question for Russ "without horns or teeth"

beans

russ,

Do you receive income from an unaccredited degree-granting entity?

If not, did you receive a degree in exchange for services rendered?

Are you the "provost" of an unaccredited degree-granting operation? Are you a director of humanitarian affairs? Did you contribute personal funds to a "charitable" cause in order to allow your employer to take credit for humanitarian acts? Have you acquired advanced degrees based on your "life experience" in the face of scorn from your family members? Do you feel that the AMA is overly protective of right of access to its guild so that anyone with a credit card should be allowed to take young children off insulin? Can you sleep at night? Do you believe your immortal soul has gone phhht and dropped into the void so that you have nothing left to lose? And are you being threatened with legal consequences by the "directors" of unaccredited schools sending message from one place, but really working in antiher place., and misrepresenting their identities in their messages to you?

Can you eat beans and still visit the queen of England?

Do you think your parents would approve of you if they knew the details? Would you hope that your own (hypothetical) children emulate you, or someone else?

Are you just yanking our chains?

 

No Beans

See, that is the problem. Your use of "unaccredited degrees" implies the same connotation as "degree mills." My argument is that they are not the same and that you can have legitimate unaccredited schools.

I wish I was getting paid for this.

Regarding degree mills, I have no sympathy for anyone who sells degrees for just a fee and no work. Where it becomes a less clear is how much work is required and what quality of work. If you can obtain a regionally accredited degree in four weeks by just testing, that starts to look very similar to a degree given for life experience.

 

Re: No Beans

You are certainly not going to enjoy yourself if you ever visit Australia, Where "unaccredited degrees" does imply "degree mills". At the very least the degrees are unrecognised and unlawful.

This site gives more information

Not trying to stir the pot too much, but different places have different rules and I am sure that you will find the Australian system as odd as I find the American system.

Perhaps you could start a campaign to show the Australian government the folly of their ways.

 

Re: Re: question for Russ "without horns or teeth"

Who has ever suggested that degrees from non-accredited schools have no quality?

The real problem with non-accredited schools is that the most widely recognized and reliable way of knowing whether or not a particular school has quality is absent.

Some non-accredited schools have tremendous quality. But the great majority of them don't. So, how do you tell them apart? How do you distinguish the good ones from the bad ones?

Again, you can't just insist that people accept all non-accredited schools as legitimate, sight uneen. That's simply stupid.

If there are individual non-accredited schools that you like, what reasons can you give other people to like them too?

 

So, how can people distinguish the degree-mills from the legitimate unaccredited schools?

Exactly. Distinguishing between mills and legitimate non-accredited schools isn't a trivial exercise, particularly when we aren't personally familar with the school in question.

So, how should we approach this? What do you recommend?

 

Russ,

Thanks for breaking your sojourn and coming back in to post but, goodness gracious, what preposterous logic you posit!

Can you listen to yourself speak (or read what you write)? Do you realize how ridiculous you sound this time? Surely, you do not think that you can make a statement like this one (below) and get away with it here, do you?

quote
posted by russ
---------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can obtain a regionally accredited degree in four weeks by just testing, that starts to look very similar to a degree given for life experience.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

definitions:

testing

n 1: the act of subjecting to experimental test in order to determine how well something works; "they agreed to end the testing of atomic weapons" 2: an examination of the characteristics of something; "there are laboratories for commercial testing"; "it involved testing thousands of children for smallpox" 3: the act of giving students or candidates a test (as by questions) to determine what they know or have learned [syn: examination]
(source: dictionary.com)

test
n.
A procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something; a trial: a test of one's eyesight; subjecting a hypothesis to a test; a test of an athlete's endurance.
A series of questions, problems, or physical responses designed to determine knowledge, intelligence, or ability.
A basis for evaluation or judgment: “A test of democratic government is how Congress and the president work together” (Haynes Johnson).
(source: dictionary.com)

Now, let us take a cursory look at your statement that "testing ....... starts to look very similar to a degree given for life experience."

Listen to yourself ... GRANTING A DEGREE for life experience - not merely granting a few or some college-level credits, or properly-evaluated exemptions from a college course or two, but a whopping "GRANTING A (whole) DEGREE for life experience!"

Holy mojimbo!

Now about your so-called similarities between testing and "granting a degree for life experience:"

Do you see the obvious? Where, in granting "a degree for life experience," is the "testing?" Where is the similarity?

Testing is often, but not always, a WRITTEN (emphasis, mine) process. So in granting a "degree for life experience" where is the "procedure for critical evaluation" or "means for determining the presence, quality, or truth" thereof?"

Supposedly one learned "something" as a result of one's years of simply living life on planet earth (i.e. experiencing life or the cumulative result of one's "life experience")?

How does your garden variety unaccredited institution of higher learning assess that "something?"

This is the crux of the issue. Mind you, some unaccredited programs or institutions and almost ALL accredited colleges and universities do this - and do it quite effectively.

The question is this: how do your run-of-the-mill unaccredited institutions or enterprises do this, if ever they do?

Please answer this question.

Thanks.

 

This is good to hear! Thanks for the information:

quote
posted by Plantagenet
--------------------------------------------------------------------
All universities and other institutions approved to offer degrees and other higher education awards are listed on the registers of the Australian Qualifications Framework.
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Good for you, good folks from down under!

I do believe that the USA is close to implementing this same scenario and will very soon, possess such a register (or registry) of accredited colleges and universities.

As has been posted several times prior, here and elsewhere, it is becoming increasingly fairly easy for students, prospective students, employers (government and private), financial aid sources, institutions and organizations to check a school's accreditation (or lack thereof).

USDoE and CHEA (and others) to the rescue!

One can easily use the web/Internet to check if a school is accredited by a legitimate organization at a new database of accredited academic institutions, posted by the U.S. Department of Education.

See the US Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education listing of "Postsecondary Educational Institutions and Programs Accredited by Accrediting Agencies and State Approval Agencies Recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education, January 2005" at

http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation

http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.asp

One can check using several user-selectable criteria, singly or in combination:

Name of institution
Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies
Geographic region
US State or outlying area
US City
Type of institution
Students enrolled (school size)

Also, one can go to

http://www.chea.org

and use their search engine (you can type in the name of the school and it will show you the accreditor). Not all schools on this list are regionally accredited - some are professionally accredited while others are nationally accredited.

This is a great start!

Now, unaccredited schools (or enterprises) and outright diploma mills have a lot to do, to try to explain to anyone (students, employers, government, etc) why they are NOT listed on any one of these, or future similar intent, sites.

Note that it is an unaccredited entity's responsibility to show why they are NOT accredited; it is not the public's duty to take them at face value simply because they exist and have freedom to operate (even if licensed!).

Thanks.

 

A side note to Uncle Janko:

Good morning. Please accept my apologies. I think that you started this thread for Russ to appear and answer your questions, without you (or maybe us) "jumping" on him. I am not saying that everyone here has jumped on him, simply that I realize that I have done so. I did not intend to sabotage your objective, however, it simply is too hard to sit by and let some inaccurate statements made by Russ get by.

Thanks.

 

Re: Re: question for Russ "without horns or teeth"

This is a very good point, if it can be supported. Please give us an example of an unaccredited DL school you feel is of good quality, yet is treated shabbily by posters here. Oh, and would you please provide an example (a quote) of such shabby treatment?

 

Re: Re: question for Russ "without horns or teeth"

By the way, this is both rude and a common shill behavior. Interestingly, it is invoked by people who post in great numbers. You've been a member since just this month, but have posted (as of February 19) 76 times! That's 7.18 posts per day, far beyond the most prolific posters on this board! (It is more than twice mine, for example. And unlike those regular posters (like me), yours are about one subject.

Perhaps you're enjoying the synergies of running your (unnamed) company and posting here? It wouldn't be the first time.

 

russ, russ, russ. You STILL refuse to tell us about yourself. Dear dear. Is it any wonder that we imagine the worst?

 

I don't want 'russ' to succeed in one of the things that he's trying to do, namely to set us against one another and fighting among ourselves.

But I have to say that I do have some small sympathy with one of his points. I've posted about it before and have been flamed for my trouble by people that I otherwise like and respect. Nevertheless, I think that I'm right.

The similarity is this:

If it really is possible to acquire a college degree cold, from a standing start in an extremely short period of time (say four weeks) without having had both broad and deep exposure to the subject of the degree prior to that short period, then what's being described is a degree-mill process.

Unfortunately, some people on Degreeinfo have posted proudly about the large blocks of credit that they rapidly accumulated, by taking examinations in subjects that they knew little or nothing about.

To be clear, I support, and very strongly too, the idea of prior learning assessment. I think that people can and do learn most of what they know outside a formal university context. Obviously there's nothing wrong with giving people university credit for that knowledge if it's equivalent to the material covered in a college class, assuming that students can demonstrate their mastery of it. I have no objection to awarding people entire degrees for prior knowledge, assuming that the PLA system truly requires mastery of of the same material that's found in a conventional university syllabus.

My argument is not with the testing principle, but only with the anecdotal reports of how easily it can be beaten. If those reports are accurate, then the system probably does have some real work on its hands reforming its assessment instruments and reassessing its reliance on them. The current standards aren't without flaws, and this might arguably be one of them.

But contra 'russ', that's NOT an argument for tossing accreditation aside and arguing that everything simply be accepted as legitimate, no matter what it is. I'm suggesting that RA standards be tightened a little bit in one particular area if abuses do in fact exist.

 

Russ, you do not know what I am or am not dying to do. Janko

 

You're absolutely right, Janko, I don't know. So what are you "dying" to do, if anything?

 

You could imagine the best. Besides, how do you stimulate discussion if someone is not willing to challenge the status quo? You all think accreditation is the only answer and I am just positing that there may be other alternatives. Government or academic bureaucracies may not be the effective solution, especially in their present form.

 

I assume that Uncle is referring to your assertion that Uncle was dying to flame you. You are so flippant in attributing words and even desires erroneously in others that you don't even give it a second thought or remember it.

 

You definitely do NOT know what we all think!

This is amazing.

 

I think that a distinction should be drawn between UNDERGRADUATE credit by testing and GRADUATE credit by testing or "portfolio assessment" or (too often) "check writing skills".

Undergraduate education is QUALITATIVELY different from graduate work. A master's or doctorate is not merely "more of the same in greater detail". A graduate program is a place where the student begins to learn the art and craft of SCHOLARSHIP, not merely the details, however complex and arcane, of his particular subject.

Heck, in the U.K. system, a student with a first class B.A. will go DIRECTLY into research for his M.Phil. or D.Phil. without further coursework!

 

We can only have a discussion with you if you are willing to interact with us, rather than just repeating your own stuff over and over.

I've never said that accreditation is the only answer. I don't recall anyone on Degreeinfo ever saying that.

OK.

So what are they?

Make some suggestions of about you think useful alternatives to accreditation might be. Then name some non-accredited schools that you think are academically legitimate and show us how your alternative criteria serve to demonstrate these schools' credibility.

 

Oh, by the way, russ, as I've told you before, I do NOT think that accreditation is the only way to go. All I said was that an unaccredted school that's been around a while had better have compelling reasons for remaining unaccredited. I do not consider substandard degree requirements to be a compelling reason.

If you would take the trouble to listen, you might see that nearly everyone on this board admits that under certain circumstances an unaccredited degree might be not only a viable choice, but the BEST choice.

But the student needs to see clearly what it is he is doing by pursuing an unaccredited degree. The diploma mill excuses being posted here are misleading at best and likely fraudulent. Rather than assisting the student to understand the consequences of his choice, they tend to mislead him into thinking that there will be no, or only minor, consequences.