Levicoff on Nations University

There is a place for University of the People and NationsUniversity in providing low cost, rigorous and credible education to people who might not otherwise be able to obtain it. Is it going to replace Wharton or Southern Baptist Theological Seminary? Probably not. There is something special about sitting under the tutelage of great professors in a classroom. However, UofPeople and NU and other online or low residency options present an opportunity to study in that field and as accreditation provides meet certain benchmarks.

I suspect U of People and Nations may cut a few more reasons people have to go the mill route to earn a degree. Their model serves humanity and a purpose but it (and other online institutions) can not replace the scholarly development done in our great residential institutions.

 

Having just said that and thinking about it, I have seen people discussing their research doctoral programs (British and South African) where they work in a mentoring and collegial way with a scholar in their field. This seems to have the potential for rigorous and scholarly results at the doctoral level.

 

Yes, that first world is called "academia." And by calling itself a university, Nations is publicly stating "we want to be part of that world and are willing to subject ourselves to the scrutiny that comes with it." Included in that scrutiny is public opinion.

Every school has two worlds. There is the academic institution and then there is the socio-cultural aspects of said university. Most people conflate the two. Your opinion of your time in college is largely the latter. I get it. My gut reaction to the Navy is colored by the people I served with, the places I served, the work I did etc. For me, the word "Navy" evokes memories of Toys for Tots drives, General Quarters drills, letting Hooters waitresses where my cover (hat, some habits are hard to break) and the morning call for "sweepers" to "man their brooms."

Likewise, Penn State has the first world which is what makes PSU a world class research institution. But it also has a second world very much like what you describe. The difference is that the second world focuses on football rather than religion (though, in Pennsylvania, the line between the two is pretty blurry). That doesn't mean that PSU gets to focus on World 2 to the detriment of World 1. When they do that people tend to get very, very upset. UNC did exactly that, in fact, and it was quite scandalous.

Liberty accepts their credits? I don't care. Not even a little bit. To me, that demonstrates less that NationsU is legitimate and more that religious universities are willing to relax their academic standards to accommodate similarly minded religious institutions. We've also seen that Regis University Law accepted at least one student with an LBU bachelors. Does that mean that LBU bachelors are completely and 100% legitimate or that Regis is simply willing to bend some rules when an unaccredited school's theology jives with their own? I don't know, I can only speculate. But my speculations don't view Regis favorably.

Show me where NationsU credits or degrees are accepted by a secular university that is not normally in the business of accepting NA credits or degrees. Now, I'm interested. I'd love to see Nations try to mainstream itself and become more broadly accepted by the academic community.

But I don't think it will.

I think the prevailing attitude is now "Well, that's it, DEAC is good enough for most people to stop calling us a diploma mill." And that's true. But to think that accreditation elevates a school beyond criticism for things like, say, running out of a private mailbox? That's just naive. The University of Phoenix has much more impressive accreditations and yet, it is routinely called a diploma mill by its critics and frequently criticized by people on this board. Heck, I don't have a problem with them being for-profit and I still criticize them.

There's nothing wrong with focusing on World 2. Churches focus on World 2. Clubs focus on World 2. But universities need to focus on World 1 first and foremost. If Nations wanted to exclusively focus on World 2 then it was free to call itself Nations Seminary or Nations Bible Institute. But they didn't.

And while it is true that graduates of Nations likely don't use their degrees to rise through the ranks of corporate America that doesn't mean the school is free to half-ass academics. Again, if only religious education for religious leaders (past, present and future) were their goal, they didn't need to offer degrees at all. A Pastor with a certificate is a pastor just the same.

Mind you, I'm not saying that NationsU does half-ass academics. But they haven't given very many indications that they take academics as seriously as say, building up a following of eager Soldiers for Christ. And, again, at the end of the day, how seriously does a University expect to be taken when it runs itself out of a PMB and doesn't have a listed telephone number?

So, yeah criticism will continue. And as long as the best defense is that NationsU is a super special little snowflake in a world where academic rigor doesn't matter I'm not going to really regard it as a serious player in the academic world.

 

Well, then, maybe that's not the case. I just recall coming across two programs that said they couldn't be offered to Texas residents due to the practicum/internship portion. One of them was the University of Wisconsin's distance PA. However, the approval process in Texas is complicated. There are multiple agencies in Texas that approve post-secondary programs based on the field of study.

I wouldn't worry about it. Steve personally attacks people all the time.

 

In my 37 years in this field, I've yet to run across a case where someone bought a fake degree from a mill because it was cheaper or more accessible. In other words, they would have been willing to do the work but it was just too expensive--or they just couldn't do the degree nontraditionally--so they bought a fake degree? It doesn't work that way.

 

Is it also possible that, perhaps, to comply with the requirements of the state of Texas Walden takes on the burden of setting up the practicum/internship thus taking it off of the student's shoulders?

 

While I certainly have fewer years of experience than Rich Douglas, I think this is spot on.

I know people say things like that when they get caught. But I don't buy it. Oh, you would've earned a real doctorate but it was just so darn expensive that you couldn't? So you did what? Spent between $500 and tens of thousands of dollars (likely on your credit card) to get a worthless piece of paper that you present as legitimate?

Get any accredited doctorate, if you must. Go to a DEAC school. Go to a foreign school. Do anything. Buying a diploma mill as your only option? Please.

And if the only thing NationsU has to offer is that it's slightly better than a diploma mill then I think that speaks for itself.

 

I agree with this. In the time it takes to find a degree mill online you can find a legitimate university, or even this discussion board. You can quickly discover the South African schools, the Malaysian schools, the Indian schools, lots of places to get degrees quite cheaply. I have never believed those old excuses for buying those meaningless pieces of paper.

 

That was my original guess until I went to their website and saw that the student is mostly responsible for finding a preceptor. It could be that they do things differently for residents of states that have this requirement. I don't know.

 

I don't know why I find this so interesting.

However, I found this discussion about this very thing.

So, I found a Facebook post where a nurse basically said that Walden's FNP program wouldn't qualify you to sit for the NP exam. Walden posted this response:

So, perhaps that "support" bit is the key.

In either case, it doesn't really matter. But it does seem like it was a known issue. To elucidate, the issue seems to be that Texas does not give schools blanket authority to do clinical field placements wherever they want. They require approval for each specific site. So, if students are identifying the sites, this presents an obvious issue as Walden would then have to potentially receive approval for every single student's clinical site.

My immediate thoughts are:

1. Maybe Walden's "support" consists of them finding the site for you altogether
2. Maybe Walden has a list of pre-approved sites for you to choose from
3. Maybe Walden contracted with a third party who has access to multiple pre-approved sites and who will work with the student on placement
4. Maybe the Walden representative (back in 2012) was full of baloney (or the stuff that baloney becomes after consumption)
5. Maybe Walden found some cool life hack to this problem that illustrates why they are all much richer than any of us

 

It is interesting. In that same Facebook thread, someone mentioned having to drop out of the Ohio University program because of the preceptor problem. From another post in 2014, I have a feeling that Walden pretty much only makes sure that the clinical site is in compliance and possibly seeks approval with Texas. They may have a list of sites that have been previously approved, but if you aren't near any of them, then you'll probably have to find a new one.

 

Um....I don't think anyone said or implied that NU was slightly better than a mill. So you created a statement in order to take a swipe. Nice!

No one said buying a diploma mill degree was someone's only option. The reasons people do so is complex and range from stupidity to self delusion to outright dishonesty. I am also well aware of all the dl options people have as well as the rather bizarre rationalizations people use to justify mills.

 

Yeah, yaknow, about that . . . ? It doesn't seem all that complex.

 

Lol............

 

Nothing at all wrong with scrutiny as long as it's reasonable, and by reasonable I'm specifically talking about fitting to scale.

I can't see reasonability in mentioning a juggernaut like Penn State vs. a tiny virtual (literally and physically) unknown like Nations whose goals, budget, staffing, and academic scope are utterly dwarfed by any comparison.

That's a personal stance you've taken. There is nothing empirical there as you yourself mentioned. Before that can have legs, you'd have to see a bigger sampling of what they have and haven't accepted. How do we know that they haven't rejected plenty of credits from schools with like-minded setups but had poorer standards or poorer quality faculty, etc? A lot of these acceptances in the religious field (not unlike other fields) are based on relationships between schools in addition to whatever matching exists between the school's academic designs.

The other thing to consider is that one school's curriculum jiving with another is one of the main components of credit transfer in secular education, so I see no reason why this should be considered an issue in religious education.

You could insert any NA school into that challenge, and then it becomes a discussion more so about the utility of NA credits/degrees as a whole than it does about Nations itself.

I see no indication or reason to think that Nations' goal is to ever do that, and being a super low-cost and free program I can't see where they would fit in the fold you're mentioning to begin with.

I can't find anyone ever calling Nations a diploma mill, and if there are some there are very, very few. I've never seen where this was ever the attitude towards them.

I don't get the pitchforking over the address of a virtual--not physical--school that won't have to ever be visited. Also, them using a PMB from that address is joined by a TV station and a several law firms all doing the same there; it's not like it's illegal or something. It's not like they're hiding, what with them putting the names and academic backgrounds of its faculty online for the entire world to see. Seems like a really big reach there...

UoP is criticized for a variety of valid reasons that Nations can't be accused of, at least not yet; it has a long way to grow still, if that's even their goal. But those who would call UoP a "diploma mill" are overreacting.

With the rise of distance education and all the many non-physical schools who've used the word 'University', we're way past the point where making a deal of what constitutes a University is even a worthwhile topic of discussion. What the word used to mean to its very letter is no longer important to people, and I doubt it ever was to begin with. Like it or not, that's where we are now, and it's never going back to whatever it was.

Nations being this charitable free and low-cost type of program, is never going to be a player in the first sense. It's goal is likely going to stay focused on the second and this is where they will be successful, as I've said, there is no reason for them to change that, certainly not because detractors egg them on to do it. The fact of them gaining legit accreditation doesn't mean they want to now sip fine wines with Chancellor Wellington at Prestige U. It means they want to make their program more valuable for the people of the space they operate in, and despite what feeling you may have, DEAC accreditation will do that.

With that premise, the strokes can be broad. Why study for a degree in French literature when you can just bum around France for a while, or, go to the library?

Religion is a subject like any other subject. People study that subject and not all for the same reason or goal. Like any other subject--including other fringe subjects-- where degrees are granted, Religion should have the same standing. After all, a lot of things can be done without the person having to go to school for it, but that alone is not a reason to denigrate schools offering the subject academically.

Then I can't see a fair reason to even put that out there...

No, I think they shattered that idea upon accreditation.

Over the years, we've heard issues with their course setup and goals being a roadblock to getting accredited. We've also heard how they'd been working on adjusting that. Looks like the adjustment has finally passed muster.

It has a listed telephone number.

What makes you think academic rigor doesn't matter to Nations? What evidence do you have to support that assumption?

Further, why are you putting this tiny school, with a dirt-cheap/free tuition, a staff of volunteers, on the type of track one would with a well-funded venture? They were never going to be a "serious player in the academic world". Their mission has always been the same: to offer free and low-cost religious education to the impoverished and imprisoned. It's a noble goal, and it's a bit disturbing to see something so positive being torn down.

 

No, it doesn't. Go to any business phone directory (I use superpages.com) and enter the school name, city, and state, and it will return a screen that says "No listings for Nations University in New Orleans, LA."

Nations will always have its apologists, numb-nuts that blindly accept everything they purport. But, in the opinion of some of us, it still comes off as a mickey-mouse school. And certainly not a university.

Bottom line: There will always be people like me who laugh at people like you. Get over it.

By the way, if Nations called itself something else, like School of Theology or Bible Institute, my objections would not be quite as strong. But university? Give me a freakin' break.

I'll be happy to reconsider if they get SACS accreditation. But DEAC? Give me another freakin' break.

 

Well said! I concur with all your statements above. While I am not religious at all, I can appreciate and respect the effort they are putting forward and the progress they have made.

 

For a period of time there seemed to have been a trend in US Higher Education to call everything a University. College after college changed their name to include the term University. I recall that Luther Rice Bible College and Seminary followed that trend and became LRU. Recently, they dropped University and became Luther Rice College and Seminary. I think it is more fitting.

When I think of a University I think of a large residential entity with a number of colleges.

 

Who cares?

Anyway, by "listed" I meant listed on their site.

And again, who cares? How many people does this really matter to?

I'm not an "apologist", I'm just not a rabid hater looking for the slightest crack of shade to attack. However, when one takes things the way you often do, I can see how it would be difficult to accept that not everyone is operating in direct opposition...

I feel sorry for people like you who think insult is an intelligent way of discourse. It's not though, it's actually quite sad. There is nothing for me to get over though, I've accepted that not all people have class or decorum a long time ago. But Steve, you need you to get over yourself.

Your opinion is your opinion. Just understand that the world is not going to stop because of it, because believe it or not, everyone in the world does not share it and they aren't all wrong or numb nuts (or whatever other insult that weakens your arguments) you can muster because of it.

 

Beginning of ad "hominem-ic" vitriol = Thread off the rails

Time to call maintenance.