Today I felt the brunt of DL’s and Adult Education’s negative reputation

I get the impression that the OSU grads feel the same way about Sooner alumni.

Be different. Be blue. Go UCO.

 

Vincey the order of priority for me are:

1.) Is the degree at the level required for the job. IE, an AS will not do for a BS job requirement.

2.) Is the major in the discipline required for the job. I do not see a lot of benefit hiring a guy with a BS in Marine Biology for a security analyst position.

3.) Is the degree from a school I've heard of? No? Then on to...

4.) Is the degree from an accredited school? NA, RA, whatever... I'll interview them. The reason being is that I only find about 1 in 20 interviews that are worth taking a risk on. As such I tend to prefer fishing in deeper waters than eliminating potentially excellent interviews through self imposed arbitrary rules on someone's education.

By the way, I never hire exclusively on education instead on a culmination of factors, experience, security clearance, how they dress, walk and speak, test scores, etc.

 

Exactly.

Pug

 

My own experience is quite different than yours. My wife and I have taken classes in a classroom and online, RA and NA, american and foreign. Here is how I'd rate them based on the combination of rigor and support:

Prince George's Community College, RA, b&m: C-

LSU, RA, online: fairly rigorous but next to no support or interaction from the professors. B-

Penn Foster, NA, online: some classes easy, others were up there with the most demanding I have ever taken, seriously. B

Eugene Bible College, NA (RA candidate), online: not very demanding, not a lot of interaction with the student. C+

Global University, NA (RA candidate), online: not very demanding, not a lot of interaction with the student. C+

Bellevue, RA, online: fairly demanding, a TON of interaction and support from the professor. Large Capstone project due at the end of the cirriculm including a lengthy project paper and a Power Point presentation. A-

Nazareth College of Rochester, RA (premiere liberal arts college in NY), b&m: demanding and fantasic interaction, A

Briercrest, NA (Canadian), online: Extremely demanding and extremely supportive. A+, best of the bunch.

So as you can see, the quality of the schools I have attended has been varied. No connection at all can be made beween profit vs. nonprofit or even RA vs. NA. ALl of that being said, the actual quality of the institution and/or program is important to the student from an academic perspective, but the PERCEPTION of quality is what matters when it comes to getting an interview or getting hired. That is why I will be doing my grad work in a classroom, probably at either George Washington University or Loyola College of Maryland.

Pug

 

Same here in California. University of California graduates look down on California State University graduates. It is most definitely a funny, funny world out there. =)

 

If it makes any sense, Tulane looks down on Loyola who looks down on LSU who looks down on anyone without a football team in the SEC.

It is a funny world out there.

 

I got the impression that LSU looks down on everybody with a football team in the SEC.

 

In the same light, many Harvard graduates consider Yale and Princeton degrees as 'worthless.'

So if an employer were to base the selection of applicants significantly on school bigotry and snobbishness, I would be more than glad NOT to be connected with such an employer.

 

I would have responded with a chuckle, saying, "You know, it's funny when someone without a degree says that..."

 

That is EXACTLY my point.

 

Well....I mean....you kind of have to when you're on top.

 

This is an interesting debate to follow. It appears to be mainly a US issue. Distance learning elsewhere is mainly carried on by individual departments of B&M Schools. The University of London have been doing it since 1858 and nobody would ever question their awards. Nobody in Australia questions whether the degree is by distance learning or oncampus. You would probably get more praise for doing it off campus because of the effort required.

I wonder how global companies handle the international diversity in acceptance of distance learning credentials?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Australia and the UK don't have hundreds of for profit universities, some of which are certainly run to benefit students, but others which deliver the minimum education they can to stay accredited while maximizing profits.

Also, we have accredited online schools that are run out of office parks without their names on the buildings, employing maybe a dozen or two staff. I think this kind of university being legitimate is exclusive to the United States.

 

EVERY institution of higher learning is "for profit". It's just a matter of who's making the profit.

 

I think you're kind of missing the forest for the trees here. Take the following scenario:

The university president grows the endowment, but lowers student intake standards so that anyone capable of entering into a legally binding contract is admitted.

I don't think there are any non profits that would view that administration as a success. However, there are certain for profit schools that clearly love this management philosophy.

 

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with DL degree as long as it is obtained from a reputable university. There is a huge difference in perception when someone has a California State University DL degree versus a Phoenix, Northcentral etc. DL degree.

There are many reputable DL B & M degrees out there so why waste time with for-profits or schools of questionable reputation. If the for-profit degrees are harder to obtain or academically more rigorous matters little if their reputation is poor. The fact that the entry standards of many of these programs are extremely low does not help either. If someone wants to get an MBA but is unable to score at least 600 on the GMAT (which will get you into many decent AACSB accredited programs) then a lower end school is probably a viable alternative. At the same time it is unreasonable to expect the same recognition for the MBA when taking that route.

 

With all due respect, I have to suggest the same of you.

Didn't affirmative action and quotas effectively do the exact same thing at the "non-profits"? Without the endowment growing?

Again, who is making the profit? Are you suggesting that the head muckey-mucks at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. are not making handsome salaries, a.k.a. "profit"? Is Drew Gilpin Faust doing the job of Harvard President out of the goodness of her heart?

How about the Division I athletic schools? Does Notre Dame not profit from the donations which fund their football team? Is it really more noble or morally righteous to divert millions of dollars donated to a "non-profit" institution of higher learning to their sports teams than it is to divert it to the stockholders of a "for profit" institution?

Context, my friend.

 

With all due respect to you, it is just very, very silly to equate affirmative action with admitting and taking money from students who are clearly not prepared to do college level work.

Under this definition many churches, religious organizations, and even police and fire departments would be classified as for profit too (take, for example the fire chief in the San Francisco Bay Area that pulled in over 200k last year)

Notre Dame and most successful football schools have complete separation of athletic and academic finance. No academic funds are used for athletics. No funds not specifically donated for the purpose of athletics are used for athletics.

Yes of course, there are also schools which run their football programs at a loss.

But all this argument over semantics is beside the point. I stand by my statements and people can decide what to think for themselves

 

Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that no one admitted under affirmative action guidelines has had to pay a single dime. Are you suggesting that there have been NO affirmative action students admitted who were not prepared to do college level work?

"Non-profit" churches and religious organizations are just as much a fraud as "non-profit" colleges. If anyone can say to me with a straight face that no one is making a profit off the Roman Catholic Church, I want to hire that person to play poker for me in Las Vegas.

As for police and fire departments, that's my home turf. I can't speak for fire departments, but police departments are the epitome of "non-profit". The rich (chiefs) may be getting richer, but the overall nature of a police department is definitely "non-profit". The major (and pretty much only) source of revenue for a law enforcement agency is traffic fines. Working for an urban city department, we don't have time to write a lot of traffic tickets, so we operate at a major loss in that department. We spend money, not generate it.

So sports teams are exempted from debate about spending? Who funds the athletic scholarships of athletes who are clearly not capable of college level work? And what of the capable students who get rejected because the school "needs" to accept a borderline-illiterate athlete?

Not for long....Boston University (with a ridiculous endowment) decided several years ago to dissolve their football program (which was around for something like 100 years) because it wasn't, in spite of their public protests to the contrary, turning a profit.

 

Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University both have a MBA program that according to them is a separate venture and the price for the program is double the price of the regular on campus one. I wonder who is making the money here? I was told at least by FAU that if I wanted to benefit for the economical option that I needed to attend campus( commute was to far at the time). FIU didn't matter the price was the same either way.The worst is when you have a school that indicates that is non-profit but behaves like a for-profit, they sure have lot of fees and high tuition prices, during my years in school I have found that non-profit schools(at least the ones I attended) they don't care about the students, I found that to be adverse to some defenders of non-for profit.