Has anyone got a job using a Fairfax University Degree?

Dr. Philip Comfort

I just noticed that Comfort is one of the two translators of my Interlinear New Testament. While I am no Koine Greek expert myself, it looks like he did a fine job to me, regardless of where he got his PhD.

Should I call up Tyndale House Publishing and demand a refund?

 

Re: Re: Re: So the outers are at it again!

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: So the outers are at it again!

Perhaps I missed a big clue, Peter. I didn't notice the new subject you started. I didn't consider this an act of "outing". What is "outing" about it? It is obviously already public knowledge.

Are you afraid that it is a mistake and someone will get in "trouble" because of the mistake? I think I might understand a little better what the communication breakdown was about but I still don't understand why contacting the person first would mean anything??? What are they going to say that isn't already said? The question was for the school not the individual.

 

Take a step back and a fresh look - please!

OK - I innocently posted a list showing that CCU people DID in fact have some form of recognition by their employment. Had I the slightest notion that someone would then proceed to go to the employer of one of these people, and effectively check out the employee, I would never have posted the list.

What is there to lose, by contacting the person concerend firstly? You may be surprised with the result. Where is the risk in doing this? The person may change their academic listing or something? You may only know a part of the story?

No - we go down the route of MAXIMUM possible damage, and we justify that. The information is in the public domain - so what? I feel for any who are treated in this way, and I also feel for any who do not see anything at all amiss with believing acting like this is OK.

Don't include the person in your discussions - No! Really what right of nay of us is it anyway to make such enquiries?

Understandably it is a cultural thing - unilateral action and disregard for 'sovereignty' looks like an American disease that more and more people in the world are getting sick of.

 

Re: Take a step back and a fresh look - please!

I don't understand what damage could be done here. Perhaps that is the disconnect in our assumptions? My assumption was that this was a list of teachers taken off of school websites. How could it be damaging to anyone? The school obviously knows that the person went to CCU.

Your list was intended to show the acceptance of CCU. However, it seems to me that your posts in this thread would seem to counter the very point of you posting the list in the first place. If CCU is so accepted (which I'm not disputing here) then, what is the danger in asking about it? A simple response might be, "We don't normally list unaccredited degrees of our teachers but CCU has a much better reputation than most unaccredited degrees."

 

OK - you don't understand

OK - we'll just leave it there Bill. You don't understand - OK?

I also don't understand what would motivate some loose canon from here to write to someone else's university and attempt to quizz them as to why they let a certain person into a graduate degree program, except to tell them that the particular person had a non GAAP doctorate.

Of course it is incompehensible to consider that the most sensible and fair path would have been to contact the graduate and ask that person. Fortunately the only fallout was '...why does an intelligent person like you hang out with idiots and wannabes like this bunch?...'

But no - as so often here - the path with the greatest possible consequences is taken.

So we'll just leave it there - you don't understand.

 

Contacting a school to inquire about information they themselves have published is hardly "outing" someone. Gee, it sounds like this is something to be ashamed about. That would run contrary to the argument that degrees from unaccredited schools are fine, wouldn't it? Or, perhaps they're not.

 

Re: So the outers are at it again!

Peter,

If IIT is willing to bring him on, with a CCU degree, great. More power to him- it';s the free market at work. I have to believe that the school knows about CCU and knows what it was doing. My question tot he school was NOT about the person but about the school's hiring policy. One of three possibilities exist:

1) The non-RA PhD has no bearing on the academic requirements for what the position requires. The position may require an RA Masters only. Likely the highest probability (People with Masters can teach Masters level courses- so this isn't a stretch).

2) The school does not have a policy at al re: whether a degree is RA or not. A much lower probability, considering the school's history, it's rigor, and it's own regional accreditation.

3) The school doesn't know about CCU. This is a near zero probability.

I'll bet that a Masters is the requirement for what this person teaches. I am merely asking a question.

 

Mike,

He was in the EE department. He as likely late 50's early 60's when I first met him. That was in 1970. He may have passed away.

He was really patient. He really cared about his students- even if we did not fully appreciate him at the time.

Russ

 

Re: OK - you don't understand

Agreed


Let me try to leave you with this one thought. I am not evil and I do not consider anyone that posts on this forum to be evil. Peter, take care.

 

Re: Re: So the outers are at it again!

I have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I would like to hear IIT's explanation. But on the other hand, I am very uncomfortable with making trouble for people.

You often see engineering schools hiring people with industry experience, don't you? And most people in industry don't have doctorates.

But what you said suggests a problem. What if our MSEE with years of Silicon Valley experience is the school's top person in the field of cool-technology. An obvious guy to teach doctoral level C-T courses would be this guy, but you suggest that doing so might not be appropriate unless he had a doctorate. What to do?

Considering the suprisingly large number of faculty with non-RA doctorates out there, I wonder about this.

My speculation is that people are hired on the basis of their masters degree and experience. But they subsequently come under pressure to acquire a terminal degree. Where does that pressure come from? Probably from their university administration, perhaps in response to the accreditors and publications like USNews that use these numbers in making ratings.

The accreditors seem to want at least X percent of the faculty to have doctorates. And they seem willing to accept some small Y percent of these from non-accredited schools. (The magazines seem totally oblivious to non-accredited degrees.) So universities appear to me to be interested in "upgrading" their faculties to maintain the X level, and willing to accept some CCU graduates and the like so long as it doesn't get so excessive as to exceed the accreditors' Y level.

So I'm guessing that many schools know that these degrees are iffy, but consider the degrees to be mere cosmetic window dressing and their holders to be qualified anyway, without the degrees. If the accreditors and the magazines demand more doctors, then hell, we'll give them some more doctors. Keep'um happy.

I agree.

I think they know. The problem is how to reply to some weird e-mail inquiry. If my speculations above have any validity, they probably wouldn't admit it.

 

Russ,

The EE department is now the ECE (electrical and computer engineering) department. I'm an EE major at IIT & there is currently no Dr. Henry Messenger in the ECE department.

There is also no mention of him on the department website or the IIT website as a whole. I'll ask around & see what I can find.

Mike

 

Re: Re: Re: So the outers are at it again!

I had a tech mgmt class at SJSU during my MBA. The prof was someone that was quite sharp and on top of it. I know this because we had an argument on SNA and he knew his stuff. Did he have a doctorate? Don't know and don't care. It was a tech class, and more on the management side of it.

When all is done and said, especially in the tech environment, things happen fast. So, it isn't always possible to have PhD do the teaching the neat stuff.

What I question (and Peter-it's just that a question, not a criticism) is whther it is a CCU PhD that makes it possible for someone to teach in a RA Masters or Doctoral program or their Masters degree.

And yes, i do sometimes ask questions that may be weird. But I think we all ask those types of questions at times.

I still plan to try and get an answer, though ;-)

 

I received a reply from IIT. The message came from the Dean of the Graduate College, Ali Cinar. He wrote:

The information that I have received from the MMAE department is:

"Wingfield teaches a few short courses for us. Project management, reliability, etc. He is from industry with over 30 years of experience."

He then wrote:

Our commitment to hiring tenure-track faculty with the strongest credentials has not changed over the years. Based on the demand from professionals to learn more about soft skills, we have some part-time instructors with strong professional experience that teach such courses.

Perhaps an alternate question might be, "Has anyone gotten a tenure track position at an RA school with a Fairfax degree?"

 

fairfax u.

I do not know how most of this information would be relevant to my original question about Fairfax, but it seems like you all have fun at it. This forum is my first 'forum' experience and I find it to be quite different than what I had expected to be.
Thanks for your opinions.
Sincerely,
AJ

 

Re: fairfax u.

Granted, there seems to have been just a little "thread drift." But your original question was:

Okay-- I'll bite. You feel that [Fairfax] can serve the needs of a mature learner with an unusual educational background.

That said-- what "needs" does it serve, if not the need for an employment-related credential? The consensus seems to be that it's not particularly useful in that application.

If the need is for education for its own sake, then it's quite possibly useful. As would be the $1.00 in gas plus $2.00 in tolls it would cost me to get to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Much cheaper, a wider range of texts to choose from, and it would give me about as much to talk about at the job interview. All that, and just down the road from the Museum of Art.

 

Back when I was looking at doctoral programs, I came across Cal Coast. I almost had myself convinced it was OK, until two things happened. First, John Bear's insight on aed- and his book. Second, my wife saying, "If you are going to go through the pain of a PhD, shouldn't you make it count?"

It was then I realized that all the work I did, and the work I planned to do, could be undone by rationalizing.

 

RedStickHat said:
"In my situation, such a degree wouldn't be worth much. I work in state government, and any degrees or college credits that qualify an applicant for a job must be from a school accredited"

A general web search on other schools that are un'accredited' reveals that this is NOT the case in all situations. There are many employees of state governments that hold degrees from a variety of institutions/schools that may or may not be 'accredited'.

I have the very distinct impression that one of the difficulties in using information shared here is that it seems to be overgeneralized and non-specific.

Of course there are people who have gotten jobs with a degree from the school you mention. Obviously there are people who have not, either because of, or inspite of, that degree.

More specific questions yield more specific answers.

You would have to, as is always the case, indicate which employer and which job.

Imminent physicists have been hired by MIT without a degree at all, some people have likely been laughed out of the HR office with their Ph.D.

All of these so-called absolutes are, frankly, as waste of the typists time.

As in life, "It all depends..."

Nothing is valueless (despite what many posters here and in the newsgroups would have you believe) if you find value in it.

-- Hamish

 

Peaceworker: "All of these so-called absolutes are, frankly, as waste of the typists time. "

Right. Absolutes are very hard to come by. It is obvious there are many people using unaccredited degrees to their satisfaction. But it is also very obvious that such degrees are utterly worthless in many situations. The reverse is NEVER TRUE. There is no situation where an unaccredited degree is acceptable, yet an accredited one is not. Absolutes? No. But the relative differences between degrees from unaccredited schools and accredited schools are vast in terms of quality assurance, educational processes, and utility of the credentials issued. People who plead otherwise are ignoring obvious facts, relevant research, written policies, and case histories in favor of some exceptions. Good luck.

 

Rich,

I agree. Well said. I especially like the reverse analogy that you made. That's a very useful point.

If the options/desires of a person lead them to the point of choosing between two schools, they should always opt in favor of the one with the most "universal acceptance", as best they can determine what that is.

But let us not confuse 'accreditation' with personal utility. Which is so varied as to preclude any real comment.

I am not in any position to tell anyone what might be good for them, but only to help them ask the right questions. Language can be part of the problem, as others have pointed out in posts here and elsewhere.

Good stuff. Thanks for your clarity.

--
Hamish