FYI - Northcentral University www.ncu.edu

IMPORTANT NOTICE
Northcentral University (NCU) takes a major step toward accreditation!
NCU has been recommended for Initial Candidacy for Accreditation by the Site
Visit Evaluation Team for North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.
Please visit our web site for full details: www.ncu.edu
Earn your Bachelor's, Master's or Ph.D. in business & Technology or
Psychology entirely through Distance Learning (no residency).
Effective March 15, 2001, tuition will increase to $165.00 per unit. Please
contact Admissions for more information.
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Admissions
Northcentral University

 

Without comment as to whether NCU would be a good choice (because I have no idea), the one thing that I notice is that their offerings are *very* limited. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing.

They offer the BBA, MBA, DBA in business and the BA, MA, and Ph.D. in psychology. That's it. 6 degrees.

Personally I would like to see more schools do this specialized sort of thing, particularly smaller, newer schools. It affords them the opportunity to specialize.

I know we're all aware that one of the first "tip-offs" to a degree mill is 186 degree programs including 12 different types of doctorates (DBA,Ph.D., Ed.D., etc. ad infinitum).

Still don't know what I think of them, but I'm glad to see that they haven't over-extended. Likely this helped with their recent accreditation visit.


Tom Nixon

 

Methinks that Northcentral is a little too quick to beat their chest.

The representative of the North Central Association, when asked, seemed somewhat less than pleased at the announcement.

According to the NCA, the site visit report is but one element for consideration by the accreditation committee, which meets next in May. It is apparently not uncommon for the committee to decline candidacy, even after a positive recommendation from the site visit team. There are a bunch of factors that are considered... and, of course, candidacy does NOT equal final accreditation.

So, methinks that the admissions department is a little premature -- and arguably a bit deceptive -- in their celebration.

 

By the way, becareful not to be confused with North Central University, http://www.northcentral.edu/

Who in the world chose the same name?

Imaging,(note: not refer to above school). For example, I have a web site for DL school that says "Stafford University to confuse with Stanford University." With a well done marketing strategy, I bet I get a lot of foreign students to apply.
Opsee, I am definatedly will be in jail for sure.

 

Chip, I agree with your assessment. I too believe that they are intimating that they will be granted candidacy status and subsequently regional accreditation too expeditiously. The increase in tuition in March appears to be a sales motivation stategy, to imply that since they are assured candidacy status they are upping the tuition now. Therefore, we all better get admitted real quick or we will lose out on this opportunity.

I say its too early to jump on the bandwagon even though they may eventually achieve their goal, which I hope they do.

 

Some of you people need to look at the whole picture. For instance, if NCU were not completely committed to RA why would they spend the money to build a state-of-the-art free standing facility from ground floor up. NCU is committed to everything from top to bottom. The limited degree offerred are just one more example of "doing it right".

Everything NCU has done has been up to RA standards. Northcentral will in time stand above Capella, and Walden. Mark my word.

Wes

 

Erma expressed concern about possible confusion with the "other" North Central University. Not to mention the North Central Association. I suspect that it was the accreditor who required the name change from North Central University to Northcentral University.

One also wonders why a school in the southwest corner of the United States would take the name "Northcentral"? It is as if the University of Newcastle (in the northeast of England) took the name "University of the Southwest."

John Bear

 

John, I know from your previous postings that there were some issues that you encountered in the past with SCUPS resulting in your needing to take a stand with the posibility of legal action. Do you feel that Northcentrals connection/association with SCUPS may present an issue in NCUs attempts to obtain candidacy status and subequently regional accreditation?

 

Sam asks, John, I know from your previous postings that there were some issues that you encountered in the past with SCUPS resulting in your needing to take a stand with the posibility of legal action. Do you feel that Northcentrals connection/association with SCUPS may present an issue in NCUs attempts to obtain candidacy status and subequently regional accreditation?

I'd love to have an answer to this question. The evidence from the DETC accreditation of the American Institute of Computer Science, which made its misleading statements about its accreditation from the dreadful WAUC organization to the very day they got DETC accreditation, suggests that these matters are not of relevance.

The fact that the same person owns or controls SCUPS and Northcentral U almost certainly would not be an acknowledged factor in evaluating Northcentral. But one always wonders what goes on in the minds of the evaluators. I had a strong sense that the very large distance learning thing started by Michael Milken and the Oracle guy very much downplayed Milken's involvement when they were out shopping for academic partners, and subsequently as well in promoting their programs.

I guess if SCUPS had ever apologized to me, I'd feel a little better about the situation.

John Bear, waiting for the day
that Carrying A Grudge becomes
an Olympic event

 

John, thanks for your response. Today, one of my friends contacted the executive director of NCA and he reported that although NCU was recommended for candidacy status by a site visiting team, this recommendation was by no means final and still needed to go before a commission for final approval.

The other point the director of NCA made was that if a student was to graduate from NCU during it's candidacy status, assuming that they acquire this status, their degree will continued to be viewed by NCA as being a candidacy status degree even if NCU should achieve regional accreditation in the future.There is apparently no way retroactively to upgrade the degree to be considered regionally accredited. Although this point may be considered moot or superfluous to many, I can forsee potential issues relating to state licensure in psychology and certain employment areas as well which require regionally accredited degrees and which may check to verify that it has this status. End of story.

 

NCU issued an "Accredited Degrees Statement" dated 2/16/01 on their webpage which states the following based on NCA's advisement:

"There is no grand-fathering of degrees awarded before the time accredited status is awarded."

Personally, I would recommend that if anyone wishes to enter this program, they should at least wait until this school formally recieves candidacy status(assuming they will) through NCA, sometime in May or June of 2001.

[/B][/QUOTE]

 

I was supervising a masters marriage and family therapy intern student from Pacifica in 1997 (I think it was 1997). Pacifica was a candidate for regional accreditation and the time for the RA site visit was rapidly approaching. My intern was told by someone at Pacifica that it was preferable to wait until RA was achieved and then graduate, and thus graduate with an RA degree.

To make the situation somewhat paradoxical, my own masters is from Columbia Pacific University, which was, at the time, still "CA approved" (all of the old-timers here are aware of the above, and I'm actually currently applying to U. of London for their M.Sc. in IO/Org Psych).

British Columbia, where I live and work, did not/does not have regulation for counsellors (but does for psychologists). A process has been going on for some years to change the above (regulation status), but it may take some more time (years) given its pace and who the stakeholders are.

The special task force determined in 1995 that those who work for the government programs (such as I) would be exempt from regulations (when they come into being). Thus, the regulations would mostly be in effect for private practitioners, where there needs to be accountability policies and proceedures to protect the public (government programs have these in place or are in the process, as such programs are all currently being subject to accreditation - e.g., CARF, for those who are in the loop on who the accreditors are).

 

Sam said "Personally, I would recommend that if anyone wishes to enter this program, they should at least wait until this school formally recieves candidacy status(assuming they will) through NCA, sometime in May or June of 2001."

Makes sense to me. I can't recall any previous case of a school actively and publicly promoting the recommendation of a site-visitation team. Will this annoy the decision-makers at NCA? We may never know.

 

John, what I find very interesting is that NCU charges only $120 per credit versus significantly more for state approved doctoral degrees in California. Based on a review of a number of their fee structures, the average Psychology degree cost approximately $20,000, if not more, whereby a doctorate at NCU is under $7.000.

The bottomline is that one would be in a more advantageous position to take a chance with NCU, assuming that they will obtain candidacy status,then attending a state approved school with limited value and viability.

 

I might agree, except that the NCU's value and viability is also somewhat limited unless and until they actually achieve regional accreditation.

There are many good foreign options listed in the new 14th edition of Bears' Guide; the least expensive is probably the University of South Africa (http://www.unisa.ac.za), which runs to about $1,500/year.


Peace,

Tom

 

Tom, the issue for many of us is whether a degree from UNISA would be acceptable to state boards of licensure in psychology and counseling as well as comply with the code of ethics of the ACA and/or APA which specifies that these degrees need to be regionally accredited (otherwise, it's considered misrepresentation).

Also, I am not certain that UNISA will allow external doctoral degree students in psychology.

 

By definition, wouldn't any 100% online program be considered out of step with the requirements of the ACA and APA? The only APA-accredited Ph.D. program in clinical psychology that can be done in a low-residency format is that offered by the Fielding Institute (http://www.fielding.edu); neither Northcentral nor UNISA nor California Coast offer APA-accredited Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology, and I find it highly unlikely that the APA will ever accredit a 100% nonresidential Ph.D. program of any kind.

Counseling licensure requirements vary from state to state; in Alabama, the online-with-supervised-local-residencies master's in counseling offered by Southern Christian University may do the trick; in Mississippi, it probably would not. In California, an unaccredited but CA-approved Ph.D. in psychology qualifies the good doctor to set up shop in some capacity; in just about any other state, you can probably forget about it.

They will, but it's general rather than clinical psychology; the Ph.D. program is research based and handled as a social sciences major. But as non-licensure track Ph.D. programs in psychology go (and NCU also falls into this category), it's a valid and very inexpensive choice. And unlike NCU, it's not presently unaccredited.


Peace,

Tom

 

Here are the facts in response to John's concerns.
1.The accreditor did not suggest nor require that we change our name from North Central University to Northcentral University. That was entirely our decision.
2. When we chose the name we had no knowledge that North Central Bible College (NCA accredited) was changing their name to North Central University at about the same time (early-mid 1998). We registered our name in Arizona, acquired our URL as ncu.edu and went about our business. By the end of 1998 we learned about the "other guys" and possibility of confusion and decided on Northcentral as the solution.
3. We selected NCU since we are located in Prescott Arizona which is geographically within the north central part of the state. We had looked at other geographic names but either the names or the URLs were taken.

Hope this takes the mystery out of these concerns.

Don Hecht
President
Norhtcentral University

 

Excuse the typo above. I was not trying to change our name again. It's still Northcentral University.
Don

 

Dr. Hecht, it's good to have you on board. I have spoke with a number of colleagues and we are hoping that your online doctoral degree program, without residency, becomes a reality.

One of our major concerns is that if we were to commence your program at this time,and graduate prior to NCU obtaining regional accreditation, we may not have fully recognized degrees, as noted in the posting on your webpage.

Are there any means or options available that would enable one to retroactively have their degrees recognized as regionally accredited?

In addition, are there any plans in the future to have additional doctoral specialization areas such as counseling and school psychology?

Thanks