distinguishing between ducks

Re: Re: Re: Re: the force of logic

You may be right, but since I am just a bit anti-establishment in my thinking, I want to tell my husband's SACS story to suggest some reservations about regional accreditation bodies.

Some years ago after my husband had finished his M.Phil. and was abd from Columbia University, he had occasion to apply for a position teaching English composition in a SACS accredited junior college in South Carolina. His masters degrees were in Classics with a heavy emphasis in classical rhetoric, and he had several years experience teaching English comp at Columbia and at Purdue as an adjunct.

During the interview, he was told by the department head that his transcripts looked similar to hers (she was a Ph.D. in Comp/Rhetoric from the University of South Carolina). She compared their work in various classical rhetoric authors such as Plato, Cicero, Demosthenes and so on. She stated that it was very much a shame that the work my husband had done was in the original languages of Greek and Latin because SACS required 18 graduate hours specifially in English for composition instructors. If only he had done all those classical authors in English translation, as she had, rather than in Greek and Latin, he would have been qualified for the job. Now my husband works as an English adjunct with those 18 hours--in Old and Middle English--in a SACS accredited institution. Nobody blinks that Old English, although taught in English departments, is prue Germanic and not English at all as we understand it.

Are you sure you trust educational organizations with such bureaucratic blindness as suggested by the narrative above ?

 

Re: Re: Re: the force of logic

No. But that doesn't mean the absence of it makes a school legitimate.

There are probably a few unaccredited schools operating at a simlar level of quality when compared to some accredited schools. That fact doesn't give all of these degree mills a free pass just because they're not accredited. Mills like to point to Bob Jones University, saying it shows us a school can be both unaccredited and good. Fine. As soon as Knightsbridge or Kennedy-Western or St. Regis shows they are just as sufficient and operate at a comparable level with BJU, I'll buy it. Until then, these examples are irrelevant.

Regional accreditation may or may not be a guarantee of high quality. But it is an assurance of sufficient quality, something unaccredited schools simply cannot provide.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the force of logic

We all have our own horror stories concerning any number of bureaucracies, but these kinds of policies are in place because, for the most part, they make sense, for most circumstances. Tell your husband to grow up, stop ascribing blame to others for his predicaments, and take responsibility for his own actions. None of the above is justification for him to refer to himself as, “Richard Evans, Ph.D. and shamless mill supporter. [sic]”

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: intersting ethical question ?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the force of logic

My personal opinion is that many of you docs (including the one I live with) take your own opinions and those of other docs far too seriously. This entire mill-anti-mill controversy seems a bit inflated to me. Of course, we don't want quacks doing surgery, but who cares about an existential anthropologist playing language games ?

Thanks to you all for a spirited and informative discussion about what some might think trivia

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: intersting ethical question ?

Or, for that matter, degrees...

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the force of logic

Why not ask your husband, who has publicly lamented being passed over for positions (which, in his field are few and far between) by those less qualified than he (albeit with legitimate credentials) if it would vex him all the more if he had been passed over by someone with fraudulent credentials?

The truth is if any job is worth doing, we don’t want quacks or dishonest individuals doing it; as a culture, it irks our sense of fair play. This is America; all we ask for is a fairly level playing field and clear rules (including repercussions for those who violate them).

 

I'd like to add one comment , something that hasn't been stated so far in the thread. While a doctoral dissertation is a noun, that is, it is a final product, a physical object, etc, it is also a process. Often times a long arduous process that takes years and years. It is full of the "back and forth" between the candidate and the supervisor as they struggle together to turn a rough idea into a valuable contribution to the field and one that takes on a very specific form and includes a very specific list of contents. There is negotiation, compromise, submission of chapters, and the editing and reediting of those chapters once they've been critiqued by the supervisor. Then there is the defense in which the candidate is questioned on any and all aspects of the research by a panel of scholars who have a substantial knowledge of the subject. That is a doctoral dissertation. It is not the submission of a paper, even a good paper, to some unknown, unseen person who will vote thumbs up or thumbs down (as if a thumbs down vote ever happens). It is my own belief that you can not even refer to a submitted paper, even a good one, as a doctoral dissertation if the work was not done under the supervision of a competent supervisor who is a scholar in the field of choice and unless this research went through the process I've described above. This is why these are not legitimate schools, because they do not adhere to this process. This is why a submitted paper, even a good one, is not a doctoral dissertation, because it was not created and evaluated through this process.
Jack

 

I couldn’t agree more, Jack. It has been said that you do not so much earn a Ph.D. as become one. In other words, at the end of the process you analyze; scrutinize; synthesize; accept or reject data, evidence and conclusions; think; conclude; and articulate differently.

 

This post is as good as it gets. Point exceptionally well made.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: intersting ethical question ?

 

education as conversion

Some of the very interesting points in this thread trun on the nature of education as a type of conversion experience, appropriately directed by competent faculty supervision. Mills don't provide supervision; they just delcare that a person has a degree. Under the conversion argument, legitimate educational institutions must be properly equipped to cause a student to participate in a process--submiting papers/chapter, revison, give and take, judge that process professioanally and then declare that said student has met the requirement of conversion.


In terms of educational process, the argument that mills are not legitiamte because all they really do is sell, without proper supervison, a paper that asserts so much life experience equals a degree seems to have merit if one will also accept that DL, through correspendence or internet, is subject to the same argument about lack of adequate process from traditional BS (butts-in-seats) education.

BS education is an on-site, face-to-face process of years of residentential conversion through oral exhanges, discussions, sitting in classes, listening and talking to professors and fellow students as well as exams, papers, and reading. The social experience, face-to-face dialogue, is essential to that expeience and necesary for appropriate intellectual conversion (a la Plato). So, one could argue that (some forms of) DL education are just as lacking in an effective conversion process with repsect to BS education as a milled degree is lacking in that process with respect to DL.

Many mills simply declare that life has made a conversion, and we know that life is a teacher. Are you skeptical ? Well, I'm just a bit skeptical that handing in internet assignments is in any way equivalent to attending collegeclasses four four long years, having my butt in a seat and having my attendance monitored, consulting with profs and fellow students on time and in person almost daily, standing in lines, learning to play well with others, living in a dorm, joing a sorority, sitting for hours in a library, being present regularly on campus for all sorts of non-class events, meeting with class teams, etc. Not to even discuss worrying about how to pay for the years of conversion from ignoremus into college grad. BS education is really a diffent type of experience form DL, in fact, just as different as DL is from life experience. Are DL degrees meaningless ? Most here would not think so. Are life experience degrees meaningless- perhaps, but on a Platonic model, DL degrees and milled degrees seem more closely related (on a continuum of lack of presence) than either seem to traditional BS education.

 

Re: education as conversion

We seem to have something of a difference of opinion. First, I'd say that your statement above to the effect that DL lacks the required legitimate process required of doctoral study is inadequately supported by your argument. It's unclear to me how you've reached this conclusion but I can tell you without hesitation that while I was involved in DL doctoral study I had frequent and detailed communications with my supervisor via email and telephone. There were weekly (sometimes daily) contacts and everything I read or wrote was discussed. All written work was submitted, edited, rewritten, submitted, etc. If you have concrete evidence that this process does not occur in any specific universities then you should name them and the source of your information.
As far as the other quoted segment of your statement above, all of these things can happen in DL. They just occur in a different way. Oral exchanges are over the phone. Discussions happen through teleconferencing or instant messenger. Exams, papers, reading are the same. The social experience, well, I did that once a couple of decades ago. I don't feel the need to do it again. As for our friend Plato, it's been some time since I've read him but I don't remember any passages related to face to face dialog being essential for "intellectual conversion." Besides, I don't think Plato knew much about internet teleconferencing, email or even the telephone. His opinion on this subject is not the most relevant.
Jack

 

Re: Re: education as conversion

I really had undergraduate degrees in mind, and I do think that the process of DL is different from BS education, very different. DL may not be inadequate at all, but the point of comparison was BS vs. DL in terms of residential college activities and all the personal interaction going on there. Grad work may be different, more remote all the way around.

As far as Plato is concerned, I think it is the Phaedrus that discusses how written texts can't answer for themesleves and makes much of presence for doing philosophy. Again, only if you think that physical presence over time is necessary for the educational conversion would there be an issue here. If being present (butts-in-seats) confers some special grace, then such an experience, in my estimation, is substantialy different from DL education in general. Electronic extensions are not the same as physical presence. If this is no issue for you, then fine.

I don't think taking courses by exam or even on-line is same as taking course in person in the presence of a professor. But taking most of one's courses by exams, for example, even from an accredtited school, seems very close in concept to getting a milled degree for "life experience" . Of course, with the milled degree, the exam results, if any, are not checked by a real faculty, but here I am concentrating on the process itself, not how the process is judged.

If degrees by electronic interaction are as good as those earned by years of residential iinteraction, no issue. If, on the other hand, the distance process can be questioned as a process (that was my point), then milled degrees and DL seems closer in process than either is to a tradtional BS process. The crucial difference between milled degress and legitmate DL degrees (without residence, etc) is the judgement ( by real faculty) of the processes that govern them.

 

Re: Re: Re: education as conversion

 

agenda or difference ?

"J - This is where your case falls apart. A DL degree (from a legitimate school) is remarkably more like it's in-class sibling for the very reason you cite. The process is virtually identical. This is compared to that slimy malodorous thing you refer to as a milled degree which is simply purchased, usually in the dead of night in some poorly lit back alley.
BTW, your agenda is showing
Jack"


Well, if you think that promoting mills is my agenda, it's not. But I am a educational snob: I think an Oxford education is essentially better than any American one, and I think that a Harvard or Bryn Mawr education is better than a MOO U education. Analogously, I think that any class-room based, socially interactive, degree, earned over the course of several years on campus, is better than any virtual degree from whatever school.

It's about the process: an aristocratic educational process involves personal time with fine thinkers, one-on-one. For me that's why the Oxford tutorial system ranks first. Good, Liberal Arts colleges here do something similar with close professor contact in person for students. But there is the factor of student-on-student contact, too. Educational/philosophical conversion can be dervived from many circumstances: life itself. But the tradtitonal "college experience" is simply different in classes of 500, state university style, from classes of twenty or two or the private tutorial. I think that the latter is better and surely outranks any virtual experience. Virtual reality is not ordinary reality although it may support ordinary reality.

To support the point I am trying to get at here, I am reminded of what an Anglican priest once said about TV chuch--he said that it isn't church at all because chuch requires personal contact of the worshipers. In other words, no virtual communion. Of course, information may be transmitted by virtual means, but the conversation/conversion must be personal and live. I think that's Plato's point about presence for doing philospohy--but of course, Derrida wouldn't agree.

Should we use virtual reality for educational purposes--you bet. Should entire degrees be based on virtual reality--I'm not so sure. Taking a written test in a procotored setting is not the same a taking an oral test, live, in front of a panel of experts. Just so, taking a virtual degree is not the same a taking a traditional degree. The question here is what is the difference--of kind or of quality ?

 

Kill Mills ??

Should we use virtual reality for educational purposes--you bet. Should entire degrees be based on virtual reality--I'm not so sure. Taking a written test in a procotored setting is not the same a taking an oral test, live, in front of a panel of experts. Just so, taking a virtual degree is not the same a taking a traditional degree. The question here is what is the difference--of kind or of quality ?



Wanna kill mills ? Very simple (but very radical) solution: eliminate degrees virtual education. Physical campus education only with live profs and live instruction for degrees would restrict fake degrees to virtual reality. Mills are not new but their recent boom comes from the use of virtual reality to promote and sell them. It becomes difficult for many to distinguish between a legitimate virtual degree and a bogus virtual degree--maybe there is some link between them in the way virtual reality exists ? Nobody will say that the local college down the street where students have butts in seats for four years and go to lectures, take exams, etc. for four long years is a typical mail order/internet order mill. Its physical presence and the real-time activities demonstrate otherwise. Or to put it another way, how do we control the Matrix ?

 

Re: education as conversion

While I agree that education is transformative in some sense, I'm less sure that it has to occur in a formal setting or be directed by university faculty. I think that learning can occur in many different contexts and I strongly support the idea of prior learning assessment.

Nevertheless, even when learning occurs outside of class, whether on the job or through independent study, the results need to be competently assessed before academic credit can be credibly awarded.

Historically, many intellectual exchanges took place through the medium of correspondence. I'm sure that the famous Leibniz-Clarke correspondence would qualify as a Socratic dialogue in a pretty strong sense, with each party responding to the objections of the other.

I'll even go farther and suggest that for some of us, electronic communication like we are using right now is superior to face-to-face exchanges.

I say that because the medium allows us to make longer remarks, to develop our positions more fully and to provide supporting evidence when that's necessary. The medium also gives us the time to carefuly consider what the other person told us and to carefully craft a response. Too often real time face-to-face communication seems intellectually superficial, because so much of it comes off the top of one's head.

 

Re: Re: education as conversion

Nobody would deny that information may be better formed, more precise or presented in written shape. The question is whether education for the living being is more like information transference or some sort of profound social transformation within a social context. A good analogy, I think: a medical practioner does not get the "practice"of medicine from books or documents (which support the praxis of course), but from practice itself, under direction of those who already know. I am suggesting that education (not necessarily training) is more like that, based on social pratices and intellectual associations. In other words, one can be very well informed but not necessarily well educated. Virtual "education" seems to me to be based on an operational model of information transfer rather than processes of social practice and intellectual conversion, a very old-fashioned view to be sure. Although I would agree with you that in the end, there are other routes to that conversion, not just the traditional college experience, however unique that may be.

 

Re: agenda or difference ?

This via encyclopedia.the freedictionary.com:

"...Plato wrote several dozen philosophical dialogues--arguments in the form of conversations, usually with Socrates as a participant--and a few letters. Though the early dialogues are concerned mainly with methods of acquiring knowledge, and most of the last ones with justice and practical ethics, his most famous works expressed a synoptic view of ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge, and human life. The predominant ideas were that knowledge gained through the senses is always confused and impure, and that true knowledge is acquired by the contemplative soul that turns away from the world..."

This leads me to believe that even Plato would disagree with you regarding your suggested superiority of methods for aquiring knowledge. I do agree with you however that interactive methods of communication are more conducive to learning than non-interactive. This cognitive process can be fostered through virtual interactive sessions just as much as physically gathering around the mentor. Although the latter does present a classical image (such as that found in some famous paintings) for those who rely on such images.

I believe that in adult learning, it is the learner not the teacher who must determine the best method for cognition. And one should take advantage of technology as much as possible in the learning process. In that light (ahem)... even in Plato's day, learning was supported by the use of the oil lamp, without which it would have been difficult to read, write, or even see your fellow philosophers.