NCU versus UNISA question

Are these critieria for "accredited" from an official GAAP document(is there such a thing as an official GAAP document?)? The reason I am asking is that I don't count UNISA or IACI as authorities as to what will be accepted as accredited in the U.S., or even in Canada and SA.

Is the DETC prestigious? Likely not but it certainly has utility for some people looking at those schools. It's certainly an imporant step here but not prestigious.

 

I just received an email from an evaluator at an academic credentials evaluation agency (a member of NACES) asking about if UNISA would be equivalent to RA accreditation in the US. I have changed the names to protect the innocent . The evaluator wrote back the following:

"UNISA is recognized as a degree-granting institution by the Council on
Higher Education of South Africa, an independent statutory body within
the South African Department of Education. In [our] opinion, studies
at UNISA can be considered equivalent to those of a similar nature
completed at a regionally accredited institution in the United States."


Hope this helps.

 

Follow up

In order to gauge the acceptance of a degree from UNISA, I emailed my HR department the following.

Their response is probably representative of many HR departments in the U.S…

On another note, I emailed the operations research department to find out if the PhD can be via DL and if there are any residency requirements. Despite UNISA’s relatively low tuition costs, one or two trips to Pretoria could easily raise the total cost of the degree. The response from the UNISA OR department is below.

Personally I think the UNISA OR program appears to be an excellent program. But, since I live and work in the U.S. where RA is king, I think my best bet is to stay with an RA university like NCU. As far as HR departments go, the less they question the legitimacy of a degree the better.

 

I don't agree. In the case of foreign degrees, "recognized by CHEA" isn't the issue.

Degrees from UNISA are recognized around the world. I doubt seriously you would have trouble having a UNISA degree recognized in whatever situation you were in.

I would expect employers to assume it is legitimate and comparable to U.S. universities, and it is.

 

Rich,

I am not disagreeing with the fact that UNISA is accredited. My concern is with my employer, the government, in recognizing the degree as, not just accredited, but RA equivalent.

The challenge here is to give them a way to verify the accreditation of the degree without having to resort to a piece of paper provided by NACES. Because the issue then becomes, who is NACES to say the degree is legitimate. And then it goes to getting them to verify that NACES is recognized by the US Department of Education…you get my point. It’s too much work on their part for one applicant.

As opposed to, “Is the degree RA? Yes, then move on.”

 

Of course. You legitimately describe an issue related to acceptance of degrees from foreign schools who meet GAAP.

 

I beleive someone sumed it up pretty well. For industry employers, NCU is better for being American and RA. For academia, UNISA is better for being a reputable international university. Since the thread is about PhD, wouldn't UNISA have a slight edge?

 

What employers need is one verified source to determine accreditation. The U.S. Department of Education has the Institution Accreditation page, which is good for U.S. schools, but it doesn’t address legitimate foreign schools.