Rushmore University

I started this thread to continue a discussion (PhD/DBA in business or organizational behavior that meets every requirement? started by furashgf) with PaulC that began in the Distance Learning Forum and really belongs in this forum.

In the some of the last messages of the thread PaulC had this to say:

 

Re: Failed test: Not where they say they are

Um, because the operator needs to keep moving? After all, Rushmore has a history of being on the move.

 

Paul, what accredited business schools have both practical projects and papers and a totally custom program with no required courses. I would be very interested in this list as I have not seen one yet searching the web...

Paul, I agree that Rushmore is not accepted in the academic world in North America and many other countries in the world. I have seen evidence on their website that the degree is accepted by many schools in third world countries and even a few first world countries. Overall Rushmore is not trying to prepare students for academia, its focus is business.

Admittedly, I can be slow, but I usually come around to getting it eventually. I understand now the sum total of your preference for and Rushmores's claim to being Unique. It all boils down to not having to take any particular course and being allowed to take any set of courses.

The concept is as nonsensical as any I can imagine. I am neither tenured nor traditional. I have no stake in the purely academic and am the product of 20 years of business need driven action and learning. Still, even a cursory understanding of the fundamental processes necessary to fully asses learning outcomes and alignment with the most fundamental core principles and theories of business, requires that a graduate with a Master's degree have gone through some number of courses that are specifically designed to ensure those fundamental theories and principles have been contemplated, compared, contrasted, assessed and Mastered by the learner. To have the "flexibility" to imagine that one completely uneducated in the basis of curriculum development and instructional design could actually select and appropriately cover what should be covered as a basic domain knowledge areas is folly, and of course, would never be considered for accreditation by anyone. New and unique are not the appropriate adjectives to describe that process.

I understand now that this is not about being able to write papers and do projects on specific areas of interest to the learner. This is about pretending that an uneducated learner can select a bevy of courses that will produce a graduate with the minimum fundamental domain knowledge necessary to form educated opinions in the area of expertise implied by the degree..

Let's see, I have no business experience but I want a business degree. I have no inkling of the various dimensions of established theories or principles considered by both academicians and practitioners...yet I am fully able to select the courses that will produce all the necessary learning outcomes to establish myself as competent in the theories and practices under debate in my field.

If you want freedom to research and write on areas of interest in business, there are dozens of existing legitimate curriculums within which any of those areas could be explored a and written about. There is no paper you could write in the Rushmore model that could not be researched and written about in an accredited model. But that does not seem to be the underlying impetus to your Rushmore leaning.

What of the civil engineer that does not want to take statics and dynamics…you want to drive on a bridge that they helped design? What of the law student that does not want to bother with legal ethics courses…you want him to be assigned as your defense attorney. What of the medical school student that is not particularly interested in in oncology, or the psychology major that is not interested in learning of the theories and counter theories of Fraud. Business majors are no different than any others. The whole concept is indefensible.

 

Re: Failed test: Not where they say they are

Steve, not long after I first browsed Rushmore's website and then checked elsewhere on the net about Rushmore(including degreeinfo) I realized that Rushmore was a “virtual American university,” since almost all of their faculty lived in the USA and had US degrees and business experience. I understood that there was no campus or central office.

I noticed that they had to move there legal location from South Dakota to Grand Cayman. I did not find any information from Rushmore or anywhere else to confirm the notion that they were located anywhere else. The only place this was mentioned was on degreeinfo.com.

I do not have a problem with Rushmore publishing the contact numbers of Rushmore faculty on their website or anywhere else. The New York number you mentioned is not on their website. Rushmore told me it is the number of Rushmore professor Alan Guinn, and it was used for an ad on Vault.com for a promotion that was supposed to end a long time ago. They also told me the other numbers they use are voice over IP numbers that are used for fax, voicemail or are forwarded to Grand Cayman (to save money for those that call them, faculty, students and prospective students).

 

Re: Re: Failed test: Not where they say they are

This may wash were it not for the fact that a Bachelors degree is not required in order to enter into a Rushmore Master’s program. Not one iota of any demonstrated core knowledge in any fundamental business concepts, theories, or principles is necessary. When you add to that, that a person with no previous studies in business can design their own business MS program...it is simply ridiculous in concept and practice. This would not be an academically sound process, so why bother pretending. Buy the books, read them, write some papers for publications and save yourself the $5k.

Tell me, if you write a paper using the guidelines published by Rushmore on their site, who would define the learning objectives for that course and who would ensure that those learning objectives had been successfully achieved, or not. I see no piece of the process that would support any of that. In their process, you read a book and write a paper of no more than 3500 words. There is no mention of how assessment is accomplished or how competencies or learning objectives are defined and demonstrated and mapped back to the intended learning objectives. Where are the details on the part of the process that covers assessing learning outcomes?

 

Cutting through the bull, the facts remain:

Rushmore isn't a university as interpreted by any competent and recognized authority.

Degrees awarded by Rushmore are not useful in any situation where an accredited degree is required.

Degrees from Rushmore would, also, be useless in any situation where the employer truly understands the nature (and lack of recognition) of Rushmore.

Rushmore has moved its operations repeatedly to avoid scrutiny by government agencies. This behavior is outrageous and inconsistent with legitimate schools.

Rushmore pretends to be in places it is not. See the previous note about being outrageous.

Rushmore has operated for about a decade without being accredited. C'mon, what's the excuse again?


Please note, I've not said a thing about the educational processes in use at Rushmore. I'm not interested in trying to evaluate them because Rushmore is not interested in having them evaluated. D-uh. I'll wait for them.

Rich Douglas, who holds a Ph.D. specializing in nontraditional higher education.

 

MARK:
I do not think Rushmore wants to be recognized by any of what you call recognized authorities.

JOHN:
One wonders, then, why they (under the same ownership throughout) have at various times claimed accreditation from either four or five different unrecognized (that's the kindest word that comes to mind) accrediting agencies.

When I visited the real campus a few years ago, it was in the basement of the home of its owner, Dr. Cox, in an Atlanta, Georgia suburb. Dr. Cox was a gracious host, and even offered to give me tennis lessons (I was in the process of re-learning to play left-handed after an injury to my right arm).

 

Mark,

Rushmore is, as others have said, a business masquerading as a university. The quality of their education, as judged by the writings submitted by at least one of Rushmore's students, is laughable.

Do a search on this forum. I don't remember the name of the gentleman, but there was somebody who was dumb enough to post online the papers he'd submitted to Rushmore. The quality of the research, writing, and thinking behind the papers were laughable. And even more pathetic, the "professor" who was evaluating the papers said, in so many words "I'm not remotely qualified to review this, as it's not at all in my area of specialty, but it looks good, so I'll give you an A"

Furthermore, Rushmore has a long history of deception, fraudulent advertising, moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (none of which were ever where they were physically located), and other evidence of a complete lack of any ethical standards whatsoever.

At one point, they claimed they had applied for regional accreditation, and were going to be getting it soon. When I checked into this with the accreditor, they'd not even taken the first step; all they'd done is request the packet of materials. They subsequently updated their page... which grew to one of the longest apologies for their lack of accreditation I'd ever seen.

No, every aspect of this school screams "fake." It seems obviousl that you're either a degree holder from there, or otherwise an apologist for their substandard programs. Anyone who looks objectively will see that they offer little more than some interesting vocational-level classes on business related topics, with a few substandard "professors" who apparently have no rigor whatsoever in their grading and evaluation process.

 

This is not true. It's true that there are a few unaccredited schools that are not degree mills but Rushmore University doesn't appear to be a member of those few. Bouncing around from place to place is a huge clue that the place is a degree mill. Diploma mills frequently bounce from place to place and claim degree granting authority from places where they don't operate to avoid legal prosecution for being a degree mill. I don't know of any reason for valid schools to do this, only degree mills to avoid legal prosecution for being a fraud. Also claiming accreditation from bogus institutions is misleading and seems very fraudulent to me.

Anyway, people with degrees from this Rushmore University may or may not have to work for their degrees. There's no way for us or a potential employer to tell the difference. It sure looks like RU is a diploma mill. The most positive thing I can think to say about RU is that it appears that they have avoided legal prosecution for 9 or 10 years, perhaps they will still be in business the next time you need someone to verify your degree. (Be careful where you try to use your degree though, it is illegal in about a half dozen states and that number seems to be growing.)

 

John, how is your tennis? Learning to play with the wrong hand seems difficult. If you can learn to play left-handed maybe the accreditors can learn how to use market forces to help them do their evaluations of schools.