SCUPS DenIed by DETC

The following e-mail is being sent to prospective applicants:

"SCUPS has been informed that the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) voted to deny the University's application for accreditation. Although the DETC Examining Committee and the Commission felt the University's plans for compliance with accrediting standards were commendable, not all plans could be implemented in time
to meet the accrediting decision deadline.

The University is please to announce, effective immediately,
enrollments are being accepted in its doctoral programs in Psychology (PsyD). and Ph.D. and in Business and Management (DBA and Ph.D.). We consider our doctoral programs to be a fundamental component of our educational offering.
SCUPS will continue to explore options for obtaining accreditation."

This is not the type of deferral received by Cal Coast but a straight denial. They couldn't even re-apply for a year and then they would have to start the whole process over. Strange given their connection to North Central University.

Does anyone know any details?

 

DETC is on the right track. SCUPS is righfully back into where they belong....league of diploma mills.

Peter Chin

 

It's a good question. Why was SCUPS turned down? It's likely due to things that we can't see as outsiders.

 

Interesting...I don't know if SCUPS really can be considered a diploma mill. Oregon's ODA authorizes the use of the SCUPS Psychology Ph.D. SCUP's J.D. can be Bar qualifying...I don't know if their psych doctorates are still accepted by the CA Board, though.

 

I'll speculate that SCUPS' relationship with NCU might help explain this.

It's unlikely that the common ownership wants SCUPS and NCU to be too similar. If SCUPS is essentially identical with NCU, except with what some might see as lesser accreditation, then there would be a real question what its justification would be. SCUPS and NCU would be offering the same product to the same market segment, but NCU would be doing it more successfully. It might make sense just to close SCUPS and to direct its resources to developing NCU.

So if the ownership really wants to keep SCUPS going, SCUPS needs to remain distinct from NCU, offering a significantly different product. That means that SCUPS might have drawn a line in the sand, beyond which they are unwilling to cooperate with the accreditors.

If there's any truth to that speculation, I'd really like to know what changes DETC was requiring of SCUPS that the owners were unwilling to make.

 

I wonder whether SCUPS was simply unwilling to delay another 7 months. The cost of delay and the loss of revenue from doctoral programs may have been too much to bear.

DETC is getting an amazing backlog of schools and appear almost unwilling to accredit anyone.

A school offer programs less than the doctorate can wait forever.

 

Re: Re: SCUPS Denied by DETC

If the above statement is true, Alan Contreras and ODA have approved doctorates from a diplima mill.

 

It's not. The same gentleman, whom I defended against aspersions cast by one of his more disagreeable countrymen, has now taken to throwing borrowed Australian rocks at us (see off-topic) while living in the glass house of anti-Semitism that Mahathir built. Apparently in the neck of the woods shared by Mr Chin and Mr Lee, anger is the criterion of truth. Pity.

SCUPS may or may not deserve DETC accreditation, just like CCU. I happen to think that both schools do "deserve" it--but I'm not the DETC, so so what? Is either school the equal of, oh, pick any number of RA or NA schools? Maybe not. But substandard does not equal "mill". Mills have no, or risible, standards.

So if there is a question of fact worth, not debating but investigating, it is: are the standards of SCUPS invisible, risible, or real but blazing with sheer mediocrity?

 

I reside in Malaysia and observe dozens of unaccredited school operating here offering BBA and MBA for working adults. SCUPS in Malaysia belong to the same leagues of unaccredited universities along with Preston, Berne, SPU, Honolulu, Stratford, PIU, AUH, Fredrick Taylor, Atlantic international, Cambridge shire, Akamai and many more and I label all of them as diploma mills on the basis of following reasons:

1) Entry requirements are absurd: Allowing people with high school diploma into MBA program, no TOEFL or any other English requirement. GMAT is off courses out of question. Basically anyone with cash in hand can enter their program.

2) The delivery of the courses: On an average 12 hours of seminar style teaching is provided for each courses in luxurious hotels where one can have lots of coffee break and lunches for a weekend party every month. What these seminars are all about; frankly story telling and very much lacking academic strength. Teacher uses fancy slides and LCD projectors to keep the participant awake. This is the model of delivery for 8 or 9 courses to be done for MBA.

3) Faculty: It is normally a requirement that to teach BBA program a lecturer should have MBA and to teach MBA program, lecturer should have DBA or PhD. Unfortunately this is not the case MBA holder is teaching MBA courses and the qualification of these lecturers are questionable. Most of them are the graduate of the same university for which they are teaching.

4) Course work and Examinations: For each course, students are asked to do one assignment and by doing that they complete that course. These substandard assignments with no examination can never be accepted by an accreditation body.

5) Student Support Service: There is no follow-up advice or guidance provided to student upon completion of a course. There is no email contacts, no resources for students except for a textbook that is provided when students attend the seminar.

6) No quality assurance provided by the university, there is no moderator, external examiner looking into student work. Degree and transcripts is the only contribution by the University!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Observing all these, how could one deny that these are diploma mills!

There is freedom of speech in US and knowing that I contributed my personal views to degree info merely on my research and analysis in Malaysia. I have no intentions to offend anybody and my thoughts are that ODA is mainly concerned with programs that is to be offered in Oregon and probably SCUPS has presented good documents and faculty for which they get their PhD endorsed.

On the contrary DETC is a global accreditation body and they probably start looking in how University manage their operation overseas how would they make sure the programs are of the same quality as in US.

Few years ago HEQC (Higher Education Quality Council) of UK stopped many UK programs that were delivered by local colleges. I happen to attend a meeting as part of my responsibility with HEQC team visiting 10 collaborative colleges in Malaysia. They publish a report that is open to public now in which they concluded that some of the UK universities failed to maintain the quality of the program offered in Malaysia as compared to same program offered in UK. As such they instructed those universities to discontinue the collaboration or make sure the quality of the program is of the same level as in UK.

Peter Chin

 

Your defense was appreciated but your comments on borrowed rocks are irrelevant to the topic. You could bring that to topic discussions where we can share our views.

Looking at my perspective and analysis in this part of the world, I have no hesitation in labeling SCUPS as diploma mill.

Peter Chin

 

This is much different than Cal Coast who can still be accredited in January. The fact that they were denied outright means they couldn't even re-apply for at least one year. Then the process would start all over.

Did DETC accredit anyone this month?

 

Rather than blindly guessing at this poine, one should examine how they would have faired against the outline of regulations prepared in DETC'S handbook for applying instutions:

DETC 2004 Handbook

 

What are the status of the other instutions????????

 

This is an interesting question so I nosed around the CA Psychology Board website where it appears that SCUPS psychology graduates are license eligible. The number of CA-approved schools is very limited and the list is considered finite where no additional schools are eligible for consideration. A school can be dropped if it changes location. I didn't find anything about continuity of the program although I really didn't scour the website very closely.

There is a mandate to include the following disclaimer in 14-point font:

"Prospective students should be aware that as a graduate of an unaccredited school of psychology you may face restrictions that could include difficulty in obtaining a teaching job or appointment at an accredited college or university. It may also be difficult to work as a psychologist for some federal government or other public agencies, or to be appointed to the medical staff of a hospital. Some major managed care organizations, insurance companies, or preferred provider organizations may not reimburse individuals whose degrees are from unaccredited schools. Graduates of unaccredited schools may also face limitations in their abilities to be listed in the National Register of Health Service Providers or to hold memberships in other major organizations of psychologists."

This strikes me as wise counsel. There are so many more legitimate options available nowadays that I sincerely hope aspiring psychologists take note. Landing a good internship is difficult at best even for students from APA-approved programs, not to mention the limitations noted in the disclaimer. The conventional wisdom when I finished undegrad was that it was as difficult to win admission to clinical psychology as medicine. And those (such as this writer) who availed themselves of the gentleman's C were pretty much out of luck. I hold myself just remarkably fortunate to have been admitted to an APA-approved counseling psychology program. Currrent conventional wisdom is that with the increase in the supply ushered in by the advent of the free-standing schools access to admission is less restrictive.

 

I wonder if things like this could have been a factor:

Chronicle of Higher Education, 4/25/97, excerpts

Thailand Cracks Down on Diploma Mills

By Tony Gillotte

Thailand has lashed out against proprietary institutions offering substandard education and even selling degrees.
. . .
Wanchai Sirichana, the Permanent Secretary of Thailand's Ministry of University Affairs, said some of these"shophouse universities," as the storefront institutions are called locally, had even held"graduation" ceremonies in Bangkok hotels and sent photos from the events to local newspapers in an effort to hoodwink the public into thinking the degrees were real.
. . .
Many Thai government officials have been contacted by diploma mills with offers of honorary degrees, which also carry price tags, typically $12,000 to $20,000.
. . .
Sathaporn Sakolrak, director of the education and foreign-training division of the government's Office of Civil Service Commissions, recently disclosed that the department had blacklisted five U.S. companies that had sold degrees in Thailand under the names"American Coastline University of Louisiana,""Kensington University,""Summit University of Louisiana,""University of America," and "Southern California University of Professional Studies."

 

SCUPS gets caught in another scam!!! HAHAHA DETC apparently did their homework on SCUPS.

 

Well, okay, I defer to the posters who have done their research instead of merely engaging in speculation (like me). I will say that there don't seem to be very many (any?) recent SCUPS J.D.s who have sctually gotten admitted to the California bar.

I also notice that I went with London instead of SCUPS for my LL.M. program, though I did investigate SCUPS' tax program.