Online DBA $12,000 TOTAL fee

That was a very informative post, not that anyone should be surprised at this point as it's well-known here that you do have a very deep knowledge of this field.

A couple of things that may fit the subject:

When I spoke to one American school's registrar about their acceptance of propios, she told me that as long as the degree is awarded by a school that is in the International Handbook of Universities it would be acceptable without a foreign credential evaluation. So that prompted me for some reason to check the IHU handbook to see which schools aren't in there and I was able to easily find DEAC schools I thought wouldn't even be included, while some RA schools that I thought were at least known well enough in their areas weren't included, but I digress.

UCAM is in the 2021 IHU handbook and they are an accredited university in Spain. I have seen arrangements in the UK where a program like Athena takes care of teaching the courses and a recognized UK University awards the degree. I believe one that I checked out a month or two ago was with London South Bank University. Another one was with the University of Chichester. The closest programs I can think of to that arrangement in the United States are: Coursera, edX, Midwest Teacher's Institute, and one program Manuel posted about in another thread where multiple universities were involved in awarding a degree in an engineering field which was equal to a similar arrangement we were scrutinizing from a legitimate Spanish entity. Compared to the whole, and as you pointed out, these are for sure not normal arrangements in the United States.

I think there is a recognition part and an acceptance part to this. A student could get their foreign degree approved for evaluation and then receive a favorable result that recognizes the degree in the United States as equivalent to U.S. standards, but that of course doesn't mean the degree will be accepted at any of the schools or jobs that student applies to post-evaluation. Certainly, a favorable evaluation from a NACES-approved evaluation service would give that student a lot of options when it comes to transferring to a U.S. school however, but there are still no guarantees that one or more schools will accept it. So I do get that there is some uncertainty, and I can definitely understand those concerns when dealing with a Doctorate more than any other level.

 

Or non-profit schools for that matter. Tough to be certain of entirely because rigor is such a variable, although I think we can all agree that the most rigorous programs would be on the non-profit side simply because that side has all of the top schools in innovation and other areas, and with the money they bring in it should be that way.

We have one too, and it's slowly fading away.

I don't get from all the Spanish conversations I've read over the past two years on this subject that there is the level of confusion about their system like Americans have for their own, so that's a good thing. Spaniards seem to be well aware of the propio's utility limitations and there isn't all of the back and forth sniping like we have here in the U.S. with the dying RA-NA model.

Heh. They know they have our attention now because our tuition prices are completely out of control. The other day I saw Lakewood University (formerly Lakewood College, formerly ACCRI) charging over $53,000 for a Bachelor's degree! A Bachelor's degree from a virtually unknown DEAC school that is at the lowest tier of DEAC schools. They also charge over $25,000 for an Associate degree, which is wild because in 2011 they were charging only $6,200. That's how crazy this has gotten. I had to ask if those prices were a misprint. They weren't!

Since these Spanish schools are very interested in continuing to get money from the U.S. market, it would be wise for them to make sure they're delivering programs that have the best chance of getting favorable evaluations for FCEs and schools, and some programs are making some mistakes with that. If those favorable evaluations dry up, the money will eventually dry up with it.

 

UPAEP in Mexico has Master's degrees with "doble grado" which means that the degree comes from two universities. Oklahoma State University and the University of Arkansas in the US are some of those partners universities providing double degrees. Therefore, this might be in the near future for everyone. It is possible to do a degree online without having to travel and this is a good thing if the degree is rigorous as the onsite one.

 

Actually, I find this more troubling since it can cause confusion.

Take it to an extreme. Would you accept a PhD awarded by a high school? Of course not, because that degree is beyond the school's scope. But this is more insidious since most of these universities CAN award doctorates; they just award some other doctorates on the (unrecognized) side.

As I've said repeatedly in this thread, I'm not arguing the content or the deliver or who develops and delivers the instruction. My concerns are strictly with the degrees.

Hard to argue with that!

 

To use the title "doctor." Man, that's a big deal for some people.

 

This is consistent with GAAP. But see what I'm saying? There is a distinction in terms of the degree awarded, but in many (most?) eyes, there is no difference. Until there is, of course. You never know when someone is going to find out and make a thing of it. As dangerous as a fake degree from a diploma mill? No, of course not. But the same dynamic applies, even if the school and the curriculum are legitimate.

I have trouble when a school is presenting itself as one thing, then selling degrees out the back door. Even if those degrees would be considered earned by reasonable people.

BTW, that's what MIGS had. It was specifically included in the IHU under its parent school's listing. Golden, right? Not after I alerted Florida officials about the operation. (After I went from enthusiasm to disillusion regarding the effort. They closed soon after that.

 

I'm not objecting to this, wanting instead to separate the learning program from the degree issued.

No, but if an employer (university or otherwise) expects a foreign credential evaluation and your foreign degree gives you a result equivalent to a comparable U.S. degree, that's the whole point, right?

 

I think the big question is: is it unethical to offer something that wouldn't be acceptable in one country but is fully acceptable in another? Who decides? Those of the originating country? Or those of the receiving country? And an even bigger question is, does it even matter what we think? If a person gets their Doctorate through this program they're going to put down that they got it from UCAM because that's who will be awarding the degree, and if the transcripts come from UCAM there would be no way to know at all that Athena did the instruction unless you really looked into it. So at that point, the only things we could really judge are UCAM and the outcomes produced by the program.

 

I think that answers the thought I put up in my previous post.

It better be, or we've wasted a heckuva lot of debate time on this the past two years, hahahaha.

Dr. Rich Douglas. Shut'in'em down since 2001 (and probably much earlier), lol.

 

Yes but without one, there is even less chance. If you hold a NACES recognized evaluation certificate for your PhD, chances are that you are going to be able to land at least a community college adjunct position somewhere. Many colleges have a hard time filling up positions because low salaries so the low ranked PhD might work for some. I have seen people with degrees from Phillipines, Mexico, etc landing jobs at CC making a living, not very high paid but you can at least survive. If your degree does not pass the NACES or AICE test, it would be very hard to land a job in academia and in government jobs.

I believe there are some cheap PhD or DBA cheap options now so I don't see the point of taking high chances to save some money with the chance that you will end bankrupt.

 

I believe Rich was a student there and this was shut down with the help of Dr. Levicoff due to some conflicts with Serna (an attorney of Sheila). I believe MIS was not the real issue but the fact that they were operating without a license in Florida, they were also issuing degrees that were not recognized in Mexico but for the foreign market, the same as U. Azteca is doing. MIGS website is http://ceu.edu.mx/
Sheila Danzing ironically opened her own degree evaluation service but it is not NACES nor AICE recognized ( https://www.thedegreepeople.com/about-cci/). Sheila used to have some Macarena lessons online.

 

Yep, agreed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for this program itself. I just wanted to add a viewpoint with regard to the arrangement and its similarity to other arrangements at different degree levels. Personally, I'm not much in favor of spending money to take a program that isn't acceptable in its country of origin because that lends to many uncertainties, but I know not everyone feels that way and they're willing to deal with the timebomb possibility.

 

I wouldn't touch any of that with a 10-foot pole.

 

I think the propio degree might be OK for some countries with less strict recognition process. I know Azteca and UNEM was selling well in Africa for academics until some Universities started denying DL degrees.

 

I know Nigeria dropped the hammer on online degrees for a while. I don't know if that extended to all DL methods like mailed correspondence, but I imagine the NUC had a plan against that being used as a workaround.

 

There were a lot of emotional issues around this. CEU(MIGS) seems to be a decent Mexican school, the problem is that they got involved with Sheila and they ended in the black list of Contreras. Azteca is doing something similar but they are not targeting the US, they seem to be more interested in Europe, Asia and Africa.

The propio thing was not so popular in the times of MIGS, now it seems to be the norm and we will see more to come. It is way cheaper to outsource the delivery of your courses to a foreign country than sending professors to the place. The home school just prints the diploma, pays the supplier and the rest is profit. The foreign company benefits from the university's name and hires local cheap faculty. For the student, as long as the degree comes from X prestigious university and saves money, they are ok with this.

 

Athena is NOT the issue. Whether or not the school is awarding a degree it is approved to award IS the issue. So is whether or not, with full knowledge, it would be acceptable.

Ask this: if someone out there--an employer, say--knew what we were saying about the award of such degrees, then came across a candidate he/she knew had such a degree, would that be okay for the candidate with that degree? Probably not so much. But there is a tremendous amount of information around this subject--and degree/school recognition in general--that simply is not known generally. But on occasion it gets exposed, usually with bad results for the degree holder.

 

Sure. If.

 

No.

MIGS sued Steve in a very inept manner with a stupid case trying to shut him up. They were wrong. But it was my conversations with licensing officials in Florida--where MIGS was operating without a license--that tipped the scales. But that's not to say Steve's successful effort to beat back their suit had no effect. It did. It, along with my effort with Florida and some other shortcomings--and the titular head of this getting it handed to his employer (a state university where he was chancellor) all combined to bring it down.

MIGS wasn't a diploma mill. It was a lame attempt to establish a degree-granting school operating from the US using a Mexican college's authority to award degrees. It collapsed primarily to ineptitude and a shallow effort.

 

I would and did.

The only person who didn't understand MIGS was someone who (a) had an axe to grind and (b) liked to tear others apart. He knew better, but said the things he did anyway.