President of Accredited University claims Phd from Louisiana Baptist University

Understood, but if am not mistaken, your feelings are less about LBU and more about accreditation. From past discussions with you, as I recall, you feel that only accredited instutions should use traditional academic designations. I think you have even serioulsy questioned the legitimacy of nationally accredited schools. If I am mistaking you with another poster, I apologize.

 

Pugbelly,

I do think it would be advantageous if only institutions with recognized accreditation used traditional academic nomenclature (i.e., degrees). This is in all probability never going to happen, but it is my humble opinion. You must be mistaking me with another poster, I've never questioned the legitimacy of nationally accredited schools. I do believe that degrees from institutions that only have national accreditation (e.g., DEAC, TRACS, etc.) have much less utility than degrees from regionally accredited institutions, but any school accredited by a USDoE/CHEA recognized accreditor is certainly legitimate. IMHO.

 

Okay. Well if everyone will create a safe space for me and help fund the LBU program, I will enroll and test drive it.

 

Ok, I had you confused you with another poster. My apologies.

Is there any reliable data out there to support your assertion that NA has far less utility than RA? I'm not disputing the reality that RA has greater utility, but far more? I'm not so sure. To my knowledge, the U.S. Government, as downsized as it may be, is still the largest employer in the United States. The U.S. Government accepts NA degrees. I have worked in private industry for my entire career and while I am aware that many employers require RA, I am also aware that many (perhaps most???) do not. I have never worked for an employer that requires RA. I'm also aware that many state governments require RA, perhaps even most, but there are also states that view NA as equal. There is no question that one can maximize his/her options by going RA, but I'm not sure I'm ready to say that NA has far less utility without seeing some data.

 

Then perhaps we'll have to settle for less utility.

 

LOL...fair enough. I wasn't trying to be argumentative, I really was curious as to whether any real data on the topic exists.

 

Yes. John Bear's survey of admissions officials and my research with HR managers both revealed such differences. There has been no evidence to the contrary, I believe, since then.

 

Are you able to point me in the general direction of these studies so that I might delve into them?

 

Mine is a published doctoral dissertation. You can download it for free from my website. (You don't even have to leave any information; just click the link.)

John has talked about his survey on this board for years. I'm not sure whether or not he published it anywhere, but he did present it at the AACRAO convention in 2001. (I'm very familiar with its results; I did some statistical analysis on the results.)

 

Rich, thank you. Your dissertation addressed a lot of different things, only one of which was the utility of NA vs RA. It would be interesting to perform a new study that looked at the total number of jobs/positions in the United States that actually require RA for employment. That would be a better measure, IMO, of utility. In other words, there were 142,654,000 jobs in the US as of October 2015. Of those, what percentage actually require RA? We could even dig a bit deeper and break the numbers down by salary range and a number of other facets: state, profession type, positions that do not require a degree, etc.

 

I would love to see the results of the following on a survey:

1. Our organization accepts degrees only from regionally accredited institutions.
2. Our organization accepts degrees only from nationally accredited institutions.
3. Our organization accepts degrees from both regionally and nationally accredited institutions.
4. Our organization does not have an accreditation requirement or makes no effort to check accreditation status.

Then, as an element of control and consistency, list 10-20 institutions, half RA and half NA, and ask whether degrees from each would be accepted for employment.

 

As Dr. Bear has repeatedly pointed out, this is the sort of brief research study that a person could do on their own at very little cost.

 

You can, indeed, do that survey in your own. But I don't think the results will necessarily reflect reality. Most organizations don't have a set policy in accreditation. Some organizations have odd requirements (I asked a colleague who works at Cornell University what their requirement for tuition assistance was for people who opted to study outside of Cornell, he said that the school has to be "accredited" by ACE). Even when companies have set policies individual HR people often misinterpret those policies (i.e. Banning UofP as a "diploma mill" despite accreditation).

Utility is a curious thing. Pre-Internet, if my NA associates wouldn't be accepted by the local university, my associates likely had very little utility. It didn't matter if some university somewhere accepted my NA degree. Now, one would only need to do a brief Internet search and identify the schools that would accept your degree. If accreditation is your only concern, virtually any NA degree can be parlayed into an RA masters at a school like Ashford.

So, then, how would an employer receive an NA undergrad and an RA grad degree? How many employers actually care?

It's fine to say to an employer "would you accept a degree from a school accredited by DEAC?" But the typical employer not only has no concept of what that actually means (and is thus just giving you an initial impression if something "sounds" legitimate or reliable) and, perhaps more importantly, most employers are simply not going to ever ask about the specific accreditation of your degree.

The only time I've ever heard the question come up during an interview the question was "do you have a degree from an accredited institution?" I've never known a hiring manager or HR professional to delve deeper. "So, tell me about your school's accreditor, which one is it? Does the program specifically have CHEA recognized programmatic accreditation?" It's a lovely notion but it simply doesn't happen.

So if anyone is going to do such a survey, I would first recommend some baseline questions along the lines of "I believe that national accreditation is better than regional accreditation" and vice versa. If your respondents have no concept of accreditation then their opinions of accreditation are going to be warped, particularly if you present them in a context they would never have to consider during the course of their work.

 

These are the kinds of questions my dissertation got at, asking HR managers about the acceptability of various forms of accreditation and institutional recognition, as well as the acceptability of degrees from a list of institutions from across the spectrum (at the time).

There were (statistically) significant differences between RA and NA. This was even more so when a brief description was later provided for each (in a before-and-after experiment). In fact, all 11 categories moved (statistically) significantly after HR managers were provided brief descriptions of each and asked again. Notably, they all moved in ways you'd expect, with legitimate forms of recognition (like DEAC and RA) moving up and non-academic forms (like state licensure) moving down. The bottom like: a little bit of knowledge can change things dramatically, getting good degrees in and keeping bad degrees out.

Another interesting finding was that the list of names of schools were all over the place. The most acceptable school was one that had the word "state" in its name (and was RA). The second-most acceptable also had "state" in the name, but was a blatant diploma mill. These kinds of outcomes were all over the place, indicating HR managers didn't know what they were looking at, and didn't bother to find out (even though the survey was untimed and they were encouraged to use whatever resources they would normally employ to check).

There's lots more in the dissertation.

 

On a barely related note, my doctoral thesis from the U. of Leicester is also available on my website, also for free and with no need to leave any information (just click the link). (There is no commercial activity on the site; it's just personal, like a brochure.) With Leicester, I employed a methodology (inductive, quantitative, theory-building) that was the complete opposite of my Union research (deductive, quantitative, theory-testing). The subject--building a grounded theory about the Chief Learning Officer--may not fascinate folks on this board, but the research process might. Anyway, it's there.

 

I may just do that at some point in the future. I believe it would be a worthy endeavor.

Agreed. This could be addressed in the survey by modifying the question(s) or adding additional questions.

The number of employers that care is precisely the question at hand. I am of the opinion, that many do not, perhaps even most. This might be because the organization has a "NA friendly" policy, because the HR Manager has a "NA friendly" disposition, or perhaps because the organization and/or HR Manager doesn't understand or care to understand the difference. Regardless of the reason(s), it impacts utility.

I agree, but the answers still impact degree utility.

I agree, thus, IMO, positively impacting the utility of a NA degree. I have never known an employer to delve deeper either. I have never been on an interview where I have even been asked about accreditation in any way at all. I believe these cases to be more the norm than not. If I am correct, NA would have a great deal of utility. The obvious exception would be the various licensed professions that require RA (medical, law, counseling).

I agree with the baseline questions and I would fully expect the opinions to be warped, but that doesn't change utility.

 

Not necessarily. If an employer is presented with a list of accreditors and asked, for example, which of them seem reputable or, more directly, which of them would they accept a degree from there are two broad possibilities:

1. The respondent is answering the question based on thoughtful consideration. If you ask Rich Douglas if he would hire a candidate with a degree from a DEAC school I would wager the answer is based upon a thoughtful analysis of the history of DEAC and how DEAC standards compare to RA.

2. The respondent is just picking the names that look "legitimate." So, they discount a DEAC school not because of any thoughtful analysis but because they view anything with "Distance Education" is likely not "legitimate" or it might "sound" fake.

The problem is, if the person is following the second pattern and they really have no idea about accreditation what are the odds they would ever even learn about an accreditor in the course of screening a candidate? You might very well think DEAC "sounds fake" but if you've never heard of DEAC before and have no desire in learning about it, you likely lack both the foundational knowledge and the desire to bring up the topic during an interview. So, I show up with my MSM from UMT and the interviewer simply never connects my degree with DEAC.

For the reasons above, I disagree. Consider if I send out a survey with a single question: "do you like truffles?"

You mean to tell me that not clarifying the intent of the respondent (i.e. Truffles the dessert or truffles the fungus) will have no impact on my final result?

If 50% of your respondents said they would never hire a person with a degree from a DEAC accredited school that could, indeed, be an indicator of utility. But what if 89% of them stated that they never even ask a candidate about their degree's accreditation and 75% said their company does no formal degree verification? How could you not hire said hypothetical person if you have no means of obtaining the knowledge that they have a degree from a DEAC school?

 

If I served as a hiring manager, I would never consider hiring a candidate whose credentials were from an institution with truffle-ish academic rigor/substance.

 

I like your attitude. You've got "straight-shooter" written all over you. Can you start Monday?

 

100K annually, with 6 weeks vacation? :smile: