If Laura Callahan's Ph.D. had been from...?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If Laura Callahan's Ph.D. had been from...?

Right on Kirkland, CCU has been around for 30 years and I hope for 30 more. I have always been impressed by their quality and stability, and wouldn't hesitate to earn a degree from them. CCU in no way compares to Hamilton.

 

Thank you.

The reason why I like multiple accreditors is this:

First, it makes specialized accreditors possible. Second, it permits general institutional accreditors to exist that might want to try different, inconsistent things.

I'm groping in the dark here. I'm not 100% sure what standards and methods will turn out to have been the most fruitful a generation from now.

There might be constitutional problems with that, but the federal government hasn't let little insignificant things like states' rights stop it before.

I've toyed with that kind of idea myself. Restricting a certain set of degree titles (BA, MA, Ph.D. and the like) to accredited schools alone, and letting other more imaginative schools create new titles rather freely.

But I'm not entirely comfortable with that. It would reduce confusion, but as I argued above, everyone who isn't personally familiar with a school is already perfectly free to look up that school's accreditation status anytime they want to.

All this restricted title thing seems to me to do is to pander to peoples' laziness. It's as if people are saying that if a non-accredited school dangles a Ph.D. in their face, even if they know its not accredited and even if they distrust non-accredited schools, they won't be able to help themselves. So they want the government to protct them from temptation, from the necessity of having to think for themselves, by restricting what they are allowed to see.

The problem is that some non-accredited schools (a small number, true), might be doing something very special. Perhap they are new. Perhaps they are small. Or perhaps they are experimenting with a new methodology or curriculum or something that the accreditors still refuse to accept. (DL still isn't fully accepted.)

Right now, here in the United States, the "competent authorities" as the Lisbon convention puts it, the parties with the ultimate authority to decide whether or not a particular qualification is credible, meets their needs and should or shouldn't be recognized, are the people doing the hiring and the admitting, the universities and the employers themselves. (At least in unregulated professions.) The individuals immediately concerned have the power, right and responsibility to make their own choices about what it is that they want and about what it is that they will accept.

They don't have to act in a vacuum either, because they have the professional and academic communities right there alongside them advising them, in the form of accreditors.

The accreditors might not all speak with the same voice. NASAD might love a highly specialized art school with minimal general-ed requirements, while AALE wants every student to be steeped in the liberal arts tradition. Both points of view are entirely legitimate, but they are utterly inconsistent. ABET might demand lots of hands-on in-class lab experiences and basically dismiss the possibility of undergraduate engineering programs, while DETC might say "sure, why not?" WASC may tell a tiny school of 40 students that it lacks the resources necessary to be accredited while the ATS signs it up happily, no questions asked.

My point is that real differences of opinion exist, and that this kind of information is useful to education consumers. But I'm not sure that the fact that there are disagrements justifies the federal government announcing that only one way can lead to real academic degrees.

 

BillDayson: " My point is that real differences of opinion exist, and that this kind of information is useful to education consumers.


Cehi: True. I agree.


BillDayson: "But I'm not sure that the fact that there are disagrements justifies the federal government announcing that only one way can lead to real academic degrees."


Cehi: maybe or maybe not. It depends on how all the arguments for or against the idea of centralizing the power for granting degrees reside with the federal governement convince the movers and shakers that it is a worthwhile endeavor to pursue. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, though.

 

The matter of legally operating State Approved/State Liscenced schools may actually me nomimal to the general population. I truly feel the numer of graduates of state regulated schools (ie, K-W, CCU, Century, SCUPS, PW-CA/HI) is small compared to the huge number of RA grads which graduate each year. I also know that many of the students who actually start a program at K-W and graduate is much smaller; people become overwhelmed with self-directed study, when they have to read a text and their grade depends on a final. For someone out of school a long time, one course could take many months. Often on the PUB I read where students have exceeded the 18 month timeframe, and are requesting extensions.

The matter to us is signifigant, becuse most State Approved schools are DL. Perhaps to the accreditors and the US population at large, the number of SA students, verses RA, is just a drop in the bucket.

Illegally operating, un-State regulated degree mills are a WHOLE different matter - if even if 1% of graduates operate from these schools, that is too much.

 

I haven't exactly done a scientific study on this, but ALL of the people that I have encountered who dropped out of K-W did so because they came to believe that it was a degree mill, not because they thought it was too challenging.

 

Kennedy-Western and Century are not "state regulated". K-W has a business license to operate in Wyoming, with no academic supervision or oversight, and Century operates under a grandfather clause in New Mexico that exempts it from current school licensing requirements. Again, no academic supervision or oversight.


Bruce

 

Beg to Differ

Bruce:

I beg to differ - by the obtainment of a fully legal and valid postsecondary state license, K-W has fully met the regulations which were established by the State of WY's DoE, and that includes: an onsite visit to the school, RA facuilty, etc. Irregardless of how minimal you feel these standards are, and how much you dislike that K-W meets the Department of Education's operating licensure requirements - this is infact a form of regulating a postsecondary institution to ensure minimal operating stanards are met. To quote from my K-W transcript:

KENNEDY-WESTERN UNIVERSITY IS REGULATED BY THE STATE OF WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND MEETS THE STANDARDS FOR LISCENSURE PURSUANT TO THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS LICENSING ACT, W.S. 21-2-401 ET.SEQ.

Thanks,

 

Re: Beg to Differ

Hi RJT,

Is this a direct quote from K-W?

Good luck with your program.

Tony

 

RJT, could you point me to a page listing the specific Wyoming DoE licensure requirements?

Thanks.


Cheers,

 

If you go to- www.k12.wy.us/
Click on private schools & licensing, you'll see what Wyoming requires of its DL schools.

 

Re: Beg to Differ

Irregardless? I couldn't find this word in my dictionary.

 

After checking I found that www.k12.wy.us/higher_ed/statutes.html will take you directly to WY statutes- 401-402-403-404 &405. All apply to KW.

 

Tony:

This is a direct quote from my K-W transcript.

Thanks,

 

All that says is that any WY licensed school must maintain a physical presence in the state (K-W has a basement office in WY, but their real HQ is in Thousand Oaks, CA), obtain a business license, obtain a bond, and list teaching methods & a list of instructors.

As I said, there is no provision for academic oversight. Wyoming's regulations are a joke, and that's exactly why K-W ended up there, after stops in California and Idaho.

If and when WY tightens up their standards, look for the moving vans at 200 West 17th Street in Cheyenne.


Bruce

 

Well, what would you expect them to say? That's like me saying "Bruce Tait is a great guy, just ask me".


Bruce

 

I'm not sure that's accurate. Most degree-mills are DL, but that's not quite the same assertion.

What if a good school is out of compliance? You would have an illegal but good school. And what if a terrible school satisfies toothless standards? You would have a legal degree mill.

Unless 'legal' implies 'good', the whole state approval thing is almost irrelevant.

 

The one I like is:

In addition, the board shall prior to issuing any license under this article and not less than once every three (3) years thereafter, inspect and visit the principal place of business of each degree granting post secondary education institution.

This in a state that allows schools to maintain a token presence in Wyoming consisting of one employee in rented premises, while all of a school's administrative and educational functions, such as they are, take place elsewhere, often overseas.

In my opinion, these Wyoming laws almost seem designed to provide a fig leaf for degree-mills. They provide the semblance of an approval process without in fact requiring anything substantial at all. I don't know whether that's intentional or whether some naive small-state officials are just out of their depth.

But whatever it is, Wyoming approved universities operate a network of dozens of "campuses" spread all around the planet, from Britain and Finand to China and Pakistan. All of these far flung schools churn out degrees on the authority of Wyoming approval.

Wyoming approval is a franchise, a McPhD, a clown wearing one of those weird square flat academic hats.

What possible relevance do the Wyoming "site visits" to some token office in Cheyenne have to policing something that's actually taking place in the United Arab Emirates?

The technical academic term for the Wyoming approval process is "bullshit". It's embarassing to me as an American to see this happening.

 

Good points Bill.

Personally, I have always felt that the reason some schools advertise large numbers of foreign students is that many foreign companies have no clue. To them state approval sounds good. We may know that it means maintaining a mail box in a state but they don't. It is embarassing.

Many Americans don't know diddly about education either. I e-mailed a Air Force Col. (Chaplain) because their site lumped D.D 's & DMin together as professional doctorates and would not list them as a special qualifications as they would an Ed.D. or PhD. I first said that DD is an honorary degree to which he replied anyone knows that (not what his site said). I had sent him the UD Dept of Ed/NSF classification of degree showing titles like DMin/Ed.D with PhD.'s and pointed out that schools like S. Christian U have 60 credit hour DMin's in MFT. He said heck, you can buy DMin.'s on-line. I emailed him back and said there is a far greater proliferation of PhD mills and that some of the 'state approved' schools have little more than a business license. No response.

What I got the impression was that if a Chaplain asked to have a PhD from KW listed he would get credit for a special qualification. A Chaplain with a 60 credit hour DMin in Marriage and Family Therapy would not. Basically the Chaplain COL did not have a clue.

North

 

Welllll... as someone else has already said, this is considerably dependent on the state where the school claims to be located.

For example, in Hawaii, the state grants legal authority to operate within a set of parameters (don't claim accreditation, have x number of Hawaiian students, etc) but the requirements are so minimal as to be essentially meaningless... so a degree from a legally operating Hawaiian school that does not have accreditation would be pretty worthless, and would very easily be a time bomb. And the fact that Jeffrey Brunton spends so much time shutting down schools that can't meet even the very minimal Hawaiian standards is an indication of how bad the situation is.

Ditto Montana and Wyoming, except that there's no Jeffrey Brunton there to enforce even the minimal regulations, so pretty much anything goes.

The other problem with state-approved schools is unfortunately, many states (including California) lack the resources for proper oversight of schools under their jurisdiction, so lots of shady stuff goes on in spite of regulations.

And then you've got situations like Century U., where the school doesn't meet even the minimal standards set by the state, because somebody lobbied for, and won "grandfathering," so they wouldn't have to meet even the minimum requirements. Of course, they proudly speak of their NM approval without mentioning this.

My take is that there are a tiny handful of state-approved schools that are trying to do a good job, follow the rules, and provide a decent education. The vast majority, in my opinion, are skating at the very edge (and usually over the edge) of legality, and certainly over the edge of what is ethically and morally defensible.

 

Welll... maybe.

In the case of Kennedy-Western, the school has skated across State lines more than once when faced with the notion of having to meet even minimal standards... and by the accounts I've heard, they didn't even actually *move* across state lines, just establishing a tiny office with one or two people, while the real operation is still in California.

In the case of Century, they lobbied and managed to get themselves exempted from the minimal state requirements.

And what about Columbia Pacific, which continued to operate for a year or two *after* being ordered to close by California authorities?

Then you've got places like Monticello or Rushmore or Trinity who dodge around the issue by claiming to be domiciled outside the U.S.

Look at the pattern. Columbia Pacific, at one time considered one of the better unaccrediteds, went downhill first claiming Indian tribe accreditation and other equally dubious approaches, and became essentially a laughingstock of a school. Ditto MIGS, which *could* have been real. Ditto Greenwich, which trumpeted its Norfolk Island accreditation and is now part of an aura reading school in Marin County, CA.

No, in my opinion, even a *legal* state-approved university is a huge risk. While Cal Coast (arguably the best of the bunch) degrees could have utility for now, what's to stop Cal Coast from becoming the next Columbia Pacific?

With all of the excellent RA options out there, and even some decent DETC schools, there's really no defensible argument in favor of going the unaccredited route, in my opinion.