Is it Worth Getting an Unaccredited Degree

What are your thoughts? I know there is a wide variation in unaccredited degrees. Some are mills or semi-mills. Others have good faculty but not the need or resources to get accredited. Others are simply new.

When I read stories or watch clips (eg people chasing down Alameda degree holders) they simply say the person holds an unaccredited degree with the unspoken assumption (or sometimes spoken) that unaccredited equals diploma mill. I know about Alameda so I am not speaking about them specifically.

Is it reasonable to earn an unaccredited degree much less use it (eg LinkedIn).

 

Perhaps an unaccredited doctorate is even in its own area because it also contains a title with it. Even more reason to ensure it is accredited or does it matter as long as you can defend the quality?

 

There are so many accredited degrees currently. That was not true in the past. But there is more to it, so answer these questions, and I'll try to help.
1. What level? Undergraduate? BS/BA?
2. Master's degree?
3. Doctoral Degree?

Years ago, in one of the earlier editions of Bear's Guide, Dr Bear was president of Columbia Pacific University. There are miles of documents on this institution, and since the father of online learning was in charge, I enrolled. Some report they did little and completed their degrees. I worked on my program with a great chair and Dr. Bear himself. It worked fine for a long time. I was teaching, as were several others from CPU. But I applied for a job in the UNC system, and they informed me the degree was not fully accredited. It was State Approved and CPU claimed it was equal. It wasn't. It cost less than 10 k to complete that degree, but I wanted to move on, and went with the first non-traditional Ph.D. program regionally accredited by WASC, then called Touro University International, Now Trident.

My point with my personal story. I wanted to be completely legitimate. If I had only taught at some community colleges, I had 2 master's degrees, but wanted the doctorate. CPU would have worked. I moved ahead completed the second degree and had a wonderful chair and in their first cohort in Health Sciences. I became a tenured full professor, chair of faculty, Chair of Tenure and Promotion, and other things. Post doctoral work at Harvard. I continue to teach online after retiring from my university in December 2020.

Each case is different. What are your goals? Where are you headed. I am happy to help.

 

An unaccredited Juris Doctor from a California correspondence school might be well worth the effort IF it qualifies the holder to take the California Bar Exam. In that case, the resulting law license itself is the point of the exercise.

Fair warning, though. I took my J.D. from a full time, resident, ABA approved program and my LL.M. in Taxation by correspondence from Taft Law School. Studying law by D/L is MUCH harder than studying in residence.

 

I think it depends on the vocation and the school. I have two unaccredited degrees. One is worthless and the other was an amazing experience and has resulted in many opportunities.

 

Unless you have a very specific goal the degree will satisfy, no. There are too many good, accredited options.

 

No, he was not. To my knowledge, he never held a position at CPU. He did hold a bit of non-controlling stock for awhile, given to him in return for some work he did for them. But that's it. His books never describe him as president of CPU, and I've known him personally for almost 40 years and he's never mentioned it to me. I would have remembered that!

The president of CPU was Dick Crews, not John Bear. I knew them both because both of them served on my doctoral committee at Union.

Again, no. Also, John was never "the father of online learning." He was a big fish in a small pond with his books. Distance learning preceded him by more than a century.

John Bear was your chair?

I have never seen Columbia Pacific make this claim. Now, the state of California passed a law that was on the books for awhile saying state approval was to be treated as the same as accreditation, but it was never taken seriously and would never have applied anywhere outside the state. (To be clear, accredited schools in California never went along with this.)

Uh, no. Touro University International was the first nonresidential doctorate with accreditation, but not "nontraditional." There were many nontraditional accredited schools offering the doctorate even in the 1980s. (Also, Touro's accreditation came from Middle States at first, not WASC, through Touro College in New York. Middle States didn't realize they were accrediting the first nonresidential PhD in the U.S. when they included TUI under Touro's accreditation. When they found out what they'd done, they told TUI to get its own accreditation from WASC, which it did.)

No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't have "worked." It would have been ignored. Community colleges were no more likely to accept an unaccredited doctorate than any other type of school. You would have been a master's-level instructor.

Please share more about this. What post-doctoral work? How did you obtain it? What did you do?

 

I think it matters, in this way: a degree (of any level) you have to keep defending, for any reason, is a liability.

However, if it is a degree of known value, where you are expecting to use it - e.g. an unaccredited religious degree from a school well-known and liked by your denomination - that's not going to be a problem.

 

I spoke to Dr. Bear early on. My post grad work was in the School of Education. Institute for Management and Leadership in Higher Ed. Look, CPU did attain State Approval, not long before it ended. I am not here to argue and nitpick, I offered to help.

As to community colleges, I can assure you in my state that if one has a master's degree, and an unaccredited doctoral degree they can teach. Note I said some community colleges. Here is some information on California Approval for CPU: https://academicinfluence.com/schools/columbia-pacific-university. And an additional file that describes them

All I have to say about that. I am not here to argue.

 

Johann is talking about what I call a "degree with an explanation" and such a degree might even be regionally accredited. "I got my MBA from Western New Mexico University". "Oh really? Say, that's in Silver City New Mexico where Lance Armstrong used to train! Great biking. Did you ever do the Loop? "Uh, well, uh, I've never actually been there..."

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the above conversation. But the issue of legitimacy hangs in the air a bit for awhile.

My LL.M. is a degree with a more severe explanation: "Taft Law School? Where's that?" "It's uh, distance learning". "Oh. Um. Is it ABA accredited?" "Well, no, the school is accredited but not by the ABA. The ABA doesn't accredit LL.M. programs you know." "Ah. I see. Well, thanks for coming in. We will let you know."

 

When it comes to the operations of higher education institutions in Europe and North America, I am seeing trends toward greater regulation of things instead of the reverse trend. This could be extended into almost every area imaginable. For example, postgraduate studies in Poland were previously left in a sort of “free market” state where supply and demand would dictate whether a program was created by an accredited higher education institution. These programs were not really regulated by the government. However, the recent scandal with Collegium Humanum is causing a major re-thinking of this policy with a huge number of voices (including very prominent government and education officials) calling for the immediate regulation of these studies and the implementation of stringent quality controls like the ones that you would see with degree studies in Poland.

In California, the license-based approval to operate might have meant something more concrete in the past. I don’t believe that it does anymore, at least nothing beyond “you’re allowed to operate under certain conditions and you had better get institutional accreditation within a certain short time frame, if you want to continue to exist.” In Spain, we're seeing more conditions being set on the granting of Títulos Propios. While these are unrelated cases, they illustrate a certain trend away from the "libertarian" conception of higher education.

Therefore, accreditation and solid source quality assurance have become a necessity in almost every country of the highly developed world. And the developing world is already following the set precedent. Seeking degrees and qualifications outside this accreditation structure made some sense in a different time period, one where the abundance of accredited options was not available. Right now, it isn’t a very wise decision for the vast majority of individuals. If you add the legal complications and the potential reputation destruction factor (which was always an issue with unaccredited degrees), you’d be wise to avoid this path under most circumstances.

In the United States, a particular interpretation of church and state separation has given rise to a largely globally unprecedented establishment of unaccredited seminaries in select states. Earning doctoral degrees and other titles from these institutions would likely get you fined (if discovered) in many parts of Europe and Asia. But the pursuit of these degrees won’t have much justification in the future, as more affordable and fully accredited religious degree options become widely available through online means, making the religious exempt institution essentially redundant.

 

If the price is right and the school offers something you can't study anywhere else, I say go for it. But if all things are equal between it and an accredited program, go with the accredited program. There are so many accredited programs available that it just doesn't make sense to study with an unaccredited one if you don't have to.

 

Okay. But you didn't address my point. And because you've taken an adversarial attitude, I'll be blunt: you're wrong. If you'd like to refute that, please do. But statements from an anonymous poster are not sufficient to support your statement when all the other observable facts belie it. If you'd like to leave it like this, I'm fine with that, too.

No one said it didn't. But it's immaterial.

No one said you couldn't. I said that having an unaccredited doctorate would be irrelevant, not disqualifying.

That is a non-authoritative source and adds nothing to the question.

Good. I'm glad that's all you have to say. Because what you've said has been in error, both in terms of your assertions and assessment. I've taken the trouble of dissecting it because it is harmful. I am grateful not to do any more.

 

This harkens a point I've made repeatedly on this board: You go to a university to get an education AND a degree. Unaccredited schools often fail their graduates in the latter, even if they've been successful at the former.

This can happen with accredited schools, too. The University of Phoenix is the most tragic example. Students who graduate from UoP have earned their degrees. With first-hand experience, I can safely say that. But the school's reputation for aggressive sales and high dropout rates have hurt it. They became the archetype for the "degree mill" tag, much like McDonalds has become the archetype for fast food. (Burger King does everything McDonald's does, but doesn't get anywhere near the flak.) Thus, students who've worked very hard to earn legitimate degrees from UoP are often stigmatized for it. And UoP, instead of being the leader in DL that it should be, continues to seek out a sugar daddy buyer to save it.

As I have noted, I consulted WISR during its (successful) run at accreditation. I believed its students were getting a good education and knew the (former) limits of their degrees. And one of my favorite thinkers, Barry Johnson (polarity management) earned his PhD at International College, a well-regarded unaccredited California-approved school. (It's now gone.) I'm not saying such a degree has no purpose, but it is a very limiting one. And as others have said, why do that if you don't have to? When Barry took his PhD there were very few accredited options for working professionals, and the DL scene in California was quite robust. Now, the opposite is true. So, all the musings about CPU, for example (Which has been defunct for nearly three decades) are irrelevant to today's situation. Generally, as a rule, with some minor exceptions, going to an unaccredited school is a bad idea.

 

Are there any examples of credible unaccredited schools left, beyond super-specific religious contexts and cases where there are other outside signs of legitimacy?
For the longest time, when this question popped up in this forum, I would bring up St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary. Despite being unaccredited, this school is the finest seminary in UOC-USA - that is, it's the only seminary in UOC-USA. It's hard to question a school where a guy in charge of HR (vocations) at the biggest employer of the school's graduates is also the guy running the school. For St. Sophia, both roles are filled by Archbishop Daniel (Zelinsky); it also helps that Abp. Daniel is what the vast majority of the Eastern Orthodox community would recognize as a "canonical" Bishop, part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. To my surprise, though, St. Sophia appears to be well into it's ATS accreditation bid.
Since I currently identify as a Ukrainian Greek Catholic, I checked out UGCC's seminaries in US. The one I quickly googled does not appear to be accredited - but has full approval of the host Eparchy (Diocese), whose head answers to Met. Borys of Philadelphia, and to Maj. Abp. (Patriarch) Svyatoslav of Kyiv-Halych and, ultimately, the Pope (and even more ultimately, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ). I argue that would make it both legitimate and worthwhile - if that is, you're trying to be a Ukrainian Catholic priest.
There can be other extremely niche examples. For example, IIRC, there are a couple of states licensing "Naprapathic Medicine" practitioners - and a couple of unaccredited schools teaching the subject. In this context, state board's listing takes place of accreditation. But only in that super-niche field.

 

How hostile to each other's seminaries are the Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox?

 

Not really. California kinda killed all of that. And with recognized accreditation so much more available to distance learning schools, there really isn't a general need for that category anymore.

 

This is a great thread, IMHO. Garp, thank you for asking the question. It takes me back to the "bad old days" 10 or 15 years ago when the Internet was making distance learning much more practical but accredited schools had not yet embraced distance learning. Garp's question was a very complicated question to answer back then with many diploma mills taking advantage of people. Of course there was also a few decent unaccredited schools started up to try to service the students interested in distance learning. The decent unaccredited schools were difficult to identify for potential students. It is so much simpler now. Much fewer people are probably being ripped off by diploma mills.

No longer any need for the wonderful critically important Bear Guides of old. The question can be answered much easier now! YIPPEE!!!

 

I believe there are two Naprapathic Medical Schools. One is the original and is unaccredited (located in Chicago). The other is of more recent origin and is located in Santa Fe. The founder is a graduate of the Chicago school. He is highly motivated and has gotten Naprapathic Medicine recognized and regulated in New Mexico and Nevada (including insurance reimbursement). He also got the school (Southwest) accredited by DEAC.