Masters Propio (ENEB, etc)

Or free Oxford - or free lectures from the 500-year old Collège de France - or, yeah - Berklee, for music. Prof. Mike Williams and Prof. Thaddeus Hogarth, particularly. My kind of teachers, my kind of players. Found them on YouTube University channels, IIRC - Have a look. See what you think.

 

Is there a "best option"?

I'm really struggling with the idea of earning a degree from a school that is properly recognized, but the degree awarded is outside that recognition. I don't even have a problem with 3rd-party companies doing the instruction, as long as the degree (and that instruction) falls inside the school's scope.

I wonder if it is not irresponsible to recommend such a path, or to debate which is "best"?

(I'm really open to being convinced otherwise.)

 

Sorry, Rich. I can't help on that one. I can think of no convincing reason whatsoever. None.

"But it's CHEAP, Mabel! So we're gonna git one. End of." (Overheard on a Yugo dealer's lot in the 80s,)

 

Yeah, the Yugo. Easy to find parts for one back then. Just drive along any highway....

As for these degrees, I am really looking forward to hearing the argument in favor.

 

I can think of few:
-Cost (under 6K)
-Time (many can be completed in few years part time)
-Customized to your needs (Many of these schools provide options that are not available in traditional schools such as natural medicine, NLP, etc)
-Institutions are properly registered and recognized in their countries of origin.
-Being able to disclose the degree without fearing a time bomb as they are properly granted according to the regulation of the country in place

They can work for few. Few situations where they can work:
I am a professional independent trainer or workshop facilitator that wants the PhD just to attract customers to my seminar.
I am a counselor with a proper license and/or certification and wants to put PhD in business card to attract customers.
I am a professional adjunct and just need a little boost on my CV to get more work as some schools require the PhD even for adjunct work
Personal development and just being able to tell to myself that I was able to achieve a PhD in my life
Professional religious minister that wants a PhD to display so he or she can get more weddings, pastoral counselling, etc
An independent business professional that wants to put this in a CV

A perfect example is the lady below with a PhD from San Juan:
https://www.ibicus.org.uk/leader-biographies/revalyn-faba-sack

In general, the term "PhD" is a recognized brand that shows high level of critical thinking and creativity. You and some have argued that you can just print your own PhD but these degrees can always by validated by an external institution that recognition by a government.

The need might be more psychological (e.g. self esteem) than a real one but some of the schools in question have been in business for many years so this shows that at least some people find them useful.

You might argue that putting in your CV University of San Juan is not prestigious, but the reality is that we are a micro community that is aware of the quality of these schools but in the real world "University of San Juan" or "university of San Jose" are the same thing for the average person. All these schools can be put in the basket of unknown low ranked schools in developing countries.

 

This is just my opinion, but...

As I've said before, at the doctoral level I don't think that accreditation matters a whole lot (except in regulated professions that require certain accreditations for licensing). What matters more in my opinion is the degree-awarding department's academic reputation in the specialty in question.

Bachelors and masters degrees are far more generic and research reputation is less obvious and less relevant. So I'd probably weight the university's institutional reputation more heavily and give more consideration to accreditation as well as what graduate programs and credential evaluators might say.

So, in the case of a well-known Spanish university offering its own degrees in some subject, I'd say that my judgment of legitimacy would depend on the reputation of the program that awarded the degree. I'm unaware of what kind of 'propio' degrees are offered in Spain or what their reputations are. I'm just holding open the possibility that I might like one if I investigated it. If it was a credible recognized university that awarded it, I wouldn't consider it a mill degree, even if it didn't impress me.

If it was some unknown school in Central America offering grandly-titled degrees unrecognized by the local agencies like SINAES, I'd be far more skeptical. That skepticism would only increase if the school was franchising rights to offer the programs out to operators in different countries. But again, the bottom line criterion would be academic reputation. Absent that, I might very well consider some of these things mill degrees. (In fact I do, in a few instances that have been discussed a lot on these boards.)

And at the bottom of the heap might be the 'religious-exempt' church-basement seminaries here in the US. I have just about zero confidence in these, but again I'm willing to be persuaded. I'd probably judge most of these things mill degrees.

And just viscerally, I think that it's unethical to use mill degrees in hopes of misleading employers, clients or patients in hopes of inducing them to give you more money than you would have otherwise received. It might conceivably rise to the level of fraud.

 

Conceivably it just might, indeed. And the strongest argument for this I hear is "it's not illegal..." Maybe / maybe not. Not good enough, in any case.

 

Just noticed - Ballsbridge has a "Canadian course" site. They're hawking a doctorate in metaphysics (I refuse to capitalize their degrees) and say it's "Accredited for Canada."
And yes it is - by an unrecognized accreditation body - ostensibly in Canada - that I wouldn't doubt the Ballsbridge folks put together themselves. Typical. And of course, there's a hook-up to ordination, so you can do weddings etc.

 

Gosh. That seems rather lacking in the arrangements under discussion.

 

Not a card I'd want to slip into my wallet to fool people with. Come to think of it, there's not any card on the planet that I'd want to do that with - however "legal" it might be.

 

In the USA student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy if you meet the guidelines, which are very strict. The guidelines are so strict that most people won't qualify, so bankruptcy attorneys just tell their clients that it can't be done. But, it can.

The better route to go would be the "income contingent" student loan repayment option where your monthly payments are keyed to the rise and fall of your income, and under the Obama administration the repayment rate was capped at something like 15% of your income. Before that, the gov't didn't give a rat's patootie about how people would keep themselves housed, fed, and clothed after making their student loan payment. The system was oppressive. Under income contingent repayment, if your loans aren't paid back after 25 years, the remaining balance is forgiven. But, it's also then considered taxable income, but IIRC (and I may not be) for people who really just can't pay the tax bill for the forgiven amount there's an IRS form they can fill out that will get it waived.

 

The "infamous" école supérieure Robert de Sorbon® is, contrary to what you said well and alive. On its website they celebrated 16 years in operation. They assume that the the French government gave them even the trademark ® . I checked it it is true. The 10 years old judgment cited was voided on appeal according to them. With the Covid-19 pandemic, I think that on line degree through the legal French VAE process is legitimate. Don't you ?

 

If a French University, with the ability to confer State-recognized degrees, were to award such a degree by VAE - then it would, of course, be legitimate. Not otherwise. The French Government may be bound by legality to acknowledge the existence of ESRDS - but the State does not recognize its degrees. End of story.

PS. I never said the school was dead. I knew it wasn't.

 

I think this concept is not well understood. A similar concept is also used in Canada, but this normally requires interviews, reports, evidence, etc for credit granting. Also these credits are just a partial number of credits required to complete a degree or college diploma and cannot be the total number of credits used to grant a degree. I think Excelsior and other similar schools use the same concept. This concept is normally used for undergraduate or college level work but i have never seen it for graduate work that it is supposed to train for research.

ESRDS just uses VAE to legitimize the degree but it is not really supervised or accredited. It is really a "propio degree", a private school that has the legal right to issue diplomas but with no academic value.

I think the point of all these diplomas is not really to be equivalent to official academic work, they seem to serve a niche and if I can learn something from these programs that I can use in my life and career then it has value, otherwise it is just vanity or paper to decorate wall.

I had a friend that edited a certificate with photoshop that got from Encyclopedia Britannica that was originally a sales certificate and he turned it into a Masters degree. It helped him to fill his wall with a Masters degree and look smart in his consulting practice. Nobody cared or asked about this degree, it just looked nice on the wall.

 

I think perhaps this concept (VAE as applied by ESRDS) is not fully understood by you. Yes, legitimate VAE - i.e. VAE as applied by a school that can award State-recognized degrees - is somewhat akin to credit for prior learning and must be documented, the student examined etc. It is comparatively rare for VAE by itself to result in a full degree - but it does, on some occasions; such provisions are available.

However - here is the difference: For a French school which does not / cannot confer State-recognized degrees - granting credit by VAE is meaningless. It's just an expedient way for the student (and the school) to speed up the award of a degree that does not have the utility of full State recognition. It's simply VAE with no official recognition. In fact, such a degree has no utility whatsoever where you live, or I live. No accepted evaluator here will say different. Well, I suppose you could use it to try and fool people, or it would make an acceptable wallhanger for some. If such a degree contains (alleged) VAE credits, those are unrecognized credits which are part of an unrecognized degree. Legally awarded or not - the end result is the same.

No. This kind of VAE (by an institution awarding degrees without State recognition) does not "legitimize" anything. If this were a fully recognized University, they would mean something. I say they are unrecognized credits contributing to an unrecognized degree.

And no, an ESRDS degree is not a propio degree. Propio degrees come from schools that have full state recognition. They award fully recognized degrees plus some other recognized degrees that have somewhat restricted use - not for Government jobs etc. Those are propio degrees. No ESRDS degrees have State recognition. If they did, you might well be able to use them in Canada and get US equivalency from accepted evaluators. You can't do that. Neither could I. And you know it.

Good, because I don't think VAE by ESRDS can ever be equivalent to official academic work. The degrees are not State recognized. Neither any VAE component - nor the rest.

And you figure what he did -faking a degree - "looks smart" and is fine? If so, shame on you. I know people who would do that - but they're not my friends. I'm through discussing faking degrees or ESRDS. After reading this, I regret even mentioning it. I will not make the same mistake in future. You have taken this discussion into appalling areas beyond any individual school - degree fakery etc. Done here.

 

I checked and you have 389 likes versus my poor performance of 93 likes. I guess that makes me the loser here so you win her majesty. You will not hear from me, I don;t want to make you upset again.

 

Thank you for stating this, yet again! Some people on this forum seem to have a very hard time understanding or accepting that a master propio degree from a certain Spanish university is a fully recognized degree - and is treated as such - in Spain. They continue to want to classify it as less than a master's degree simply because it can't be used for government jobs or as preparation for a PhD program due to its lack of instruction in academic research and writing.

I keep saying that these master propio degrees are very much like the "professional masters" degrees we have in the USA, which nobody questions are valid masters degrees even if they only take one year to complete and don't prepare you for PhD degrees. But, for some reason, some people can't or won't recognize the similarity and insist on continuing to spread their misinformation.

I still feel bad that I even considered faking a MA degree -- even though I actually earned enough graduate credits in the subject matter area to equal the degree (and have official transcripts to prove it). So, that's why I'm so glad I literally stumbled upon the joint master propio programs with ENEB and Isabel I. It'll take much more time than Photoshopping a degree diploma (and I'm really good at Photoshop), but the risk is lower and the reward is higher and I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror.

 

This is a non sequitur and is certainly false.

The comparison being made is not between professional and what, scholarly(?) nonprofessional(?) degrees. The question is whether or not the degree being discussed is recognized by the system in which the awarding school exists and whether or not said degree would be considered comparable to being accredited (or some other foreign equivalent). I doubt very seriously that there is a clear and universal answer to that.

But under no circumstances is it fair to compare these degrees to "professional master's degrees." Again, it's not about how they're constructed, but instead it's about how they're recognized.

 

Mighty fine preachin' there, Rev. Douglas. An' true, every word of it. Yessir! Trouble is, I think the whole congregation's sorta --um, left the buildin'. I heard tell they might be down at the Post Office. Folks were sayin' how there's bin a whole, uh, shipload of them "discount DE-grees." Well, like the Romans used ta say, de gustibus non est disputandum. Ain't no accountin' fer tastes.

See you next Sunday, Reverend. And thanks again. Most upliftin' sermon. Yes, indeedy.

 

I don't give two sh*ts about what you think about anything I write. I have already told you more than once to leave me alone. This is my LAST time telling you. Leave me alone and do not post anything to me. If you persist, I will consider that harassment and I will contact a moderator. You and I have NOTHING to discuss. Not now, not in the future, and not ever. LEAVE ME ALONE.