RA’s don’t actually discriminate against DETC it turns out;just no one had asked them

And, I just did a google search on “admissions requirements” and "nationally accredited" and got 15,600 hits, suggesting, while it is all baloney, that as I said about this type of search A – you can misrepresent a lot, B – you can exclude stuff and get crazy wrong answers, and C – that a more scientific unbiased examination is needed.

50 to 1 is nonsense and doesn’t tell us a thing.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=admissions+requirements++%22nationally+accredited%22

 

We must at least try to keep bias and emotion out of this debate. At least for me, this is about learning the facts only. It's not important, at this point, whether the present situation is 'fair'; it's only important to know what the present situation is.

I also looked at the "Google it" method as a means of doing a quick test to see if this is even a question - it is indeed a measurable question. Where we're going to face an issue with the Google method is in terminology. There are colleges that require regional accreditation but word that as "accredited" - they don't mean "DETC" when they say that. We also know of examples that do indeed mean they accept DETC in transfer. The wording in the college catalog isn't going to answer the question sufficiently (though we want to see that too). We will have to sample the 4100 colleges and ask. Anyone want to suggest a sufficient sample size here? We have lists of colleges and can randomly select any number from them. What number do y'all think I should be looking at here? Is 25% sufficient to draw an inference? 33% - 50%? Will this be better received if we survey 100%?

My question now - do we ask the registrar or the director of admissions? The registrar has the final say but the director of admissions (admissions office) is where most students ask the question first. Isn't it possible that the registrar would say one thing and admissions another? If admissions says "no" the prospective student usually walks away.

Do we need matched pairs here -- is admissions saying "no" but the registrar would say "yes"?

 

you cut that volume in half if you add "-nursing" which tells me that graduate programs in nursing obviously expect programmatic accreditation. That's interesting. More interesting if we can show that there are any program accredited nursing programs that are not RA. It doesn't help with our DETC discussion though.

 

But for example Aspen has a nursing degree, so –nursing would exclude them, even though they for sure accept DETC degree’s in transfer…. Also, you have no way of knowing if one school has 1 page or 20 with the terms in it..

 

I understand your agenda, but I wonder if this board is the most productive place to do your evangelizing. To a large extent, you're preaching to the converted when it comes to the regulars around here. Despite our differences, I understand what you're trying to do, and I think everyone here wants to see DL acceptance grow. Long term, the way the accreditation debate gets settled isn't by surveys, it's by scholarship - the more publication worthy work and quality teaching that is done by DETC grads, the faster they will find DETC degrees accepted as equivalent to RA as a matter of rote rather than on an individual basis.

It's an alias. I've used it as an online moniker ever since I first logged on to a BBS way back in 1991.

 

Dave,
I applaud your agenda. One area I believe would be a good start, or an additional question for any large survey, is that of RA institutions with DL programs. As a DETC graduate I’d be interested first in the acceptance of my degree, or credits, at another institution which also provided distance learning programs. I would guess that the acceptance of DETC at other institutions that provide distance learning would be higher than those that do not, but I have no data to back that up.

 

In many schools, this would be a department or faculty decision. Admissions and the registrar's office often ask faculty to make the call on such things on a case-by-case basis.

In some places and under certain circumstances, a dean, department chair or faculty member (in the discipline of the student's major or program or course) can override a registrar's decision on transfer credit or acceptability of a degree for admission to graduate study.

A survey would have to ask questions about appeal processes and waivers of policy.

 

A Google search for ["admissions requirements" "regionally accredited" site:.edu] generate 23,300 hits.

A search for ["admissions requirements" "nationally accredited" site:.edu] generated 1,600 hits.

When the searches are restricted to .edu websites, the scale of the difference remains over 10x.

It's hard to know what to conclude from that without looking at the results themselves.

Just glancing at the first 100 hits in each category, it does look like many universities' transfer and graduate-school admissions requirements explicitly specify regionally-accredited degrees and credits. What we still don't know is what procedures and exceptions might be in place for non-RA credits and degrees and how often they are used. Clearly these special-admissions categories do commonly exist, though they could mean extra hassles for an applicant.

It looks like schools often interpret the phrase "nationally accredited" to mean professionally accredited. Clearly many nursing schools use the phrase to mean NLN accreditation. We see U. of North Texas boasting of having more nationally accredited programs than any other school in the Dallas area. We see schools boasting of their nationally accredited business departments.

Since a webpage that talks about regionally accredited degrees and credits could easily have a separate section discussing nationally accredited degrees and credits, I did a search for the phrases 'regionally accredited' and 'nationally accredited' appearing together on the same .edu page along with 'admissions requirements'. ["regionally accredited" "nationally accredited" "admissions requirements" site:.edu] This generated 545 hits.

An initial glance suggests a mixed bag. Some schools clearly do have explicit provisions for DETC, ACICS, ACCSCT etc. But others are once again using the phrase 'nationally accredited' to mean professionally accredited.

I'm not pretending that this is the last word on anything. It's merely suggestive, certainly not conclusive. But these kind of inquiries do start to give us the first hints of a picture, crudely drawn in broad strokes, of what's currently happening out there.

 

A few observations:

1. Any researcher with an admitted subject bias, at the level characterized as bigotry, and an agenda about the outcome has seriously damaged the validity of the results, despite a well vetted methodology.

2. Any search that uses nationally accredited as a filter will also retrieve professional and program level accreditation, which we know is not a part of the debate.

3. It is possible that some posts and responses appear to miss the point because the research questions and hypotheses have been a moving target.

 

Yes, but if you run this search
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=%22national+accreditation%22+%22admission+requirements%22+site%3Asite%3A.edu
"national accreditation" "admission requirements" site:site:.edu
You get 3580 hits

And this one
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=%22nationally+accredited%22+%22admission+requirements+%22+site%3Asite%3A.edu
"nationally accredited" "admission requirements " site:site:.edu
Gets you 9710

I don’t think this is valid as the English language doesn’t set up for this. As PaulC points out, and as I agree, which is why I didn’t volunteer to do any of this research, and why I openly admit my bias (I wish others would because it makes for a much more honest conversation), is that you can make this stuff look a lot of different ways to tell a story. The “search game” is a dubious test at best.

 

The more I think about it, the only way to compare apples, I believe, is to narrow the inquiry down to something specific. It could be DL, it could maybe be business degrees or credits, it could be CC compared to DETC across the board, tier 4 to NA. There are many permutations. The broader and less focused the research, the cloudier the picture I suspect.

 

We’re doing more than preaching, there are activities going on in many places. I can’t talk about them but some will come to light soon, others will take a while. Are you saying you want me off the board? Interesting approach.

You seem well spoken, you should go ahead and put your name in your tag line, it is much more effective to have your name out there with your opinions. Using an alias diminishes, IMO, any views you provide.

 

If there is any hope that this process and discussion will produce any data that is both valid and reliable, there has to be significantly greater focus, clarity, and specificity as to what research question seeks to be answered.

There are dozens of possible questions surrounding the RA/NA debate, none of which will be answered as long as there remain dozens of questions.

 

Dave Lady and Coach Turner,

I applaud your efforts. Do not let the side line distractions take away from your main focus, research. Why research turns into "You are trying to force acceptance of DETC" is beyond me. What the hell?

I believe PaulC summed it up quite nicely when he said:

"If there is any hope that this process and discussion will produce any data that is both valid and reliable, there has to be significantly greater focus, clarity, and specificity as to what research question seeks to be answered.

There are dozens of possible questions surrounding the RA/NA debate, none of which will be answered as long as there remain dozens of questions".

Carry on gentleman, good work.

Abner

 

Not at all - just saying that despite our disagreements, most everyone on this board agrees that DETC schools provide a useful and valuable product to the education market, and that we already believe they SHOULD be more widely accepted. If you're looking to increase acceptance of NA degrees, the people to evangelize to are those who don't currently "get" NA degrees. I'm looking forward to see what you're working on.

I've been using Fortunato as an alias long enough and in enough public venues that it's pretty easy to figure out who I am, if one really wants to. I've had reporters track me down from online postings on more than one occasion. Not to mention, there's a link to my blog in my sig, and I use my real name there. I'm not hiding anything.

 

My situation was serving full time in the Army and yet as a recruiter (mega hours). I chose Ashworth College to complete my AS in Criminal Justice of which the Army paid for. Now, since my retirement from the Army I managed to secure a position as a Oklahoma Park Ranger. The requirements for this position was 60 semester hours and there was no question as to the legitimacy of the degree, only that the college was accredited.

 

Abner,

I believe Dave has unabashedly stated that one of his goals is wider acceptance of DETC credentials. I don't see anything wrong with that, and I don't think anyone else here does either. In fact, I think that advocacy colored as research is a bit disingenuous, and I applaud the fact that Dave is relatively straightforward about his cheerleading for DETC schools in general and Aspen in particular.

 

For clarity, in case anyone wonders; I do not have an agenda of increased or decreased acceptance of DETC credit in transfer. My interest lies only in answering the question what percentage of colleges/universities will accept DETC credit in transfer under what conditions. This is a quantifiable question. I suspect that we will find that acceptability has risen since Dr. Bear asked this question but that it has not risen considerably.

At the same time, the organizational behaviorist in me wants to know "why" the percentage is what it is and if that "why" is valid. This one is not quantifiable and may well create more debate. This relates to the original question in the thread - we now know that the "why" isn't "because SACS won't let us" - we don't know the bottom line then.

Those with a certain agenda may feel free to use what I find in their battle, I suspect some of it will be useful in that regard (both sides). When I'm done - I intend to publish the result (if anyone will have it) and then consider something new or build on it.

One area that I'm interested in is employer acceptance of DETC degrees and certificates. I suspect that in that arena the level of acceptance is higher than is acceptance by RA colleges for graduate admission or undergrad transfer. That's not the question right now though - right now I'm looking at those questions above.

Just so there is no question; at this point in my life, I am neither for or against greater acceptance of DETC (specifically) credit in transfer. I am in favor of greater access to higher education through distance learning and I think that DETC has been a force in providing just that.

 

Hear, hear! This is a sentiment I think we can all agree on.

 

I fail to see how the fact that “Rich and others have stated repeatedly” has anything to do with my statement being false.

I stand by my statement. Accreditation may play some role in graduate admissions, but in the majority of cases, particularly tier-1 programs, standardized test scores play the greatest role, followed by the reputation of the undergraduate program (with FP-DL being the least desirable), followed by personal achievement and then followed by accreditation.

There is a particularly disrespectful tone shown by some on this board towards DETC by using language as “there is no reason for a student to select a DETC program.” I suspect that graduates of RA-DL programs feel the need to substantiate their personal degrees by finding some other degree that they can claim theirs is superior to.

Accreditation is no indication of relative quality. It is a MINIMUM standard. DETC’s standards are equal to RA standards in the eyes of the USDOE.