TRACS

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Michael, Mar 3, 2001.

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  1. Michael

    Michael Member

    What are your opinions of the accrediting agency TRACS? Would their degrees likely be accepted by RA accredited schools?
     
  2. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member

    Our own Steve Levicoff once wrote a book-length critique of TRACS, titled "Where the TRACS Stop Short." Without going into too much detail, here are my thoughts:

    (a) TRACS is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

    (b) TRACS is not recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

    (c) The acceptance rate of TRACS degrees is probably noticeably lower than the acceptance rate of DETC-accredited degrees, but no studies have been done on this yet (that I know of).

    (d) Some very credible schools, like Liberty and Luther Rice, hold TRACS accreditation (although Liberty also holds regional accreditation).

    (e) Most TRACS-accredited schools are, as near as I can tell, traditional Bible colleges.

    My personal conclusion: TRACS is legitimate, and TRACS accreditation ensures that a school is, at least, not a degree mill. On the other hand, a TRACS-accredited bachelor's would probably not get me into a regionally accredited (or equivalent) master's program, and a TRACS-accredited graduate degree would probably not be a useful teaching credential (though it might serve the needs of pastors, writers, and other assorted folks).

    Steve went through 1994 TRACS with a fine-toothed comb, and can probably tell you much more about their history than I could.


    Peace,

    Tom
     
  3. Neil Hynd

    Neil Hynd New Member

    Hi,

    On (b) below, doesn't it concern anyone that CHEA has absolutely no authority whatsoever apart from what it gives itself to "recognise" anything on a par with a government body - and then be quoted as if it were one by Tom Head and others ?

    I see from www.chea.org that CHEA's mission is:-

    What is CHEA's Mission?

    The Council for Higher Education Accreditation will serve students and their families, colleges and universities, sponsoring bodies, governments, and employers by promoting academic quality through formal recognition of higher education accrediting bodies and will coordinate and work to advance self-regulation through accreditation.

    CHEA Mission Statement, 1996

    Methinks it serves its members before it serves anyone else .....

    Perhaps it would like to make a take-over bid for the State and Federal government educaitonal roles ?

    Getting elected to do so would be a good start ....

    Anything happening on the RA DE guidelines that were drafted months and months ago ?

    Cheers,

    Neil Hynd

     
  4. levicoff

    levicoff Guest

    Tom Head has summarized TRACS quite well in his response; the only thing which I would question is the comparison between the acceptance levels of TRACS and DETC (both of which are limited), since no empirical data exists in this issue.

    I did, indeed, write an entire book on the agency called When the TRACS Stop Short: An Evaluation and Critique of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (1993). After it went out of print, I had the full text on my web site for a few years, but the TRACS situation has changed sufficiently that I felt the directory sections of the book were out of date. It is notable, however, that WTTSS was the primary cause of TRACS being held up on their reapproval by the U.S. Department of Education for almost two years until they began to show improvement.

    There is, however, an evaluation of TRACS that is several pages in length in my book Name It & Frame It: New Opportunities in Adult Education and How to Avoid Being Ripped Off by "Christian" Degree Mills. Though NIFI is also out of date in terms of the directory section, the full text of the book is still on line. You can surf to it through my home page (http://levicoff.tripod.com), and will find the detailed discussion of TRACS in chapter 3 of NIFI. Except for noting that TRACS has undergone some management changes for the better in the past few years (discussed in the 4th edition update in the same chapter), my intrinsic position on the organization has not changed significantly since I wrote it.

    As for whether their degrees are likely to be accepted by RA schools, I'm afraid that as a general rule, the answer is still no. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, so I would not intend this as a blanket, across-the-board statement.
     
  5. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member

    I never said the CHEA was a government body -- it's a private agency that effectively evaluates accrediting bodies. As such, I use it as a litmus test (along with USDE recognition) to determine whether or not a U.S. accrediting body grants a form of accreditation that would meet generally accepted accrediting principles.

    As the U.S. accreditation system isn't government-run (all six regional accrediting bodies are privately operated), whether or not the CHEA is government run isn't really the issue. Its authority comes from its standards and its track record.


    Peace,

    Tom
     
  6. levicoff

    levicoff Guest

    No. Next question?

    But seriously, folks, the CHEA question is somewhat off-topic for this thread. Nonetheless, snce it was asked (albeit by someone who holds his doctorate from Century University, a known degree mill), it does deserve an answer . . .

    CHEA (for newbies, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation) is a private agency that, along with the U.S. Department of Education, "accredits the accreditors." There is an excellent brief history of CHEA in John & Mariah Bear's book.

    CHEA has managed to maintain its integrity through several changes over the years, and its administration consists primarily of administrators from regionally and professionally accredited schools. They have been careful not to let in the accrediting mills, and their board, management, and evaluation teams consist of people with top-notch credentials.

    CHEA hardly has governmental powers, as alleged by Neil. What they have is a high degree of respect within legitmate academe on the whole. Thus, their approval is as essential to an accrediting agency being viewed as legitimate as the approvel of the DoEd, although there should be no confusion between the make-up of CHEA and DoEd. Just as there are situations in which a accreditor may be approved by DoEd but not CHEA (as is the case with TRACS - and yes, I believe that hurts TRACS), one can also find the reverse to be true: CACREP (the Commission for ACcreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs), which is the primary accreditor of graduate-level professional counseling programs, is approved by CHEA but (last I checked) not not DoEd. Yet CACREP accreditation determines, in several states, the ability of a person to sit for the licensure boards and earn immediate board certification from national organiations.

    To delve into CHEA's role past that point would, again, be irrelevant to this thread. More than that, however, it would be an ideological debate; the fact is that CHEA is both recognized and highly respected throughout legitimate academe.
     
  7. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    I think that Neil is making a fundamental mistake in assuming that only government agencies can have the authority or the competence to provide educational quality assurance.

    In the United States, when we consider 'accreditation', what matters is who is doing the accrediting, how credible that accreditation process is, and what influence that accreditation carries in the relevant professional communities.

    Consider the American Chemical Society. This private organization is the professional association of chemists in the US. The ACS accredits university chemistry departments. But the ACS is not a recognized accreditor by either DoE or CHEA. No government agency authorizes or empowers it to do what it is doing. Nevertheless, ACS accreditation carries great weight among chemists, and among those who employ chemists. I mean, who better to evaluate university chemistry departments than the chemists themselves, right?

    The ACS has authority in exactly the same way that any respected authority has authority. Albert Einstein was an authority on the general theory of relativity, but he was not a government official.

    Many foreigners make a fatal mistake when they look at higher education in the United States. They assume that the private accreditors are unimportant simply because they are private. These people assume that the only people that could *possibly* have the competence and authority to evaluate educational quality are government agencies. So they shrug off regional accreditation as "voluntary" and "private", and go for state approval.

    And in doing that they fall right into the arms of some pretty worthless schools that all seem to exploit that argument on their 'accreditation' pages.
     
  8. levicoff

    levicoff Guest

    Bill's evaluation is quite correct. In addition to the examples he cited, we can look at fields in which professional orgaizations virtually run the show, right down to the point of state licensure. Almost every state in the U.S. recognizes the A.B.A. as the arbiter for setting standards for legal education; ditto the A.P.A. for setting standards for psychologists, from education to licensure.

    The issue has nothing to do with government sponsorship; the Department of Education does not accredit colleges and universities, it merely approves private accrediting associations, and those private agencies do the accrediting.

    Both accrediting associations (from regional to professional) and professional organizations (such as the ABA and APA) are represented by persons in those fields with solid credentials. As a general rule, they do not include persons with credentials from degree mills such as Century University. Thus, any protest one finds to the accreditation system, as it were, will usually come from persons who do not have accredited degrees.
     
  9. Neil Hynd

    Neil Hynd New Member

    Hi Guys,

    The fact remains that "approved/not approved by CHEA" (or similar) gets trotted out usually in the same breath as "recognised/not recognised by the US DoEd" (or similar) by many of the worthies on this and other DE groups.

    Whether intentional or not, the implied equivalence is quite clear I think - and misleading if not misrepresentation.

    Just as Steve might like to mislead people into thinking that his American doctorate is somehow more legal and legitimate than my own American doctorate !

    CHEA is a lobby group with a well-documented history in the Bear tomes - and a group that does not seem to have (so far) done very much at all to advance the development of Distance Education.

    Quite the (protectionist) reverse in fact ...

    Cheers - and Eid Mubarak,

    Neil

     
  10. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member



    That's because the CHEA is actually more credible than the USDE when it comes to evaluating accrediting bodies.

    Not at all; just as we have credible private accrediting agencies, we also have a credible private agency to evaluate accreditors.

    They're certainly equally legal, or at least they are everywhere but Oregon (I haven't checked their list lately), but legitimacy is another matter entirely.

    That said, am I prepared to say that you didn't earn your doctorate? No, I'm not. I have no idea what you did, or didn't do, to get your Ph.D. from Century. If you're concerned about the issue, why don't you tell us?

    I disagree. For further supplementary reading on why the CHEA is a Good Thing, check out this book through interlibrary loan:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573562335

    The bottom line is that the United States is run on a more capitalistic system than perhaps any other country in the world; as such, it tends to rely on private bodies as much as it does public ones.

    Because the U.S. Department of Education is in danger every time a Republican president gets into office, I think it's high time we finish privatizing our accreditation system.


    Peace,


    ------------------

    Tom Head
    co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)


    [Note: This message has been edited by Tom Head]
     
  11. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member

    Two notes worth mentioning.

    First, Neil expressed concerns that the CHEA is not doing anything to further the cause of distance education. This would strike me as a more significant criticism if the only widely known and credible distance education accrediting agency, the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), were not itself recognized by the CHEA.

    Second, I think the displeasure over the CHEA can be boiled down to cultural differences. I recognize that in Neil's country, recognition by the Ministry of Education is equivalent to what we in the U.S. would call regional accreditation; and in the UK, a royal charter does the trick (though some folks refer to this process as "self-accreditation," my general feeling is that people who engage in self-accreditation should do so in private and wash their hands afterwards). In the U.S., we have a competitive and adversarial system. If an accrediting body goes south, it will simply be replaced by something better.

    To be honest, I don't really care about the whole Century thing.


    Peace,


    ------------------

    Tom Head
    co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)


    [Note: This message has been edited by Tom Head]
     
  12. levicoff

    levicoff Guest

    Let's see if I understand this . . . Neil received his doctorate from Century University, which I have called a degree mill. Why don't we get a second opinion?

    Ooooops! We [/I]already[/I] have a second opinion! Let's see what John Bear wrote in his 14th edition:

    Now, that's Neil's doctorate. My Ph.D., on the other hand, was earned at The Union Institute in Cincinnati, which is regionally accredited by the North Central Association.

    Res ipsa loquitor, campers.

    Now, don't get me wrong. I'm sure that Neil is a nice guy, and he seems fairly bright. But what we see is an example of someone who feels he has to justify his unaccredited degree, and there's a message in that for anyonewho is considering going for an unaccredited degree.

    Neil has brought up an argument that was discussed to death-and-beyond on the newsgroup in the past: the difference between legal and legitimate. Of course Century's degrees are legal; New Mexico has some of the looser standards around, and the mere fact that they operate legally makes their degrees legal. (On the other hand, Century could hardly operate legally in many other states, which is why they split California in the first place.)

    But legitimate? Res ipsa . . . ah, you know the rest. [​IMG]

    So any time Neil wants to compare his bogus doctorate with my regionally accredited doctorate, all I can say is, Let's rock. [​IMG]

    In other words, I don't have to mislead people at all. But while I have nothing against Neil, I think it's important that any pontification in which he engages is clarified by a disclosure statement regarding the nature of his alleged credentials, lest he lead potential students down the wrong track in which they waste their time and money in a program such as Century's. That's what consumer awareness is all about.
     
  13. Neil Hynd

    Neil Hynd New Member

    Nicely put Tom,

    Does this now mean that those holding DETC-accredited qualifications now have complete, unfettered and unquestioned acceptability for student and faculty positions in US Regionally Accredited institutes ?

    I rather think not .....

    Cheers,

    Neil

     
  14. levicoff

    levicoff Guest

    I think most of us reaize that Neil's question is rhetorical. However, for the benefit of newbies, it should be noted that DETC is been highly criticized by many (including me) on both the newsgroup and this forum. Notwithstanding that DETC's orientation is largely vocational rather than academic, DETC has accredited several schools over the past few years that many have viewed as historic degree mills.

    But once again, all Neil is doing is sidestepping the issue as part of his attempt to defend his own Century degree (on which John Bear has just provided a more-than-wonderful commentary on the a.e.d. newsgroup).

    As another writer noted here. regional accreditation is the gold standard, not DETC accreditation. Notwithstanding that U.S. DoEd approves DETC, just as they approve TRACS (with which some have also disagreed), one must ask how an accreditor is viewed within the academic community as a whole. And even in the academic community as a whole, regional accreditation is still the ultimate arbiter for acceptance, along with professional accreditations in some fields (such as medicine, psychology, and law).

    In other words, DETC is no more accepted by some than a degree from, say, Century University.
     
  15. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    What has CHEA to do with that? CHEA doesn't control whether or not universities accept particular degrees. That's each university's own decision.

    The DoE also accepts DETC. So, if the fact that CHEA recognition doesn't lead to automatic acceptance implies that CHEA is holding back distance education, wouldn't the same (incoherent) argument work with the Department of Education?

    I get the impression that Neil's underlying issue is that the government theoretically has the power to legislate acceptance while private bodies don't.

    In the United States the USDoE makes no attempt to legislate acceptance, and probably couldn't under the Constitution. But in some other countries government recognition of universities probably carries with it the legal implication that they will recognize the degrees of all other government recognized universities.

    Once again, I think that it is a mistake for those outside the United States to try to understand the American educational system in terms of some other very different educational system.
     
  16. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member

    No, but that's hardly the fault of the CHEA; that's the fault of the DETC.


    Peace,

    ------------------

    Tom Head
    co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)
     
  17. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Or neither? DETC's evolution into an accrediting agency of schools offering academic programs loosely parallels the increased demand of academic credentials in the workplace. These days, many bachelor's and master's programs can hardly be considered "academic," at least apart from their general education requirements. Degrees in business, engineering, education, etc. are largely vocational. Is it any wonder the DETC moved to accredit vocationally oriented schools that began offering degrees? And then moved to schools that offered only degrees?

    In fact, the main reason nontraditional higher education exists (except for sham schools) is to deliver "education" to working professionals. But those students are typically taking their courses/degrees not for scholarly purposes, but to improve their skills (and promotability) in their current fields, or to prepare for entering new fields.

    An interesting example of this is with the Regents program, where courses in engineering, business, education, etc. were not acceptable as liberal arts electives in the B.A. and B.S. programs. They are accepted as unrestricted electives, however, along with home ec, industrial arts and the like. And Regents doesn't accept credits from schools accredited by DETC. Is it any wonder?

    For DETC to truly move up in status equivalent to the seventh regional ("virtual region"?) it will have to drop the vocational schools (its bread and butter still). This is particularly true if they want to accredit schools offering non-first professional doctorates. "Let's see, Ph.D. or gun repair school? How will I decide?" Until then, it will continue to receive the scorn of the regionals, their constituent memberships, and many potential students. (Or at least the one's who couldn't draw the pirate.) [​IMG]

    Rich Douglas, Ph.D. (Candidate)
    Centro de Estudios Universitarios
    Monterrey, NL, Mexico
     
  18. Neil Hynd

    Neil Hynd New Member

    Salaam Alaykum,

    But if being a member of CHEA (as DETC and the RA's are) doesn't equate DETC and the RA's what on earth are they (CHEA) messing about at ?

    But then expecting any sense or logic out of that situation is just plain hopeless ...

    Ma Salama.

    Neil

     
  19. Tom Head

    Tom Head New Member

    Wa Alaykum al-Salaam!

    You're definitely on to something here -- and in this respect, the CHEA really isn't doing its job in ensuring some sort of general uniformity in accreditation standards. But then, no agency probably could; one of the disadvantages of a diverse and private accreditation system is that forging a uniform standard out of it is like trying to herd cats.


    Peace,

    ------------------

    Tom Head
    co-author, Get Your IT Degree and Get Ahead (Osborne/McGraw-Hill)
     

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