Detc Accrediting Meeting This Weekend.

Mary A. what you say is correct. On the other hand reputation is a strange item. It is made up of many things. One thing that will generally hurt reputations is inappropriate behavior. When someone condones inappropriate behavior then that can hurt that entity's reputation as well, especially when the entity condoning poor behavior is responsible for ensuring academic integrity. If DETC wants to improve their reputation then they must understand or DETC will continue to be the second class citizen of the legitimate accreditation world.

 

Out of curiosity has any formerly diploma mill reformed itself and achieved regional accreditation? If American Sentinel University has earned national accreditation through DETC, what does it matter how the former incarnation of itself operated? Some of the august members of this forum have at one time or other in their lives been involved with unaccredited and presumably questionable institutions that in some cases went on to achieve legitimate accreditation whilst others might have devolved into diploma mills and ties with such institutions subsequently severed.

 

Sentinel: "...has any formerly diploma mill reformed itself and achieved regional accreditation?"

John: That's a really good question. My initial inclination is to say that at most, there was one, beyond doubt. (Well, most people's doubt, anyway). And it's driving me nuts, because at this moment, I can't come up with the name. Saint Something, I think, but not religious. Old English typeface. Green border on the letterhead. Bah. I will browse through old editions of Bear's Guide as time permits.

Also: Mary A. makes good points, as always. The issue of whether things you did in the past should be held against you now is one of those things that keeps ethicists in business. There was the very controversial case a few years ago with a major university discovered that a popular and skilled professor had been in prison for quite a few years for murder. They fired him, saying that no matter how good he is now, what he did then was inexcusable (including not disclosing it). Right? Wrong? Grey area? Clearly a very personal matter for many people.

 

This is the edited and corrected version I was unable to change in my original post:

Also: Mary A. makes good points, as always. The issue of whether things you (a human or a school) did in the past should be held against you now is one of those things that keeps ethicists in business. There was the very controversial case in 2003 of Paul Krueger, a Penn State University professor, who was 'outed' by the local newspaper as a mass murderer, who killed three people when he was 17, served many years in prison, and was released as fully rehabilitated. As the Chronicle story on him said at the time, "...At what point has someone been punished sufficiently for a crime for which he has been sentenced and served his time? Does a murder conviction alone make him unfit to be a college professor? Do the years of degrees and accolades count for nothing? Or, in the end, is society -- especially colleges, given their prestige -- justified in rejecting someone who took three lives?"

 

I'm really torn on this issue and my thinking about it is still a work-in-progress.

On one hand, if doubtful schools (or any sort of individuals) really do try to shape up and go straight, then they probably should be recognized as doing the right thing.

But on the other hand, DETC isn't doing itself a whole lot of good if it becomes known as the accreditor that's closest to milldom and the shortest stretch to achieve.

Accrediting a small handful of schools with fragrant histories can be explained as special dispensation, the product of the accreditor acknowledging reformation. But making a habit of it, routinely accrediting schools associated with questionable academic and business practices, will inevitably influence how the accreditor's own standards are perceived.

 

I share Bill's uncertainty. I do believe people (and organizations) can change...but I am not at all sure that I would hire the rehabilitated and highly-recommended child molester to work at my school.

Incidentally, looking at the DETC site this morning to see if there was any news (no), I noticed that the excellent and highly regarded (my opinion, of course) University of Southern Queensland has recently resigned its DETC accreditation. Wonder what that's all about?

 

I find it interesting that most of the international schools do not maintain DETC accreditation. I wonder if it is simply a poor return on $$ for them or if there is another reason.

Jeremy

 

I don't know who Emil Mohammed is but Robert Kennedy College was established by Prof. David Costa in 1998 with an official address in Zurich (to my knowledge). Their degrees are validated by the University of Wales and appeared in Financial Times' Top Online MBA programs for the past three years http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/online-mba-2009

 

I agree with you as to hiring child molesters.

But I would hope that (non-child molesting) former millish school operators could become truly rehabilitated regarding accreditation. Otherwise, it may not be advisable to hire or take advice on school accreditation from a highly-recommended former degree/diploma mill operator.

 

Any results on the June 2009 meeting as yet?

 

Interesting posts here.

I will address Mary A's issue first.

In my opinion, the ACCIS "carcass", as you refer to it, keeps getting mentioned because DETC's decision to accredit was an absolutely appalling decision which violated DETC's own guidelines in place at the time. It is one thing to argue, as DETC attempts to do, that:

This implies that DETC would require some reasonable length of time between a school's holding fraudulent accreditation and being eligible for DETC accreditation. But this wasn't remotely the case with AICS/ACCIS. In fact, AICS was proudly displaying the seal of approval from the dreadful and blatantly fraudulent (or, as DETC says, "what most people consider to be phony accreditation") World Association right up until the day they received DETC accreditation. So much for the "once held" claim of the DETC.

I do not know if you, Mary, were the president of the school back when it was AICS, but I distinctly remember that whomever the then-president was, when asked directly about why AICS has fraudulent accreditation, directly stated that it was a "business decision." No apology, no indication of any remorse or poor judgement; the fact that the president of the school freely admitted this implies that the school was intentionally using the fraudulent accreditation in order to attract students through misrepresentation, fraud, and deception; what other possible "business reason" could there be?

And that is, in my book, why this remains an issue 10 years later.

Want to close the door on it? Admit that AICS was using a fraudulent accreditor for no other purpose than to mislead students, that it was completely wrong to do so, and that Sentinel has made a strong commitment to the highest in ethical standards and strongly rejects the deceptive and fraudulent practices of its predecessor school, and will never in the future engage in these sort of deceptive and fraudulent practices.

As for DETC, I find it fascinating that they apparently consider DegreeInfo an important enough player to address our ongoing concerns about their poor accreditation decisions in their FAQ.

This, too, could be put to rest if DETC could acknowledge that it was a violation of their own guidelines to grant accreditation to a school that was clearly using false and deceptive advertising. (I remember a post at the time describing DETC's guidelines, and it was very clear that honest and non-deceptive advertising was one of the requirements that needed to be met.) A statement that no schools will be accredited in the future when they have actively advertised fraudulent accreditation (or other deceptive marketing) within some reasonable period of time (6 months?) would go a long way toward eliminating concerns about this sort of breach of DETC's own guidelines.

As for the comparison with California Coast, that's apples and oranges. In it's very early days, Cal Coast did have some issues, but unlike AICS, Cal Coast has for many years run an honest operation. They were always up front about being unaccredited, though they did somewhat play down the value of accreditation.

At a time when university presidents are plagiarizing their dissertations and academic dishonesty of all types is at epidemic levels, I believe that it is crucial for the accreditors to act as a "last line of defense." They have the ability to confer a "seal of approval" that is meaningful, and when they allow institutions who are openly dishonest with prospective students into the fold, it sends a terrible message.

 

Thanks for this update. Can you provide details on what exactly "validated by the University of Wales" means? I'm willing to be openminded, but this smacks of the same sort of claim made by the unwonderful Trinity College that their degrees were "Accredited by the University of London" which was a deceptive and ultimately meaningless statement.

By the way Robert Kennedy, while I suppose it could have dramatically reformed, was a really terrible operation. They were evasive with regard to every inquiry about them, and there was a lot of dirt that DegreeInfo members dug up. I'm sure the threads are in our searchable archive.

As for the Financial Times "best MBA"... let's not forget that it was Financial Times that bought Bears Guide and attempted to insert paid advertising into the 13th edition that was not going to be marked as such, which would have had the effect of implying a glowing endorsement of schools which, in many cases would probably not have been warranted. (John violently objected and the plan was eventually dropped.) Unless they specifically indicate that their selection criteria is objective and their process is not affected by any compensation paid by the schools, I would suspect that their "best MBA list" is a bought-and-paid-for list in much the same way as many of the "best online degree' sites on the net advertise the "top 20 degrees" based on which school is paying the most for a referral that week. I've certainly never seen any indication of anyone credible referring to Robert Kennedy as the best of anything.

 

Hi Chip,

First, let me mention that I have no doubt in your expertise in assessing online institutions. I just wanted to contribute to the discussion based on my experience.

What “validated by the University of Wales” means is that graduates of RKC receive the same diploma as any University of Wales’ (UoW) students, whether full-time or by distance learning, and get to attend the annual graduation ceremony in Cardiff, Wales. A UoW board visits Zurich twice a year to approve the grades for all courses. All grades are not final until approved by the UoW board. Even the application is done on UoW’s website not RKC’s. Source: http://www.wales.ac.uk/defaultpage.asp?page=E7052&Country=SWITZERLAND&inst=RKC

You could be right; RKC might have been a terrible operation in the past. I will search DegreeInfo’s archive for related posts. But as you said, they could have dramatically reformed.

Well, I always thought the Financial Times is a well-regarded institution. It never occurred to me that they would publish a bought-and-paid-for list. Thanks for the info. However, looking back at the list I referred to in my post, I see it includes the following schools as well:

Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University
Henley Business School
Open University Business School
University of Maryland University College
Manchester Business School
Warwick Business School
Indiana University: Kelley
Northeastern University
Bradford University School of Management
Babson College
Durham Business School
Arizona State University: Carey
Thunderbird School of Global Management
University of Texas at Dallas
Syracuse University: Whitman
University of Strathclyde Business School
George Washington University
IE Business School
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
University of Florida: Hough
Drexel University: LeBow
University of Surrey School of Management
Aston Business School

Is it possible that these schools also paid to have their names appear on the list?

Thanks.

 

This is really interesting info, and, at face value, certainly paints a completely different picture of RKC than what was there years ago.

If you look at the history, RKC was originally Robert Kennedy University, and was godawful back in the day.

I took a quick look at the University of Wales link and agree that it appears to be legitimate.

I do not feel qualified to evaluate the current legitimacy of the program, nor to comment on U of Wales decision to validate degrees from this school, but perhaps others who are more familiar with the process of validation could comment on this.

I must say that my first thought was similar to that of Grand Canyon and Warren National; a horrible mistake that I'm sure will be corrected once they figure out what a scam Warren National is. But, on the other hand... DETC has accredited schools who were actively committing fraud against their students, and other schools that weren't great have improved enough to earn at least DETC accreditation, so I suppose anything is possible.

On the Financial Times issue, a number of those schools (but not all) are ones who have fairly aggressive advertising budgets so I would suspect that it's still quite likely that RKC's placement (along with at least some of the others on that list) may well have been bought and paid for.

If we look at the model that FT was trying to shove onto Bears' Guide, there would have been a collection of "in-depth" articles on schools that appeared completely innocuous; this would not have changed the listings of other legitimate schools, but certainly would have had the effect of taking lesser-known (and, at least in some cases, almost certainly inferior) programs and made it look as though they must be "good" programs since they were getting these in-depth writeups, when, in fact, it was simply the payment of money that would have determined which schools got in-depth writeups. If I'm not mistaken, the Petersons guides had actually been doing this, and that's where the Financial Times idea for Bears Guide came from.

So for that reason, I'd be inclined to discount, at least partially,the value of the Financial Times list.

 

Just for reference, here's some of the older threads on Robert Kennedy, back in 2001 and 2002. There's more in our archives (4 pages of results) but I found these fairly quickly:

http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=5190
http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=2415

 

Thanks Chip. I enjoyed the discussion.

 

In Brit-edu-speak, 'validation' is typically something a bit more meaty than the Liverpool endorsement. It refers to the practice where a British university authorizes the faculty at another education provider to offer one or more of the university's programs at that remote site. Students who complete the remote validated program are awarded the validating university's degrees.

Historically, quality assurance over what the remote providers do out there has been the responsibility of the validating university, so some British universities have created what amount to in-house accreditors that they call 'validation units'.

More recently, the British have moved in the direction of American-style accreditation, creating a new autonomous quasi-governmental agency called the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). These people conduct evaluations and site-visits for all British degree providers. The QAA has ultimate QA-oversight responsibility for British universities' remotely validated programs as well, though their initial selection and continued management is still the responsibility of the university validation units. The QAA only becomes involved after the fact.

So in this case, the University of Wales validation unit has chosen Robert Kennedy College to be one of its many remote sites and authorized RKC to offer classes and conduct examinations leading to the award of several University of Wales degrees.

So far, so good. But British universities have been facing less-than-optimal government funding for years now. There's been pressure on universities to become more entrepeneurial and to develop sources of income of their own. So we've seen some of them trying to turn their validation units into profit-centers. Overseas validated programs enroll large numbers of foreign students and fund themselves from charging tuition, paying their British validator handsomely for the privilege of using its name. The U. of Wales has been prominent in this development, expanding the network of schools that are authorized to offer Wales degree programs to more than 100 in dozens of different countries around the world. The Wales validation unit seems to have visions of turning itself into the international answer to the U. of Phoenix, I guess, and presumably getting equally rich in the process.

Unfortunately, a small number of Wales' international franchises emit what in my personal opinion is a pungent odor. The care with which Wales chooses partners for its franchises doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

BBC Wales did a pretty scathing report on the U. of Wales validation unit on its 'Dragon's Eye' news program last year. I found a transcript of the segment on the web and it seems to have concentrated entirely (and inordinantly) on the U. of Wales' validation of Trinity College and Seminary in Indiana (already familiar to Degreeinfo) not long after Trinity had been turned down by the NCA/HLC for regional accreditation.

Wales immediately dropped Trinity's validation like a hot potato and seems to have told (some? all?) of its other franchises that they will now need to possess some local version of accreditation if they expect to remain validated. That obviously raises more questions than it answers -- Does accreditation even mean the same thing everywhere? What about local providers that aren't universities and can't award domestic degrees? (And what if they boast a partnership with a seeming mill alongside their Wales validation?) But whatever the answer to that, it's apparently motivated other current/former Wales validated partners like Trinity and RKC to apply to DETC in hopes of strengthening/regaining their Wales validation.

See these threads:

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=30182&highlight=wales

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=28346&highlight=wales

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=22400&highlight=wales

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=17920&highlight=wales

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=29352&highlight=bbc+wales

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=29424

 

Bill, thank you for your explanations re validation. I was wondering if you could clarify this for me:

I'm currently considering a small school in the UK whose degrees are validated by a "big name" school. My understanding is that the small school's degrees would actually be conferred by the big school, ie instead of "Small College" the degrees would read "University of Whatever". Is this always/normally the case? Would it then be proper, on a CV, to list the qualification as "MPhil, University of Whatever" instead of "MPhil, Small College"?

This may seem like a petty kind of question, but if I'm paying many thousands of dollars for a degree I want to make sure it has maximum utility ... and frankly the name of the school matters a lot!

Thanks for your input!

 

BBC-Wales reported that the future of the University of Wales itself was in jeopardy, because more than half of its constituent universities withdrew from the coalition in distress over the validation business. This would be like the University of Texas at Austin withdrawing from the University of Texas system to become the independent University of Austin.

If I were considering a course of action that would result in a University of Wales credential, I'd want to learn as much about this as I could. (If someone does, perhaps they will share information here.)

 

Oh, I didn't know that the University of Wales was a degree mill. Thanks for the info.