GAAP is not RA

Yes.
I know very little about the school and quoted it only as a school that actually has the lowest "reputation score" on USNWR list. Their "vedic science" curiculum also seem somewhat flaky.
I first looked into it a couple of years ago, and I considered their "computer professional" MS option.(http://www.mum.edu/compro/index.html The whole program was apparently an attempt to play immigration law and bring foreighn labor to USA on F1 visa (nothing illegal here - the law does permit a student to engage in paid "curricular practice training" and "optional practice training", and they did offer classes). At least one ukrainian student was denied visa on this grounds.

 

I’ve seen this allegation referred to several times over the years.

One of the oft-quoted allegations dates to June 5, 1999, and was made in a Yahoo Group discussion (see here) that was attempting to debunk Creation Science and its denigrate its proponents.

• Next time you see a creation "scientist", ask him where he
  got his degree.
  
  --"Dr" Richard Bliss, who developed curriculum materials
  for the Institute for Creation Research, had a doctorate in
  education from the University of Sarasota in Florida, an
  unaccredited diploma mill that is located in a hotel.

Another Web site entitled Some Questionable Creationist Credentials states the following:

• 
  Richard Bliss, formerly a member of the ICR staff, claimed to be "a recognized expert in the field of science education" and was co-author of a "two-model" book that creationists have pushed for use in the public school system.
  Bliss claimed to earn a D.Ed. from the University of Sarasota in 1978. A previous version of this article described the university as a "diploma mill operating out of a Florida motel" as late as 1984. However, the university's status has since improved. The University of Sarasota was accredited in 1990 by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to grant masters and doctoral degrees. According to the 1997 edition of Bears' Guide to Earning College Degrees Nontraditionally [1], a student's total residency at the University of Sarasota can be as short as six weeks.

Supposedly, the original allegation was made by the Philadelphia Enquirer, which characterized the University of Sarasota as a “diploma mill in a Florida motel,” based on the fact that when it was first founded they did not own, and instead leased, their facilities. This allegation was (once again, supposedly) repeated in Lovejoy's College Catalog. The Philadelphia Enquirer’s characterization was also supposedly repeated in an article by William V. Mayer in the In the 1984 Spring issue of Scientific Integrity.

So there you have it; the sum total of these allegations stem primarily from the efforts of those attempting to denigrate the credentials of a single individual who is a proponent of Creation Science. To my knowledge no one has actually located or posted the original Philadelphia Enquirer article, nor the article from Scientific Integrity (not that either should carry much weight), but the references to the diploma mill characterization persist.

 

Yours is an extremely misinformed and ethnocentric opinion. But then again, you have demonstrated in the past that your research and opinions concerning educational institutions leaves a lot to be desired.

 

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I do not acknowledge messages from those who post anonymously.

 

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I do not acknowledge messages from those who post anonymously.

 

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Can you provide an example of your work which dates back 30 + years?

 

Gus is Gus. Others will agree.

Of course, I might not be Rich. Except that you and I have corresponded. Gus and I have talked on the phone, with me contacting him. Gus is Gus.

 

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Members who post anonymously can not be held accountable for their actions. On many occasions I have read your comments expressing the same.

 

But Gus isn't anonymous. He's Gus. It's him. It's his real name. I'm curious what you consider "anonymous."

 

If Gus, Jeff, and Rich are "anonymous", what does that make you?

 

Hey, wait a minute! I feel left out! After all, I'm as anonymous as those other guys, don't I get snubbed too? Or maybe your sig line should really read DWTroll.

Jack

 

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Back to the original point.
I trust that all US (or foreign) RA institution is of sound -- possibly minimally so, but still sound -- quality.

Because GAAP encompasses the rest of the entire world and all of the individual Q.A. processes, some sound and some not, and some probably not at all -- I can not trust that the average GAAP degree is of average RA quality.

Of course, the big boys, like Oxford, Cambridge, and many others are quite easy to recognize and validate, but the legions of others truely offer no real proof. How do we -- education consumers -- know that Q.A. is really a priority or did the Q.A. issue end when government approval was awarded?

Personally, it upsets me that DegreeInfo ignores the other USA accreditors, when DETC (IMHO) established DL in this country. Maybe through home study of vocational programs, but non-the-less DETC is the only accreditor, which solely pushed DL schools.
Also, many a small unknown school helped blaze the trail, if you will, that is DL in the USA today. We as DL consumers have many options because Walden, Sarasota, Capella, Union, Saybrook, CIIS just to name a few decided to take up the DL cause.

DegreeInfo does not acknowledge the other non-RA accreditors, when in large part DegreeInfo exists today because of the small original trail blazer.

 

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Sorry Jack you are not anonymous. I checked your profile and you certainly have listed enough information for me or anyone else with half-a-brain (and a free thirty minutes) to track you down.

Want me to phone you?

Rich although he does not list any personal information in his profile has certainly posted enough personal information, including an institution where he teaches, that one can certainly trace him as well.

It's all about accountability.

 

That is not true, I for one have strongly endorsed American Military University, which is a DETC-accredited school.

 

Why would you want to “track down” a member of this forum? Moreover, it might take longer than thirty minutes, but if you have a fair modicum of research skills, anyone can be located. In any event, you might want to pick up a good dictionary and look up the term anonymous.

Whoa! Why would any member of this forum want you to contact them by telephone? Isn’t communication the primary purpose of this forum? Don’t you know how to use this forum’s private messaging feature?

Once again, why would you want to ”trace” a member of this forum? What’s with all the cloak and dagger stuff? Have you tried requesting personal contact information via the private message function of this forum? It seems that if someone must resort to ”tracing” and ”tracking down” other members of this forum, their motives are less than honorable.

To whom, Wes, you? Is that what they are teaching you at ACCS? I doubt it.

A few select members of this forum have my telephone number and are welcome to call me any time. Many more have my private email address. However, it is precisely people like you, Wes, that reinforce my belief in the need to protect one’s privacy.

 

There are a lot of issues in this thread, some of which have caused violent flame battles in the past.

1. Is "GAAP" the same thing as RA? No, I don't think so. "GAAP" simply means that a university is listed in at least one of a particular set of reference books. The importance of that is that many people in the United States treat such a listing as evidence of RA-equivalence, so "GAAP" clearly represents a level of utility.

2. Are American universities academically better than foreign universities? I think that some are better than some foreign universities, and some foreign universities are better than some American universities. You have to look at individual schools on a case-by-case basis. I'm hesitant (in most cases) to generalize about entire nations' higher education systems.

3. Should a student restrict his or herself to domestic schools? I see no reason why they should. In some cases, the best DL options might be offered overseas. Personally, I think that one of the coolest things about DL is precisely the fact that it makes the world's higher education available to me. I guess the two things to worry about here are: A. Will the foreign school meet domestic licensing requirements? And B. Does the student want to hide the fact that he/she studied by DL? (Hard to do when one's university is half the world away.)

4. Should Degreeinfo embrace American non-RA schools? I think that they should be treated realistically. We should be very clear about their limitations, but willing to accept that they might have considerable value for some students. (That only applies to legitimate schools of course. Mills should be treated very cooly.) Again, we need to look at individual cases in detail: What schools are we talking about, and what programs? What kind of accreditation does the school have? What are the student's needs and how does he/she intend to use the education and any degrees or certifications earned? I think that Degreinfo often treats these sorts of issues simplistically.

5. Are all Mexican universities inferior to all American RA universities? I find that assertion ridiculous. I do think that Mexican higher education QA leaves something to be desired. (The Mexicans admit that themselves.) Probably some of their low end schools are questionable. (The US isn't immaculate in that regard either, but the lamest American ones rarely make RA.) But most Mexican schools and programs are certainly comparable with American RA, and a few programs are widely considered to be among the world leaders in their fields. (I mean, where would you rather study pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art history?)

6. Is there anything wrong with anonymity on Degreeinfo? My feeling is: not really. The only time that it's relevant to know a participant's identity is when that individual is trying to claim some kind of personal authority: when they are simply making assertions and saying 'Believe this because I'm me'. What I normally do is treat everyone's posts as what they are from my vantage point: words on a screen. They are little pieces of text, and my replies to them are responses to the ideas and information contained in that text. (Degreeinfo is like a very intellectual interactive video game.) If a post is crap, it doesn't make it any more persuasive to know who wrote it. And if a post is persuasive, there isn't any real need to.

 

If by that you mean DETC, I would be happy to give DETC a hug. Just keep in mind that it represents a small fraction of 1% of the graduates in the USA and the degrees don't have quite the utility of RA degrees (probably because it is such an insignificant piece of the pie makes it an unknown).

 

What the hell are you talking about? Do you think "Jeff Hampton" is a stage name that I chose because it is so darned catchy?

And to call Rich anonymous. You have got to be kidding me. The newsgroup alt.education.distance is now primarly a discussion of Rich's biography.

I think what you meant to say is that you do not acknowledge messages from people who refute your ridiculous assertions.

 

But he isn’t referring to the DETC; that is just a smoke screen. Wes has never championed the DETC’s cause in the past (and by posting such highly inaccurate statements, he isn’t doing much to bolster their cause now). He is referring, of course, to all the other USDOE approved and CHEA recognized accreditors, and to be more specific, TRACS (the accreditor of the current institution he is attending). Wes would like to see DegreeInfo embrace TRACS, arguably one of the most controversial of the other accreditors.