Masters Propio (ENEB, etc)

My BS Comp Sci is in progress. Probably will finish it by Jan 2022. It does seem like brief would be best.

 

Yes, because many of the HR systems scan a CV based on keywords. Some people on youtube have also conducted experiments where they list an unaccredited degree with the words ("Non accredited degree") and they still get calls from HR. There is nothing unethical by disclosing a non accredited degree in a CV, it is an earned degree and not a purchased degree.
In the fields of naturopathy and alternative medicine in Canada, all programs come from private institutions and not universities. Technically the titles of Doctor of Naturopathy are not university qualifications but professional qualifications recognized by a naturopathic association.
In the field of IT, Google has more power than many of small universities so many employers might give it more credibility than a BSc in CS from an unknown college with dated coursework. For this reason people get it.

I can see that the next thing is that ENEB and other schools will start selling "Doctor of" certificates. There is nothing in the Spanish law that prevents schools from granting "propio" doctorates and many schools already grant them but I can see in few years the $199 Groupon Doctorate from ENEB.

 

And ECE will come up with a way to evaluate it as a Master's

 

It is an economics issue. For the doctorate, all they need is to ask the student to publish a couple of peer review papers in peer review journals and hire few academics from India and Venezuela to deal with this for low cost. American schools need to spend millions of dollars in RA accreditation to come up with the same thing, a bunch of automated courses with template based dissertations. I am not going to disclose the details but I worked for few RA schools and the doctoral courses were not much different than the ones from ENEB and the dissertation process is very well structured so people can complete by submitting template based submissions with all the guidelines and instructions. Given the current saturated academic market of online PhDs and little market for full time faculty, most of the online PhDs from low profile schools really serve as continuing education or icing on the cake for academic administration jobs or adjuncts so there is no harm in adding the 200 bucks PhD from a Spanish school.

I received few emails from WES and other world education evaluators that they are not longer considering University Azteca given the massive amount of requests for the evaluation of this school. Some evaluators are refusing also the Nicaraguan school. The bottom like is not so much in my opinion educational standards but the fear of massive invasion of cheap doctoral credentials to the US. One can take a free or low cost PhD from latin american but they will not accept English dissertations, Azteca and University of Central Nicaragua are just opening to the English market and some people dont like they invade their territory.

The war of the dot com doctorates will start soon if not started already.

 

I agree but WES also relies on good relations with academic institutions in the US. Many Academic institutions and professional associations only recognize WES. Academic institutions are not going to like that WES starts giving US equivalence to terminal degrees from very low cost institutions otherwise there is no incentive for people to do them in the US. When I was working with some online academic institutions for PhD or DBA programs, most students are adjuncts, academic administrators, army and once in a while some professionals that just do them for personal improvement. If people figure that they can get an RA equivalent from WES that is good enough to land adjunct or to dress a resume for 5K, there is no incentive to spend 50K at the US school. Maybe the experience at the US school is superior but most people do it just for the potential pay increase as adjunct or academic administrator so the foreign degree would do.

 

It's all a political game. With the polarizing academic climate, the increase of MOOCs and alternate forms of education, and a decline in enrollment over past few years across colleges and universities, what was once considered diploma mills with the utilization of fast degrees, credits for work experience, etc. is becoming the norm for mainstream degrees. University of Phoenix has a lingering reputation because they were first to offer degrees mainstream online. Now there are a multitude of online universities as well as mainstream universities offering online programs.

Schools are getting cash strapped and students are finding global options that are as good and many times better than the traditional educational formats for a much lower price. This is forcing local universities to lower their prices as well as use characteristics of what would be considered characteristics of a diploma mill to compete with their less expensive and global counterparts.

 

The reason they are blacklisting Azteca and UCN is because many of their degrees are based more on validation or transfer of studies from unaccredited programs outside of the scopes of their schools. I read a PDF document of a handful of evaluators that declined evaluations of this type of arrangement except for ERES and Spantran and even they were hesitant yet still willing to give an evaluation.

 

I totally agree. It is an economic system with stakeholders that are realizing that the world is changing. Laurentian University in Canada filed for bankruptcy recently and others will follow in an economic climate where only the stronger will survive.
There is also the consumer market for qualifications, students are realizing that many of these graduate programs have little value in a dynamic economy that changes the rules very often and your degree become quickly obsolete so the return of investment is questionable. I have a MS in Electrical Engineering but if I look at the jobs in EE now, I can hardly qualify for anything as my degree was completed in the 90s so all my knowledge in the area is irrelevant in todays world, I work in education as an administrator so it does not affect me but the value of the EE graduate degree is questionable as it is cheaper and more effective nowadays just to take courseera or other MOOCs classes for free rather than taking a graduate program.

 

This is a poor argument, British and Australian Universities use the same approach starting by the University of Liverpool that uses Laureate (a private company) to offer their courses. Laureate itself outsources the course development to China, Hong Kong or any place that does it for cheap. I hardly doubt that academics from the University of Liverpool are involved in the course development, the University just gets the cash and prints the diploma while the courses are delivered by an unnacredited private service.
ENEB is a private company and Isabel 1 just prints the paper but it is not involved with the teaching.
This is 2021, schools just print diplomas and outsource the teaching to companies that do it for cheap. It is not cost effective to hire full time faculty with high salaries that are tenured and unionized, it is way cheaper to hire consultants for this.
To me this is not an issue of outsourcing but price, British and Australian Schools are still expensive and not a real threat to American Schools. ENEB, Azteca and UCN are cheap options.
I wouldnt be surprise if ENEB is next in the blacklist with the same argument but the real issue is economics.

 

To provide an even more direct example: the educational technology company 2U develops and delivers a number of online degree programs, and takes 65% of the revenue. 2u handles all of the curriculum and grading, but the degree is granted by the partner university. https://2u.com/partners/ You can filter by "degree programs" and see American University, Baylor, Georgetown, NYU, Pepperdine, Rice, Berkeley, and others use this model.

Edit: Actually, I don't know if 2U handles the grading for the university programs. But still, they develop the curriculum.

Nobody is going to doubt the legitimacy of those degrees, so it makes it harder to justify WES' approach.

 

Well when push comes to shove, I think many foreign degree evaluators will start to soften their approach since we are seeing these type of partnerships become more prevalent here in the USA.

 

Thanks for sharing. Excelsior, Edison and similar accept Microsoft, CISCO and other non accredited sources for academic credit. One could argue that a person that earns a degree mainly with credit transfer from Microsoft or CISCO is not following a program that is consistent with academics.

British schools have tons of programs that take experience, unaccredited diplomas, etc towards academic credit or degree completion programs that take work experience, etc.

Azteca and UCN are not doing anything different of what many schools are doing already but way cheaper. WES and others figure that if they accept these degrees, this will just motivate more Latin Schools that have lower costs to enter the US market with cheap doctorates and will flood the already flooded market with credentials that will just create chaos with the existing American schools already struggling to survive in a saturated market.

The future of the value of the doctorate is uncertain, there is a shrinking market for full time faculty positions as universities outsource their teachings and require less full time tenure track faculty and companies are not willing to pay higher salaries to people that hold doctorates for a job that does not require a doctorate. The adjunct market just benefits from the availability of cheap doctorates as it can decrease even more the wages for adjunct faculty due to offer and demand.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the future when the academic structures change and companies take over the education system.

 

Well if this is the case, I wonder should I disclose my unaccredited Masters of Religious Studies from Nations University that I earned back in 2013.

 

It depends, are you applying for a job to a Christian University ? I would say yes, this can help you as it shows commitment to learn about religion. For some jobs, it might help as it shows someone that has interest in ethical and moral values.
In the case of religious qualifications, most people that I know that practice religion as ministers have no accredited degrees because they volunteer with no salary and most just attended bible colleges or seminars that grant non accredited degrees so it is not expected that your degree is accredited. Only people that teach at University are expected to have accredited religious qualifications or some traditional denominations that require accredited degrees.

 

I hoped that eneb would be offering a cheap online propio PhD and sent them an email a couple of weeks ago. They replied that they currently have no intention to offer a PhD. Unfortunately.
I couldn't find an English language alternative (for a cheap propio PhD) neither.

 

I think there is University Azteca, University of Central Nicaragua and University of San Juan but none of these are top schools and most likely already blacklisted by most evaluation services in the US. There might other similar ones in Costa Rica (I think UNEM and Universidad Panamericana) but most likely also in the same situation as the ones above. Even you can find similar ones, they most likely have the same issues, the schools in Latin American cannot afford to hire English speaking faculty so just outsource it to companies in Europe, Africa, etc and this arrangement is not of the liking of Evaluation Services so you might end with a credential that has no use in the US.

The most viable way would be to find an English speaking faculty members from places that have distance learning PhDs and are free or low cost. UNAM in Mexico has few distance learning PhDs at almost no cost. There are also some distance learning schools in Mexico at low cost but you would need to see if they take an English dissertation, some might but it is matter of keep looking.

 

In life, sometimes we have to use intuition for decision making as the data is not always available. If Azteca and UCN are already blacklisted, it is common sense that any similar outfit would follow the same luck. It is a risk factor, one can take a chance and get a degree from Universidad Panamericana and get a positive NACES service evaluation but if you see that most schools with similar settings are being blacklisted, it seems like the trend at least for now.

Most of these outfits have something in common, they are private schools. A less risky approach would be to go with a public university as this could easier to defend.

You talked about European Universities, I had a friend that was following a degree with the University of Pecs (Link below). The arrangement was working but at some point he dropped because the lack of response of the school, public schools are not as responsive as private schools so this is a risk factor to consider:

https://international.pte.hu/