Douglas Dissertation Proves Value of Unaccredited Degrees

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by Dennis Ruhl, Jun 15, 2004.

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  1. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    I have had the experience of sitting on a several of hiring committees for full-time college faculty and administrator positions. It was interesting to see the reaction that would occur when I would mention "oh, by the way, this candidate's doctorate is from a school that is not regionally accredited". The application would go straight into the reject pile (which is actually more severe than my judgment would have been).

    As Rich's study inidcated, the acceptance of non-RA degrees by his subjects was due, by and large, to their being ignorant of the different types of accreditation (and judging an institution by whether it had a legitimate-sounding name). It demonstrated a training need among those who hire people with college degrees. It remains one of the only studies of its kind.
     
  2. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Oh, I don't know. That might change....
     
  3. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Really ? Are you planning to conduct a follow-up study?
     
  4. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Something like that.
     
  5. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Very cool. If I can help out in any way (e.g. providing a list of journals for you to consider), please let me know.
     
  6. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Tony, I'll be glad to tell you in a PM, but it's close-hold for now.

    BTW, long-time readers know the high regard in which I hold Dr. Piña, despite his "trade doctorate." :cool:
     
  7. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    True. While I was working on my Ph.D. at Arizona State University, I got a job in California, which made it necessary for me to "trade" my Ph.D. program at ASU for an Ed.D. program from La Sierra University. So, I gues that Lawrie Miller was right after all--I do have a "trade" (or at least a "traded") degree :)
     
  8. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Shouldn't you have gotten football tickets or at least some t-shirts from ASU as part of the trade package? ;)
     
  9. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    And betray his dedication to the Golden Eagles? :eek:
     
  10. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    E-Bay!! :D
     
  11. Anthony Pina

    Anthony Pina Active Member

    Well, I did get a bit of Sun Devil memorabilia and the ASU EdTech faculty still claim me as one of their own (even though I finished elsewhere). The best part was that La Sierra accepted my ASU credits and eventually allowed me to design an online masters degree for them (something that I would not have been able to do at ASU), so, even though I had to trade the Ph.D. for the Ed.D., it turned out to be a pretty nice trade :)
     
  12. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I thought they just sold corporate jets? ;)
     
  13. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Government jets. :p
     
  14. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    corporate jets...government jets...at the moment it's not clear to me that there's any difference.
     
  15. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    I don't know about you, but I could get used to the Boeing Business Jet;

    http://www.boeing.com/commercial/bbj/
     
  16. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

  17. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

  18. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I figure I could afford the fancy jet if I just cut back in other areas. For example, if restricting myself to eating only dog food for a million years or so.
     
  19. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I'm on vacation this week. I've spent most of the day outside, pruning the fruit trees, seeding the pastures, fall mowing. Now, I'm clean and dry and I have a full glass of pinot grigio inside. I've come back to this thread because the premise has always bothered me. Dennis is clearly suggesting that if people (hiring managers) don't understand the difference between accredited and unaccredited degrees then this means that there is no difference. You can buy an "unaccredited degree" and still sneak through. I've done enough research to know that this is exactly his intent. Buy a substandard degree and then try to sneak through. If you get away with it then it's the system's fault for not catching you. Good luck Dennis. Watch out for that karma backlash.

    Oh yeah. Here's a link to the US Treasury Department. If you knowingly use a conterfeit bill then you are a criminal. Even if the person who takes the bill does not recognize it to be counterfeit. Most unaccredited degrees are like counterfeit bills. You might pass one off but that doesn't mean it's good.

    http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/counterfeit.shtml
     
  20. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I won't try to figure out what Dennis' motivations might have been.

    But I do think that some (not all) state approved degrees do have some value and some utility in some (not all) applications. So if I was one of those being polled, I would have agreed with the 96% initially. Even after having somebody bend my ear for an hour about how state-approved degrees totally suck, I would probably have stubbornly and obnoxiously continued to respond that they can sometimes be useful. So I would have agreed with the 65%.

    So just going by Dennis' little paraphrase of one tiny snippet of Rich's data, it's hard for me to reach any conclusions.

    Maybe HR managers say that state-approved schools have some value because they are absolutely clueless about degree-mills. Or maybe the managers are fully aware of the mill problem, but simultaneously think that a handful of state-approved schools really are credible and remain willing to consider them. Or most likely, maybe the many respondents vary a great deal in terms of sophistication and don't always have the same reasons for giving the same response.

    I continue to think that treating "state-approved" as a single homogeneous class might not be the best way to approach this. There's too much variation within the unaccredited class, so I prefer to think of these schools in terms of whether or not they are credible.
     

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