DETC vs Regional Accreditation

Re: D.E.T.C. accreditation

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My guess, after they gained the right to accredit the awarding of professional doctorates, they will eventually be approved to do the same for PhD's.

Tony

Pure crystal ball speculation.

 

It’s my understanding the DETC Commission decided last June to not reconsider establishing a pilot program for doctorates for two years.

 

That would create a degree seeking crowd like Masters from RA and PHD from DETC !

 

Or maybe D.A. (sorry, couldn't help myself).

 

Dr. Bear's stats

In a recent e-mail exchange, Mike Lambert, Executive Director of DETC, advised me that they conducted a survey of DETC grads in 2001. The survey found that 2/3 of those grads were successful in having their degrees or credits accepted by RA schools. Some of these DETC grads went on to do Ph.D. programs at RA schools such as Walden & Capella or Masters degrees at American Intercontinental.

It appears as though Dr. Bear's findings are inconsisent with DETC's survey.

 

No, not inconsistent. The Bear looked at fraction of RA schools that accepted degrees/credits from DETC schools. The DETC survey looked at fraction of students that had their DETC-accredited degrees/credits accepted. Imagine if 1 RA school (out of the hundreds) accepted DETC, and if all the students applied to that 1 school. Then Bear would report <1% and DETC would report 100%.

Incidentally, the DETC Accrediting Commission is meeting right now (through Sunday). We may have some interesting news by Monday. Some of the current candidates (I don't which are being considered this weekend): College of the Humanities and Sciences, Southwest University, St. John's University (woof woof), Universidad FLET, William Howard Taft University.

 

Further Comments on DETC's Survey of Itself

Worthingco writes: It appears as though Dr. Bear's findings are inconsisent with DETC's survey.

Bear replies: I don't think so. Here is a portion of my detailed analysis of DETC's survey.

DETC says
Methodology
21 schools were asked to provide 100 names, randomly. 1,353 names were submitted (out of 2,100 that might have been expected; some schools did not have 100 graduates, presumably.)

Bear says
There were no controls on the randomness, thus no assurance that the names were randomly chosen. Further, the number of surveys mailed ranged from 7 to 99 per school, and the number returned ranged from 1 to 28. 8 of the 21 schools had fewer than ten surveys returned.

DETC says
226 questionnaires were returned. DETC believes that 18% is good.

Bear says
The 18% seems extremely low, since one would assume graduates would be eager to have further validation of their degree.
It could be predicted that the 82% who did not respond were people who may well have not been proud of or happy with their DETC degree.

DETC says
97% said the information they received before enrolling was accurate, and 98% said the program matched their expectations.

Bear says
This is where school differences could be very relevant. For instance, only one survey was received from an Andrew Jackson University student, only two from the American Academy of Nutrition. We cannot assume that every school had identical satisfaction. We learn little overall satisfaction of all students and nothing about the individual schools.

DETC says
35% of students gave permission to have their supervisors surveyed by DETC.

Bear says
That means that 65% denied permission, an amazingly high percentage who did not want their employers to know about their DETC degree.

DETC says
42% of the 80 supervisors responded.
91% of supervisors knew that the employee had earned a distance degree.

Bear says
So a very high 58% did not respond.
The statistics throughout are in this form. It is important to remember that this is 91% of the 42% who responded -- and the 42% is of employers contacted -- but 65% of the employers were not contacted because permission was denied. It is safe to predict that the vast majority of employers do not know that the employee had a distance degree.

DETC says
When asked to rate the value of the distance degree compared with residential degrees, 69% supervisors said it was as valuable or more valuable.

Bear says
Thus 31% presumably said it was less valuable, which also seems quite high.

DETC says
67% of the students did not try to transfer their credits to another institution.

Bear says
And yet (page 15 of survey), 62% of respondents said that “access to a higher degree” was one of the major ways they benefited from obtaining their DETC degree. What’s going on here? You can’t have it both ways. About half the respondents who said they benefited presumably didn’t even try. This is the oddest thing in the report, in my opinion.

DETC says
Of the 33% who did try to have their degree or credits transfered, 21% were successful (and, presumably, 13% were not).

Bear says
Crucially, there is no indication of whether the transfer was attempted to another DETC school or to a regionally accredited school. The figure of 13/21 (or 40%) rejection is quite high, and would almost certainly be considerably higher, if transfer to non-DETC schools was considered.

DETC says
The overwhelmingly most popular reason people chose the degree program was “personal satisfaction” (74% chose it as the highest reason; next highest was “improve job skills” at 46%.)

Bear says
And 78% rated personal satisfaction as the highest benefit. They got what they paid for.

 

And I look forward to telling the rest of the story. Like how DETC accreditation is less-well received than state approval, or there is no significant difference in acceptability between degrees from DETC-accredited schools and WAUC-accredited schools and....well, you get the idea.

 

Originally posted by Rich Douglas

Like how DETC accreditation is less-well received than state approval, or there is no significant difference in acceptability between degrees from DETC-accredited schools and WAUC-accredited schools and....well, you get the idea.

Wow. Not necessarily good news to me.

I look forward to reading the rest of the story. Did your research evaluate acceptability of all thirty-seven DETC (degree granting) institutions as a group? Did you look for or find any significant difference in the acceptability of the individual DETC-accredited schools?

 

No. I asked employers about the acceptability of degrees issued by schools accredited by DETC, along with a number of other forms of recognition. While I also included a list of schools for them to rate, they were only one from each category of recognition. (One RA, one DETC, one ACICS, etc.).

Based upon my findings, I doubt seriously that a polling of employers regarding specific DETC-accredited schools would reveal much difference among the schools. Employers don't know and don't care. (And, thus, prime the pump for diploma mills, unaccredited schools, etc.)

 

This is very interesting. In my particular case, I am attending a nationally accredited school. I have also taken several CLEP tests to hedge my bets. I have scored over the 90th percentile with no preparation other than my prescribed courses on the subjects. If I understand how CLEP norms their tests, this means that I scored better than 90 out of 100 of the students who passed these courses in regionally accredited schools, and scored a lot higher than the average score of those who earned an A in said courses. While I do understand that there are differences between schools, surely I am getting a decent education based on these results.

Tony

One question. Are there any studies focused on the success of people who earn a nationally accredited undergrad degree, and then a regionally accredited masters, compared to regionally for both the undergrad and masters?

 

Tony:

What do you mean by "success"?

I've never heard of any studies like the one you describe. I'm not sure employers would discern enough difference between the two paths in order to show significant results to your question. My research (two substantial surveys) shows that employers don't understand accreditation.