Highest Level of Accreditation?

The “Featured Schools” section of this website states “regionally accredited” or “internationally GAAP accredited” represents the “highest levels of accreditation.” Since when would a regionally accredited MBA program be higher than an AACSB accredited program? Or a regionally accredited law school be considered higher than ABA accreditation? (There are free-standing regionally accredited law schools that are not ABA.)

I realize the differences are obvious to regular readers of the Board but could be misleading to new readers – the type of reader the Featured Schools seek to attract.

It is also noted that CHEA and the USDOE, the only evaluators of accrediting bodies in the United States, don't consider RA to be any higher than any other level of recognized accreditation.

While the operators of this site are certainly free to run it as they chose, the policy of limiting featured schools to regionally accredited seems somewhat inconsistent with the mission of providing information on various education alternatives. (At least that’s what I remember the mission to be when it was being discussed on alt.education.distance.)

I realize there has to be some cut-off. (RA, CHEA, DETC, Approved, Unaccredited?) But most of the innovations in distance education have taken place outside of the regional bodies. Since this is a distance education site, it just seems strange to limit endorsements to RA schools. Or was this something that was forced on the operators by the featured schools? (“Limit your Featured Schools to RA or we won’t sponsor.”)

 

A good example is the San Joaquin College of Law in Clovis, CA. I'm not sure why they would even be interested in becoming an ABA school. Little advantage for the school, near as I can tell.

In a greater Fresno of over 1,000,000, many lawyers and a number of judges all graduated from there. They have their own "old boys network" all set up.

They would probably consider making the necessary changes if they weren't so successful without it. In head-to-head competitions within the state and elsewhere, they seem to do quite well.



Tom Nixon

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Btw, in looking up statistics, the single-most successful way to study for the bar exam, based on percentage passing was the law office/judges chambers office. 66.7% of first time takers passed. Oh, by the way, that would be two of the three in the entire state that actually studied in that manner. Statistics are an interesting business.

 

ABA and AACSB are not in the same league

Comparing AACSB and ABA (or AACSB and APA) is like comparing apples and oranges. Lack of ABA accreditation prevents a graduate from practicing his/her profession but lack of AACSB accreditation does not prevent an MBA graduate from practicing his/her profession. AACSB would make more sense if it could lead to licensure like APA, ABA, AMA, ABET, etc.

Ike Okonkwo, Ph.D.

 

Professional versus Academic accreditation. While I have not checked all the schools on the ACCSB and the ABET sites, the ones I have looked at are all regionally accredited or GAPP equivalent "before" they are professionally accredited. Also the professional accreditation applies to a program (note all engineering programs at a particular school may not be ABET accredited) the regional accreditation applies to the school as a whole.

Also if you are a humanities major you do not care if the MBA program is ACCSB accreited or the Industrial Engineering program is ABET accredited, but you probably care that the school is regionally accredited.

So from that point I would place the regional accreitation as the higher level.

 

Re: Re: Highest Level of Accreditation?

What? You first acknowledge that regional accreditation is often required before beginning the specialized accreditation process and then conclude that regional is higher?

Just as the argument is made that DETC won't work for some students, RA accreditation alone won't work for others.

My post was not intended to be a slap at regional accreditation, only to point out that broad generalizations such as “highest level” can be misleading.

 

Re: Re: Re: Highest Level of Accreditation?

I think that Mike's point is that you are collapsing the distinction between institutional accreditation and specialized programmatic accreditation.

While the specialized accreditation can be said to be "higher" in some sense, it usually exists in addition to regional accreditation. So even in these cases, regional accreditation remains the "highest" form of institutional accreditation, though individual departments may add specialized recognition to that.

There are a small number of problem cases where specialized programmatic accreditation is a school's institutional accreditation.

We occasionally see non-RA art schools accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), which usually accredits art departments within RA schools. More common are small non-RA seminaries accredited by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).

In some fields this kind of thing is routine. Pretty much all of the acupuncture colleges are institutionally accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM). Most chiropractic colleges have their institutional accreditation from the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE).

These cases where specialized accreditation constitutes a school's institutional accreditation usually involve trade-offs. They may have more utility than simple RA in some applications, but less in others. As the specialized nature of their accreditation suggests, it has most utility in specialized situations.

 

I thought Mike's comment was a bit off, but everybody is entitled to their opinion.

I would not say RA is above any professional accrediting agency.

Each area has their professional accrediting agencies, if you are getting an MBA it does matter.

 

I agree with nearly every comment posted. However, the majority of the "Featured Schools" offer business programs that are not AACSB accredited. To me, it’s hard to support an argument that RA is the highest level of accreditation for these particular schools.

 

David you bring up some interesting points.

From Featured Schools Section: "These schools, which have been individually screened by the DegreeInfo.com staff and are either regionally accredited or International-GAAP accredited (the highest levels of accreditation), are listed below for your convenience." ...we urge you to consider them for your degree needs (or something to that effect)...

My concerns with this are:

1. What does individually screened mean? What standards were used?
2. What is "International-GAAP accredited"? I know GAAP has been discussed in Dr. Bear's book but this seems to presuppose this term is now recognized (other than accounting principles) and is part of the recognition system of the U.S. Education Dept. Correct me if I'm wrong, there is no listing for "International-GAAP" accreditation or "GAAP" accreditation. GAAP or International-GAAP is not a recognized accreditor!! How can an education site that places emphasis on the best get this wrong?
3. It appears as if the schools listed in the Featured Section are sponsors for this site and not selected for any special qualifications or because they meet any higher standard or level of quality than any other RA school or chartered foreign school. I think the phraseology is misleading and indicates these schools are special in some way, which they're not (except perhaps the Univ of London) and most are relatively unknown which is a large factor in degree utility. I think few have been departmentally accredited by the leading and recognized professions.

Looking at this in a cursory manner, it appears as if this section could use a serious re-edit.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Highest Level of Accreditation?

Bill:

You are right. Many people still do not understand the difference between institutional accreditation and programmatic accreditation. RA should be compared with other forms of institutional accreditation (DETC, ACICS, TRACS, AABC, et) and AACSB should be compared with other business accreditations such as ACBSP and IACBE. If RA is compared with other forms of institutional accreditation, RA is unequivocally the highest form of accreditation.

Ike Okonkwo, Ph.D.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Highest Level of Accreditation?

I can accept this statement with respect to institutional accreditation. However, the "Featured Schools" section doesn't make it clear they are referring to institutional accreditation.

In fact, rather than referring to an institution, college or university, it refers to "schools" which could be easily interpreted to be a business school within a college or university.

I’m not implying there is any intent to deceive, but I still feel the current language is oversimplified and potentially misleading.