example I am familiar with, the Dominican Republic.

Questionable Schools:
-Unibe is owned by a prominent banking family, and they operate a medical school. Nicknamed "Unibonche" with is slang for party university.
-UniCaribe is owned by a former functionary of Joaquim Balaguer.
-UNIEMHOS is owned by a former functionary of Jorje Blanco. The medical school was shut down by Leonel Fernandez because they were selling medical degrees and later reopened by Mejia.
-At least six universities came out of nowhere during Hipolito Mejia's goverment started by people in his government.
-O&M is owned by a former functionary of Antonio Guzman.
-UCE is owned by a prominent Senator, and they operate a medical school.
-UCAMAYMA is personaly owned by a catholic bishop (so much for his poverty vows) and it also has a shopping mall and a medical school. Go figure.
-There are many more examples of preferential treatment in opening universities but I think you get the idea.

Decent Schools:
-UASD is a state operated university which is unfortunatelly tainted by too much politics. The first university in the Americas (Yes, it's older than Harvard).
-UNPHU is a not for profit school with good academic standards which unfortunatelly is nearly bankrupt. I taught here on and off for a few years and always gave my paycheck (About US$200.00 a month) to their scholarship fund. The first private school in the country.
-INTEC is a good not for profit engineering school with no problems.
-UCSD is a not-for-profit catholic school.

Yet, you problably have more success with licensing and acceptance with these degrees than with an unaccredited state-approved US degree. Go figure.

 

To avoid post-flutter, I'll try to address several posters in one response.

First, Stanislav:

1. Self-publishing very often only involves the author's judgment, whereas self-validation of an institution involves the institution's collective judgment. Although the instution is one body, it is not one person. For instance, a doctoral advisory board might have 3+ individuals, +1 author.

In fact, it might be said that the self-validation I'm saying is reasonable is more like traditional publishing: governments don't put rules (except in a very broad sense) on what may be published by a publishing house. Publishing houses become known for their books and authors, not their internal editorial process, and editorial committees are neither just the author, nor external accreditors.

2. The degree is an indication that a contract has been fulfilled between the scholar and the institution.

3. I'll get to that in my response to George's questions.

Which is:

The scenario sounds reasonable. Although it will sound odd for me to say it, what I see next is private, specialized accrediation, such as by professional colleges, bodies, or associations, of specific programs, rather than entire institutions, and employers requiring certain accreditations/progam certification, if such is a concern to them.

If, for instance, some employer wished D.Shoe (Doctor of Shoenailogy) candidates to absolutely know how to avoid having shoe nails pierce people's feet, then the International Association of Shoenailologists might form a more perfect union with employers to go into those institutions who wish to have their D.Shoe programs so recognized to do so. The IAS "accreditation" process would be known to both the school and the employer, and might include the requirement "The D.Shoe program shall require the prerequisite Pierce-avoidology 101, and must ..." Moreover, accreditors, just like the institutions whose specific programs they accredited, would have to be be on the ball in terms of their market, since such a system would also have stiff competition amongst those who proposed to be competent and trustworthy evaluators within their field.

This specific program certification, rather than institutional carte blanche might serve the consumer far better than the institutional model. It is a form of external validation, yes, but it is not state hegemony. It would exist to serve specific and restricted purposes within subfields, and would be certification within those subfields.

Now, if there are no associatoins of professionals, for instance, a lack of "General Studies Majors of Australia" type associations, then perhaps this speaks volumes of the certifiability of some majors of post-secondary study. In this case, lacking specific concensus in some fields, like Aesthetics of Graduate Level Origami, there would be a lack of formal recognition by such program specific evaluators. People would be forced to admit that AGLO programs are as diverse as the little paper statues that come out of them. Some things defy quantification, without diminishing their quality.

 

As I mentioned in a recent previous response, I believe that the degree is a symbol that a contract has been honored by both a scholar and a scholarly institution.

Absent that contractual meaning, the degree would only be an indication of certain competency (which in some cases, the first scenario covers, but not always).

Thus, without the auspices of some institution and its internal process, no contract is entered into between two entities, and the "autodoctorate" is about the equivalent of someone dubbing himself a knight.

Perhaps in such cases, universities could associate themselves with one another into an "Order of Universities" and grant "meta-doctorates" -- that is, doctoral conferrals based upon concensus amongst university boards that a certain person has achieved some level of scholarly aptitude, without the actual naming of a specific university whose contract has been satisified.

 

If no money changed hands then are you saying that you didn't pay for your UA degree(s)? Then why in a previous post, would you refer to "a time when consumers like me were allowed to be stupid". If you didn't pay in some capacity (cash, loans, earned scholarships, etc.) then you were not acting as a consumer. Most people pay for their degrees and benefit from consumer protection to be sure the education in which they invest will benefit them in some tangible way. The only way to ensure that is with outside verification. Corporations and non-profit organizations alike have proven too many times that they either cannot or will not verify or sufficiently regulate themselves. Regulations don't normally happen in a vacuum. They happen because someone or some entity violated what was understood to be a public or individual trust, proving any further matter in those areas could no longer be left to trust alone. You do say that you paid for it by making yourself a target. I don't know the background of that but if you feel you said something stupid regarding your UA degree and that made you an unwitting target, well live and learn.

Again, I am not aware of the situation you are referencing. If you suffered due to attempted use of UA degree(s) by loss of a job, not getting a job you wanted, or possibly having charges filed against you, etc., then you were a victim of nothing other than the kind of time bombs about which John Bear repeatedly warns. If you are referring to personal harm caused by a stalker type who was simply playing a game of internet "gotcha" then why continue to seek validation from any such person? Those folks need a hobby not connected to their PC but they don't need to be given free rent in your head. If you truly feel pursuing your UA degree(s) was not a waste of time then so be it. No one else's opinion matters. But if you can prove personal or professional harm from any stalking incident then consider pursuing legal action. However, do realize that if you did try any offline professional use of UA degrees then that fact is not going to get you much sympathy as a plantiff unless you can also prove that you had no knowledge of generally accepted accreditation at the time you may have used UA degrees for personal gain.

If instead you are simply lamenting a certain lack of practical use of your UA degree(s), that's another argument entirely. If you want to use your UA degrees for practical purposes then you will simply have to find other ways of demonstrating your knowledge rather than just producing copies of UA diplomas or proclaiming their existence on a resume. That's reality, like it or not. If the only way you can think to demonstrate your knowledge is to have any prospective employers analyze your dissertation then you are slashing at windmills. It isn't going to happen. Instead why not focus your energy and intelligence on CLEP or other tests to prove your knowledge?

Finally, your advocacy of allowing unregulated and unaccredited degrees to have the same meaning and practical use (governed only by free-market) as degrees from regulated and accredited schools simply would not work in many instances. If you needed your appendix removed would you be willing to use the services of a surgeon who graduated from Joe's Medikal Skool (complete with P.O. box-only address) or would you rather avail yourself of the services of a surgeon who graduated from Stanford Medical? Would you be willing to drive over a bridge or fly in plane designed by an engineer with an unverified degree? In those examples and many other, would you want to always have to personally and throughly check any professional's entire educational background before using their services? If you think that could work at all then what of emergencies? If you were involved in an accident and wheeled into an emergency room unconcious then you may be stuck with the graduate of Joe's Medikal Skool.


Kit