Does anyone have any information about Harcourt Learning? I am well experienced and established in my field and already have 3 AA/AS degrees in Electronic Technology, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science from RA schools. I also have a BS in Business from California Coast and I am working on my MBA from Cal Coast. I fully understand the accreditation issue. I am thinking about pursuing an AST in Mechanical Engineering from Harcourt. I am not going to do it to get into a new field, just to cover that last technical aspect. Now that I have made my reasons clear, does anyone have a non-accreditation related opinion of Harcourt Learning?
There was a former poster here and on a.e.d. that was quite rabid in being against Harcourt, to the point of having a "Harcourt sucks" type webpage. I was never interested enough to look into the whole thing, but a Google search might turn up something worth looking into. Bruce
http://www.harcourt.com/hlcollege/ is worth looking at to see who owns what part of Harcourt and which parts won't be around much longer. ------------------ Bill Gossett
The former International Correspondence Schools has a lot of detractors. Some comment on the quality of courses but most, I think, are responding to the hard-sell marketing (and the Suzanne Sommers commercials). Harcourt clearly made the decision to do away with the ICS name when they paid many hundreds of millions for the business a few years ago. While the former ICS has been going strong for well over 100 years and apparently has several hundred thousand students (most of them not in degree programs), there is still the chilling reminder, with Harcourt's abrupt closing of Harcourt Direct last month, that proprietary companies with a responsibility to the stock holders, and with major input from the cost accountants, are capable of shutting something down if it doesn't meet their business plan, students be damned.
Of course, Dr. Bear is referring to the Sally Struthers commercials. Suzanne Somers is noted for an equally offensive set of infomercials, including those for the Thigh Master. Rich Douglas, who does not have flabby thighs.