Northcentral U is now accredited.

Re: I would have won!

 

Re: Re: I would have won!

Rich,

I worked with a couple of engineers from a company a few years back. One graduated from Clemson, and the other from Bob Jones University. BJU is not accredited, and Clemson is one of the top engineering schools in the southeast.

The guy from Clemson (with 5 years experience I might add) royally screwed up all three projects that we worked on together. I kept telling his supervisor this guy does not know what he is doing. He cost his company about 100 grand before he was told to move on. The guy was arrogant, and thought because he had a degree from Clemson that he was above the help from others.

The guy from BJU was fresh out of school, and very young. This guy did a great job on the two projects that I worked with him on. He had better fundamentals and skills, and he would listen to others. If he got in over his head on something he called someone.

Does this mean BJU is better than Clemson? NO! It just means you should work hard and earn your degree. The labor of the learning in the program brings more than where the program is located.

 

Re: Re: Re: I would have won!

This could be because BJU is a fundamentalist school.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: I would have won!

Now that is a good one!

 

I know a guy with three Harvard degrees who fell off a ladder. Just goes to show . . .

 

He had to fall. With three Harvard degrees there is nothing above, just empty space.

Opherus

 

With three degrees from Harvard, John, perhaps this guy was the very first candidate for the mythical Chancellorate degree. Perhaps he was earning the Chancellorate before it even came into existance, so the Harvard guys pushed the ladder and made the guy fall. You know how those "ivory tower" guys resent it when someone begins to achieve what they have achieved.

 

Re: Re: Re: I would have won!

BJU is the exception. When discussing unaccredited versus accredited, there's generally an implied "BJU is an exception and those schools that reach accreditation within a few years after starting up are exceptions".

For example:

Degrees from unaccredited schools have less utility than RA schools.

The above is a true statement but there's that implied exception which usually isn't bothered with.

 

But....?!?!<>?!!

I hope the 'regular' posters here may learn something from this! RA (for RA also read into this equivalent centralised strangulation in other countires as well as the US!) is NOT what it is cracked up to be. People here who are not in academia opine about matters (they have the right) about which they are quite ignorant and have no experience and think that governmental type 'approval' (same in UK) is the be all and end all! Believe me it is not!

I'll refrain and restrain to see what reaction this receives!

'telfax'

 

I agree with you.

 

Most high quality US schools do have accreditation, but accreditation doesn't guarantee a high quality school. Not all schools, seminaries, universities, etc. are created equal.

xyz State College (RA) < Yale University (RA)

 

Re: But....?!?!<>?!!

I'm having difficulty translating your combative hyperbole into something tangible that I can react to.

I'm not sure who you are criticizing, what views you are attributing to those opponents, or what your own views are.

I might agree with you, or I might decide you are full of crap. Right now I can't say.

 

This is a strawman argument, tossed up by people who criticize accreditation, but offer no alternative. No one anywhere is saying that all accredited schools are equal. In fact, when others' complain about that fact, it is often pointed out that accreditation tends to ensure an effective level of quality, not an equal one.

One this is for sure, accredited schools are superior to unaccredited schools. And degrees from accredited schools are far more useful than those from unaccredited schools.

Regional accreditation status isn't designed to differentiate between similarly accredited schools. But that also doesn't mean accreditation makes them all equal.

This isn't a very difficult concept. One has to think there are other reasons for continuing to confuse it.

 

Re: But....?!?!<>?!!

I'm having great difficulty parsing your post. It appears that a key to understanding your point might be wrapped up in what you think RA is "cracked up to be". Would you care to explain?

 

All RA schools are equal.

OK, so call me the Straw Man!

I did first year at an Ivy League university (Cornell). I learned calculus by doing excercices out of the Swokowski textbook. I then transferred to a public university (University of Alberta). I learned calculus by doing excercices out of the Swokowski textbook. No difference.

If you're an undergrad, no matter where you go, you'll learn by doing the same exercises out of the same textbooks. If you're a grad student, what matters is not the quality of the school, but the quality of one professor there, your supervisor.

Is there any advantage to going to an Ivy League university? Well, yes, you may make some friends from rich families. But in terms of formal education, not.

 

Well said Mark!

 

Rich: "This is a strawman argument, tossed up by people who criticize accreditation, but offer no alternative."

Actually, I'm not criticizing accreditation, only the people here who insist that it is the be-all and end-all. My undergrad degree was from a regionally accredited state university, and my seminary degree will be from a regionally accredited seminary. I have no ulterior motive as you seem to be ascribing to me ("This isn't a very difficult concept. One has to think there are other reasons for continuing to confuse it."). I simply look at the education scene and draw a different conclusion than you do.

There are unaccredited schools in my field which are the equal of accredited ones. Schools like Bob Jones University, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Virginia Beach, and Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary provide individuals an education that looks to be on par (or better) with accredited schools. In certain employment circles, they provide a credential that is on par (or better) with accredited schools.

I have found degreeinfo to be entertaining, informative, and sometimes helpful, but some people here never seem to move beyond "Dude, is it accredited?" to more substantial evaluations of a school. The gentleman who criticized NorthCentral University for the weakness of their doctoral program in computer science may or may not have been correct (it's not my area of expertise), but at least he was looking beyond the RA label.

 

("This isn't a very difficult concept. One has to think there are other reasons for continuing to confuse it."). I simply look at the education scene and draw a different conclusion than you do.

DG1,

I think that if you draw a different conclusion in this forum then you are just wrong, and must have a dog in this fight. It seems to me RA is king, and campus attendance is prince.

 

Mark Israel: "I did first year at an Ivy League university (Cornell). I learned calculus by doing excercices out of the Swokowski textbook. I then transferred to a public university (University of Alberta). I learned calculus by doing excercices out of the Swokowski textbook. No difference.

If you're an undergrad, no matter where you go, you'll learn by doing the same exercises out of the same textbooks. If you're a grad student, what matters is not the quality of the school, but the quality of one professor there, your supervisor.

Is there any advantage to going to an Ivy League university? Well, yes, you may make some friends from rich families. But in terms of formal education, not."

DG1:
Mark, you make a good point. Perhaps I should not have used an Ivy League school as an example. I am by no means convinced that the Ivy League has a monopoly on quality. I used Yale as the example because it was a school I thought most readers in the US or elsewhere would recognize as a major university.

However, I do think that there are differences between regionally accredited schools. For example, even in the California State University system, professors can tell you which schools are strong in which fields. “If you want to study in such and such a field, don’t go to that CSU school, this one is stronger in that field.” Yet these are all regionally accredited and all California State Universities.

I went to a California State University and my best friend went to a nearby University of California campus. (California has two 4-year college systems.) The UC’s are reputed to be better than the CSU’s, and in general, they may well be. The lower division classes at the UC were substantially more rigorous than the CSU’s lower division classes were.

However, I sat in on several upper division UC classes in my major (history), and was thoroughly unimpressed. I came away from the comparison realizing that my friend probably had a better school to put on his resume, although I was very happy with the education I received in my specific field.

I will try and state this as respectfully as I can. While I think education is primarily what the individual makes of it, I do not think it is reasonable to say that the entire multitude of US schools which are regionally accredited are equal in terms of quality and credential. That seems to me to be the equivalent of saying that all NBA basketball teams are equal, even though their records indicate otherwise.

Education? I think that there are gradations of quality for teachers, curriculum, and admitted students that produce varying levels of quality education.

Credential? Just like some companies will not consider applicants with a California-approved but unaccredited MBA, some companies will not consider an applicant unless they have a prestigious business school MBA. Mind you, I don’t think that prestige should matter, but rather what the graduate knows and can do for the company. Of course, it is possible that some prestigious schools have prestige because of what their past graduates proved they knew and could do.

 

Re: All RA schools are equal.

I took calculus at City College of San Francisco (a community college) and our textbook was Swokowski. UC Berkeley accepts CCSF calculus courses in transfer for major credit, even for math and physics majors.

The biggest difference that I saw was: A) More CCSF students had to take college algebra and trig before they tackled the calculus, and B) The CCSF calculus classes had a tremendous drop out rate. They were usually standing room only at the beginning but only 1/3 filled at the end. Many students made several attempts before they passed.

I think that larger graduate schools might offer a greater range of specialized courses and employ more specialists in advanced subjects.

On the research level I agree with you 100%. That's why I say that virtually every accredited graduate school is good at something. That even goes for "fourth tier" schools. There is going to be some research problem out there where the school is a leader. People trash Nova Southeastern regularly, but Nova hosts the National Coral Reef Institute. If coral reef ecology is your thing, Nova SE might be a better choice than Yale. San Francisco State is a lowly masters level school, but it spawned perhaps the most exciting research group in astronomy and succeeded in making some people's reputations. The exo-planet search is now headquartered at UC Berkeley, which illustrates something else: that the "top" schools usually have more research funding and facilities to offer.

BTW, the CA-approved National Test Pilot School is the only civilian school in the world recognized by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. When NASA went looking for somebody to teach contract courses at NASA-Langley in piloted handling qualities assesment, they went straight to NTPS, not to MIT or Cal Tech.

I think that the "top tier" research schools have lots of leading research groups in lots of different fields. They are near the leading edge in some aspect of many, if not most fields. They have many "name" professors who can give their students powerful recommendations. The "lesser" schools tend to be more specialized, offering fewer courses and research opportunities in fewer subjects. They have fewer big-name professors, and their stars might only be known in smaller and more specialized communities.