Have we changed...

Sounds about right.

North

 

Good point. There's a John's Hopkins (ivy league) program in hospital administration or something offered in California that is CA-approved. All the U. of Phoenix, Embry Riddle and City U. local branches are too. Out of state schools from Goddard to Naropa are active here. I expect that all the CA DETC schools are CA-approved. The NASAD art colleges and the ACICS business schools are.

What's more, the great majority of CA-approved schools are sub-university level trade and vocational schools. The degree granting CA-approved schools with no other recognized accredition total several hundred, I think. That's still a lot, but not 3,000. I don't think that they represent the main thrust of the BPPVE's mission.

I'll agree with that. It's just that if they aren't RA, they lack the most widely accepted indicator of academic credibility here in the US. So the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate their credibility in some other way. By some alternative form of accreditation perhaps (CA-bar in SF Law and Lincoln's cases), affiliation with an RA school (I. Buddhist Studies or U. Creation Spirtuality), certification by the board of behavioral science examiners perhaps, or simply developing a strong academic reputation of their own through research and impressive graduates.

Whether any of them have really been successful and are fully recognized as peer institutions by the mainstream academic world is open to debate. Personally, I don't think that any of the CA-approved DL schools have completely succeeded.

 

Which schools do you think have come the closest to succeeding? Or perhaps a better question might be, which of the CA-approved schools would be considered the most reputable?

Russell

 

Sorry North,

I meant Australia not Canada.

Oz is now about 18m population with California about 32m, so not quite double.

Size matters - right ?

Any entity with 32m population and a self-standing top-5 or -6 world-class economy should be taken seriously.

In whatever it does, many follow later ..... eg. could there be any correlation in its economic success and its approach to post-secodnary education ?

Maybe someone has done a study ....

Cheers,

Neil

 

There is a historical angle to this question. California had the opportunity to build the credibility of its approval process, yet failed to do so. At one time, state law stated that Approval was the legal equivalent of accreditation. Now, this was never true in practice. You couldn't take a California Coast U. bachelor's and gain admission to UCLA's master's program, even though UCLA is a state school. But California COULD HAVE ENFORCED THIS! But it would have also required that the approval process be beefed up and administered properly. This would have not only required much greater resources at the state level, it would have also put a lot of schools out of business. (Which the state did anyway when it removed the "Authorized" category.)

California also could have applied for USDOE recognition, becoming recognized as an accrediting agency. The only state to do this has been New York, whose Board of Regents remain listed as an approved accreditor by USDOE. But it did not.

All this discussion over the size and economic power (implied) is moot. The fact is, degrees from California-approved schools are not recognized as part of the nation's acadmic system. As such, they're not acceptable--except in rare cases--for admission to study in other schools, here and abroad. They seem to have some utility for employment purposes, but that's a different issue.

The fact that WASC accredits schools operating in California only serves to illustrate this discrepancy further. Schools in California have a clear path to becoming part of the nation's higher education system via accreditation with WASC. That WASC is the least flexible (except for, maybe, the New England Association) of the RAs regarding DL is tough, but schools have been able to do it (Fielding, Saybrook, CIIS, etc.). Then there's the growing credibility and availability of the DETC....

I'm as big a fan of the California-approved schools as anyone who isn't trying to put one of their degrees to use. But the facts are the facts. And California has done more to gut its ability to regulate and even promote this sector than it should have. And missed a great opportunity along the way.

Rich Douglas, a native Californian

 

One problem is that the most reputable among them gradually eliminate themselves from the CA-approved category by becoming RA. Just here in the Bay Area, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, CIIS and the Wright Institute come to mind as schools that have "graduated", so to speak. I expect that Saybrook was once CA-approved too. So the CA-approved category is an incubator of RA schools, and is probably one reason why California is rich in all these small RA graduate institutes that you don't see so often in other states. I like that.

Among the current CA-approved schools without any other DOE/CHEA recognized accreditation?

I like SF Law. It has been in operation for many decades and has graduated a lot of Bay Area attorneys, including some local judges. It's success rate on the bar exam is pretty good, comparable with some ABA schools, though its drop out rate is high. It's CA-bar accredited but not RA or ABA.

The Institute of Buddhist Studies has its own degree granting powers, and technically has a Master's of Buddhist Studies (MBS) on offer. But it is concentrating now on preparing students for Graduate Theological Union MA's in Buddhist Studies. GTU is not only RA and ATS, it is prestigious. They seem to accept IBS as a full affiliate, and if you look at the GTU online course catalog you will find courses listed in things like Mahayana Buddhist Texts where the student is directed to the IBS. So the GTU is willing to list IBS courses among its own offerings.