DETC to DEAC: The Forgotten Schools

I'm using this thread to look back at schools accredited by the DETC (now known as the DEAC) that may have been forgotten, or may be a surprise to some.

One surprise I found through digging was this:

McGraw-Hill World University

Yes, thee McGraw-Hill. They offered an Associate of Applied Science in Accounting and an Associate of Applied Science in Business Management. Never knew it existed before. They began in 1996 using the web address of http://www.mhwu.edu. But after about 1998/99 they appear to have stopped the degree programs and focused only on single courses, and even then just a handful.

McGraw-Hill was also behind the NRI (National Radio Institute) Schools which offered: Associate of Applied Science degree programs in accounting and business management, and non-degree courses in computers, electronics, programming, networking, automotive technology, air conditioning, construction, home inspection, computer-aided drafting, small engine repair, bookkeeping, paralegal, fiction and non-fiction writing, gunsmithing, desktop publishing, and word processing. That was until April 1st of 1999:

https://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/mcgrawnri.htm

 

Until 1980, the National Home Study Council (now DEAC) accredited just one school offering a bachelor's degree: LaSalle. They offered a bachelor's as well as a diploma in law that could, technically, qualify someone to take the Bar in California. But it did accredit quite a few schools offering associate degrees in occupational areas.

DEAC has an interesting past, from accrediting schools who claimed unrecognized (and fake) accreditation to schools outside its scope to schools awarding degrees on the side outside its scope to (my personal favorite) the Canadian School of Management, to accrediting schools with really shady pasts themselves, to lying about one of their accredited schools launching a PhD (which it soon afterward altered to a professional doctorate).

 

Canadian School of Management

They offered: Certificate, associate, diploma, graduate and fellow programs in business administration, health services administration, management, facility management, international management, travel counselling, and tourism/hospitality management.

From Rich back in 2007:

Here is some more information and some entertainment where a possible former student (or employee... or owner, lol) necro'd a thread after 15 years to defend the school:

https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/csm-institute-of-graduate-studies.960/#post-8046

 

I'm glad you mentioned the NHSC name. I originally wanted to go back farther than when it was in its DETC iteration, but internet data on this that could be captured from websites only went back to 1996. According to the DEAC site, NHSC changed its name to DETC in 1994. I am working on finding more of their directory releases, and if I find enough I may kindly ask moderation to modify the thread title. I found one from 1970 with a list of interesting schools, like the Doll Hospital School, 2251 Barry Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90064. Founded 1944. Courses in doll repairs, doll making, clothing, shop operations. Division of Lifetime Career School (Heh heh, that's cute).

Here are some more that stood out from the 1970 directory:

Bell & Howell Schools, 4141 W. Belmont Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60641, Founded 1931. Electronic Operations Technology; Electronic Operations Technology and Computer Controls, including Fortran programming; Television, Radio, and Home Entertainment systems servicing, including color TV: Electronics Communications, including Radar, FCC License Preparation, and Broadcasting; Computer Programming, using IBM System 360 equipment. Resident training available in Chicago, Phoenix, Toronto, Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, Columbus, Ohio, and Union, New Jersey (Another big familiar name. Almost seems like owning a school was like the "dotcom" rush of the past for big companies).

Britannica Schools, Inc., 425 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611, Founded 1965, Management training, including effective executive practices; automation and computers; scientific techniques for evaluation and decision-making; corporate finance; banking; insurance; Investment practices; accounting processes; business law. A division of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. (Ah, another one).

DeVry Institute of Technology, 4141 W. Belmont Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60641. Founded 1931. Electronic Operations Technology; Electronic Operations Technology and Computer Controls, including Fortran programming; Television, Radio, and Home Entertainment systems servicing, including color TV; Electronics Communications, including Radar, FCC License Preparation, and Broadcasting, A division of Bell & Howell Schools.

ITT Educational Services, Inc., 5610 Crawfordsville Road, Indianapolis, Indiana 46224. Founded 1963. License preparation course for the FCC License and the Radio-telephone 2nd Class License; courses in Semi. conductor Fundamentals and Practical Applications of Transistor Basics. An educational service of ITT.

La Salle Extension University, 417 S, Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois 60605, Founded 1908, (Divisions: Academy for Home Study, Utilities Engineering Institute and Wayne School.) Accounting Training: introductory, intermediate, and advanced general professional accounting; auditing, cost, controllership, systems, tax accounting; and CPA training, American Law and Procedure Training for Leadership: including business law, con. tract law, insurance law, law for claim representatives, law for police officers, law for trust officers, and real estate law, Business Management Training: advertising and sales promotion; basic, financial, office, personnel, production and sales management. Computer Programming. Dental Assistant Training: dental assisting techniques and Act, management. Drafting: Basic plus choice of specialty option in aeronautical, architectural, electrical, mechanical and structural drafting. High School: general diploma courses, including specialized vocational fields, Hotel Motel Executive Training, Interior Decorating: design and decoration, business practices and procedures, Real Estate Training: real estate brokerage, investment, management, planning, sales. Sales Training. Secretarial Training; office procedures, typing, shorthand. Stenotype (machine shorthand) Training. Technical-Vocational Training, Traffic and Transportation Training: organization and management, freight classification, rates and tariffs, transportation agencies and services, transportation law and regulations, rate making and rate cases (Colonel Sanders is one of its famous graduates!).

RCA Institutes, Inc., 320 West 31st Street, New York, New York 10001 Founded 1909. Twelve Career Programs and eighteen courses In Television Servicing (Including Color TV and CATV); Communications Electronics; FCC License Preparation; Semiconductor Electronics; Digital Electronics; Solid State Technology; Automation Electronics; Automatic Controls; Industrial Electronics; Nuclear instrumentation; Electronics Drafting. Basic courses include introduction to Electronics; Electronics Fundamentals; Drafting and Computer Programming. Electronics courses also offered in Spanish. Resident School Electronics Programs available in New York City, Cherry Hill, New Jersey and Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.

This was owned by thee RCA, and it grew to over 12,000 students. But by 1973, it all turned bad:

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/14/archives/rca-school-here-plans-to-close-institute-cites-rise-in-costs-and.html

Park Management Associates, 3211 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica, California 90405, Founded 1966. Courses in mobile home park management; recreational vehicle park management; and mobile home sales and dealerships (basically, they taught you how to run a trailer park).

I may contact the DEAC and see if they'd be willing to lend some old programs.

 

Adding onto this, it appears from a 1974 NHSC directory that McGraw-Hill was invested in this long before 1996. According to the 1974 document, they were accredited by NHSC and operating as the McGraw-Hill Continuing Education Center. They also owned the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute, 3939 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. Washington, D. C. 20016. No course list was included, but the types of courses offered are deducible from the name.

A Fall 1969 NHSC Directory shows that McGraw-Hill also owned this:

CREI, Home Study Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 3224 Sixteenth Street, N.W,, Washington, D. C. 20010. Founded 1927. College-level programs in Electronic Engineering Technology and Special Programs for Engineers include specialized study in: Communications, Aeronautical and Navigational Engineering, Television Engineering, Computers, Nuclear Instrumentation and Control, Automatic Control Engineering, Missile and Spacecraft Instrumentation and Control, Missile and Spacecraft Guidance, Radar and Sonar Engineering and Digital Communications. Separate Diploma Program in Nuclear Engineering Technology. Certificate programs offered are: Principles of Leadership, Engineering Mathematics, and Contemporary Mathematics. Courses in both Spanish and English languages.

Whoa, wait... Nuclear Instrumentation and Control? Missile and Spacecraft Instrumentation and Control? Missile and Spacecraft Guidance??? By home study through the mail??? Now that's scary! LOL! And they weren't alone since according to the same directory, Bell & Howell and DeVry were both offering similar programs at the time!

 

Indeed. I think I've got an old textbook from one of those courses somewhere - I forget which school, exactly. IIRC, it's "The Little Golden Book of Thermonuclear War."

 

Oh, yes, when I got my electronics engineering diploma from CIE it was still the NHSC. Those were the days, too. I learned how to bias a triode tube. TV repair? Sure! You could set yourself up with a pickup truck and a tube caddy and make a pretty good living. NRI, now, they were gone by then I think but the nuclear engineering technology diploma from somebody was still available. No degrees in those days, just diplomas.

 

Truth is, the "career diploma" system worked pretty well for the student. Why pay for a degree you'll spend a lifetime explaining when a good diploma course covers only what you really need and for less money?

 

Seems to me...hm...just a bit before my time...NRI offered a course leading to an FCC radiotelegraph license that allowed the student to go to sea as a marine radio operator. The writing was on the wall, so they thought. Morse code was obsolete by 1960 so no one thought learning it was worthwhile. Surprise. Morse at sea didn't end until 1999.

 

.-- . .----. .-. . / --. --- -. -. .- / .--. .- .-. - -.-- / - .. .-.. .-.. / .. - .----. ... / .---- ----. ----. ----.

(We're gonna party till it's 1999) (Prince Rogers Nelson, the artist formerly known as Prince)

 

Exactly. I have a bunch of these - at least half a dozen. All after I turned 60. Some were "good" diploma courses - some were, as I saw it, deficient. But even in those cases, interest led me to A LOT of further reading etc. that made up quite well for any shortfalls of the course provider. Courses I've done include gardening and landscaping, photography, programming, and, more recently, fashion design and merchandising. Did I get a job out of any? Of course not! I didn't want one. Certainly, not now...

But the cost was reasonable and I have dynamite hobbies! (And round-the-room bookshelves.)

 

Johann, where did you find "apostrophe"? I needed comma, period, question mark, dollar sign, open and close parentheses, quotation, hyphen, slant, and...hm...oh yeah, somebody went to the trouble of getting "@" added to the official table. Besides the alphabet, numerals, and some standard prosigns, that's all I ever learned or used commercially. Ham radio is much more restricted. Punctuation is mostly frowned on as a waste of time.

 

Yup, there it is alright. The inverse of hyphen. Never heard of it before now. Hyphen gets used a lot because you send fractional numbers like this: 57-1/2

 

I never saw parentheses outside of weather reports.

 

I'll confess, Nosborne. I Googled "Morse code translator" and used the first one I found. I couldn't read that post of mine on a BET!

 

Believe it or not, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission still issues a commercial radiotelegraph operator license. Being as there is no commercial Morse left on the airwaves, one does wonder why. Anyway, the code test includes all numerals, letters, and "comma, period, question mark, slant bar" and some special prosigns operators use for housekeeping. No hyphens, parentheses, dollar signs, or apostrophes!

 

There are still tens of thousands of active Morse transmitters on the high frequency bands but they are all amateurs. Morse isn't dead but commercial and military Morse died decades ago.

 

@Rich Douglas I have an interesting one just for you, coming up

 

From the 1997-98 DETC Directory of Accredited Institutions:

University of Leicester's Centre for Labour Market Studies
They offered: a Master of Science in Training, and a Master of Science in Training and Human Resource Management, as well as diploma programs in training and development and human resource management.

First accredited by the DETC in 1997.

@Rich Douglas

 

He knows.

A quote from Rich in the 'Groupon University" thread:

It's here: https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/groupon-university.56790/page-2#post-535197