trying to transfer credits from nationally accredited school

You just don't have the academic buzzwords yet. Don't ask about a "life portfolio" -- ask about credit for "prior learning."

See http://www.collegeispossible.org/adults/adults_credit.htm for some resources that will help you learn more about common policies and procedures ... and that all-important jargon.

 

Have you Considered

Although there have been a lot of good suggestions posted to date, I would suggest that the first thing you do is start with the school from which you graduated ans ask them two things:

1. Do they know of regionally accredited schools that have accepted their (or any other AI school's) credits. At one time all of the AIs were considering regional accreditation.

2. Will they work with you to try and get your credits accepted. That means they would contact the schools on your behalf and try and get an exception made for you. At ISIM this has been modestly successful and in fact is what led to our articulation agreements. We had a couple of students agree to be test students (a suggestion we initiated). Following their successful performance Capella agreed to accept all ISIM graduates in their Ph.D. programs.

Another suggestion would be to take courses from Western Governors. WGU is nationally accredited and sitting on the fringe of some type of regional accreditation, but the majority of the courses they offer are from regionally accredited DL schools. You can search for courses by topic, delivery medium, and price. You will see there is a big range in price for the same types of courses, depending on who the offering institution is.

Finally, with a little bit of work I think you will find what you are looking for. Schools often do not advertise that they will accept credits from nationally accredited programs, but in fact the decisions are made in the office of the registrar. Registrars will sometimes look at an unfamiliar school and see if the school is a member of AACRAO - the registrar's association. If they are, particularly at the AA level, that can be enough to secure admittance and transfer of credits. It doesn't always happen that way, but I know that I was once quoted a nearly 40% increase in acceptance of Harcourt's (now Thomson Ed Direct) AA degree at regionally accredited schools as a result of Harcourt's participation in AACRAO.

Good luck as you move forward with this.

Regards,
Mary Adams

 

Try this

In taking a look at the AIP website, I noticed that several of the faculty have associate's degrees from AIP and went on to earn bachelor's and/or master's at RA schools. You might want to either check out those schools or contact those faculty members and ask how they were able to get credit for their AIP degree.

Good luck.

Ted Cooke

 

Ted and Mary

Sometimes solutions can be as simple as the nose on your face....never thought of looking backwards or using them for information...I will certainly look into this. thank you .

 

Good luck - and be sure to let us know how it goes.

Best,
Mary

 

Dawnlanore,

Since you've looked at so many Florida schools, you might be interested in a survey that I did of the acceptance of DETC degrees for admission to graduate programs in Florida. It was summarized in this thread (three sequential posts): http://www.degreeinfo.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4352&highlight=florida+detc

The results weren't very encouraging, but there were some exceptions. (Knowledge of the situation is better than unfounded optimism, IMHO.) Note that this was a general survey, not a DL survey. If nothing else, there are links to all the schools.

Be aware, as some has suggested, that the admissions people may have no idea what DETC or nationally accredited mean. I had to send information to many of them in order to get a meaningful answer. Save yourself some trouble and be explicit about the non-RA credits.

 

thank you for the thread reference.....interesting and not surprised, knowing first hand the immediate rejection I have gotten upon muttering the words "nationally accredited"

 

State Liscenced Universities

Dawn:

Did you ever consider a non RA/NA, but State Licenced Post-Secondary school? Likely to allow you credit for your life experiences and you could transfer your AA. I was able to both.

Hope this helps,

RJT

 

Re: State Liscenced Universities

Warning the acceptability of Non-accredited credits within the academic community is almost zero. You're having problems trying to transfer nationally accredited credits. Accomplishing that will be like a walk in the park compared to trying to find someone that will accept your non-accredited degree.

 

Re: State Liscenced Universities

And this would alleviate her current situation how, again?

Lawrie Miller cites the Law of Holes: When you're in one, stop digging.

 

What I meant ...

What I meant was that if Dawn were to complete her degrre at the state liscened school, the issue of having transfer credits would be moot. She could also pursue a graduate degree at a state liscened school. I am not referring to a degree mill, rather a DoE deined, legal and legit post secondary institution who can grant BS, MA and Ph.D. degrees. If she does not on plan on teaching, or need a liscence, this is a perfectly legit way to go. Aagain, I am not taliking about Trinity C&U, what I am referring to is a school which is liscened and registered by one of the 50 states, and as so is intermittently audited, employs qualified instructors, requires actual coursework and some corner-stone requirement like a thesis. Remener, the "rule of thumb" if you do not have to work for it, you do not deserve it. By the way, if I graduated from such a Univeristy, which I will this summer, and an employer did not recognize my hard work; I'd not want to work for said employer.

Rules of State U's.

US State Liscenced
Qualified Instructors
Real Coursework
Completion of a Cap-Stone Project
Ony a portion of credits thru Life Experience

If you live in OR, you may want to verify that states acceptable schools.

 

Re: What I meant ...

Not to mention the other 49 states and the rest of the known universe.

BTW, the poster is obscuring the issue with very imprecise terminology. He/she is not discussing "State U's." State universities are run by state governments and are almost exclusively RA. The poster is instead referring to unaccredited schools permitted by their respective states (not where they're located, but where they've obtained licenses) to operate. Big difference.

 

A Proud SLU Grad

There should be no confusion, I clearly stipulated State Liscened Post Secondary Educational Institutions.

I do beg to differ in your preception of being illegal to the Universe. How is aquality education ever illegal?

There are plenty of good SL schools that remain unaccredited. Also, all schools at one time must start out this way. I feel that the decision should be with the student. If properly investigated one can determine the validity of the program, and repuation of the school.

The University which I will soon be recieving my BS in Management from, I feel offered me a better education than my co-worker who is attending the University of Phoenix. How? First, I must apply myself to each course in detail. His classes are in a group setting, and largely presentation based. My entire grade depends on complting a 75-100 question timed final. Although open-book, given the computerized timing feature, if I am not throughly familiar with the content I will fail. He can 'wing" it by the group grade. Furthermore, I have to do an intense 75 page reasearch paper, which is held strictly to APA standards, and even is reviewed by an independent anti-plagerisum service. He has to write no papers. My advisor works at a promient RA school, and my courses are all developed by leading non SL Ph.d. professors. His instructors are professionals during the day, and teach at night. I will gauarntee yo that my eduacation is just as valid as his. ... Also, my University has a website which lists corporations which recognize the school and pay 100% of the tutuion. This discussion group is comprised of students. Fortune 500 companies like GE, HP, US DOD have all reimbursed. ... Do I feel my Degree is inferior NO WAY. It is with a school that is State Liscenced and according to the DoE, "The United States has no Federal Ministry of Education or other centralized authority exercising single national control over postsecondary educational institutions in this country. The States assume varying degrees of control over education, but, in general, institutions of higher education are permitted to operate with considerable independence and autonomy. As a consequence, American educational institutions can vary widely in the character and quality of their programs.

The key point is that the US DoE in thir wisdom have established that States detrmine control. I trust the wisdom of my leaders, and my University is 100% State Liscened and Registered thru 2006, and in full-compliance with the regulations of the state in which they maintain University operations. In addition, they also provide for RA audits annualy, voluntarally. You may ask why then don't they become RA? Because they are occupationally oriented, and see little value in having students endure humanity couses, for which most of the students are mid-career, and are already familiar with such content. Students who are mid-career are seeking to get rapid eduaction in subject matters that they can apply directly to their careers. My University provides that. ... Thanks.

A proud soon to be soon-graduate of a State Liscenced Post Secondary Educational Institution.

 

Re: A Proud SLU Grad

Yawn.

Never let the facts cloud the issues, right?

Continue shilling. As I've said before, your discourse does more to prove the points regarding non-accredited, less-than-wonderful programs than anything I could contribute.

 

Re: What I meant ...

RJT, I feel that you are doing a great disservice by pushing degree mills. Sir, I believe that you really don't know what you're talking about. At first I thought that maybe you were a shill for a degree mill and that you knew what you were doing. I now believe that I was probably wrong.

Most of the unaccredited schools are scams to rake in money. They come in many forms and use different business models. Here's some examples.

1. Bestow diplomas for nothing more than "life experience" and money.

2. Bestow diplomas for turning in a paper or two, "life experience" and money.

3. Bestow diplomas for taking a few poorly monitored classes, "life experience" and money.

4. Bestow diplomas for taking 5 academically rigorous classes, "life experience" and money.

A real school bestows diplomas for completing 120 semester units that must include various classes depending on the major. Notice that "life experience" isn't in that equation. The way that it can be taken into account is if there is rigorous testing/verification to prove that material that must be learned in each of the required classes has in fact been learned. This is the way that real schools work. There is no such thing as waving of hands by some clerks in admissions to say that 10 years of computer programming is worth 3/4 of a degree or whatever. This is the way that less-than-wonderful schools work.

RJT, let's do a little experiment. This will work only if you are willing to learn the truth. Ask a few students at your school how many classes they had to take to graduate and how many credits they are trying to transfer in. I predict that you will find that a pattern appears. That pattern will be 5 classes. Earn your bachelor degree by taking 5 classes. Does that sound like an earned degree to you? Also please send me a copy of the catalog to your school. I would like to look at see how many semester/quarter credits are required to graduate. Do they even bother trying to assign credits for "life experience"? Or do they just always say 5 classes?

Please try to educate yourself before trying to mess up the lives of other people.

 

I think that you are compounding several problems. Accreditation is only one of them.

You say that you did an associate's degree from Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I assume that your major was studio art or something closely related. Now you want to transfer into the middle of a business or CJ program.

That's changing your major, and that's gonna bring with it its own set of problems. That will include losing all those art credits. Essentially you are talking about transferring general ed classses, and unfortunately the non-RA art schools are often short on general ed classes. That's why many students like these kind of art schools in fact: they are more art, less other stuff.

So, my point is that even if AIP were RA, you still wouldn't be able to get two full years credit in a new major.

If the objective is to transfer as many GE classes as possible, too bad that you didn't attend The Art Institute's Houston branch, which is accredited by SACS (regional accreditor). It seems the The Art Institutes is kind of the University of Phoenix of art schools, operating 20 branches nationally, each of which has its own, often different, accreditation. LA is ACCSCT, Minneapolis is ACICS, Houston is SACS...

My advice: Just apply as a lower division undergraduate someplace. I expect that most places will accept you. What they will do is do an evaluation of your transfer units, and that's where most of them will give you little or no credit.

Nobody's gonna blacklist you and refuse you admission because you attended an accredited but not-RA program. The worst that will happen is that your existing credits won't transfer into your new program.

So your problem is to convert as much of the work that you already did as possible into GE credits. That's pretty much all a transfer student who is changing majors could expect to do anyway, accreditation or no accreditation.

Personally, I'd look at CLEP exams. If you've already taken classes in the material, you could review, take an exam, and generate regionally accredited credits that would count in your new program. CLEP exams are offered in most of the common GE subjects, many schools accept them, and many schools offer them in their own on-campus testing centers.

So when you apply somewhere, just make sure beforehand that they accept enough CLEP credit into the program of your choice to make it worthwhile. I think that schools vary a lot on this, so you would have to check carefully.

Perhaps you need to contact an admissions counselor at one or more of your candidate schools.

 

That was good advice. If you were a senior physics major at MIT and want to tranfer into a French poetry program somewhere, you'd likely find yourself a sophomore, again.

You might consider enrolling in an AA program at a local (RA) community college, getting as many transfer and CLEP credits as possible. After X terms, you'll have a very transferable AA degree.

C'est la Vie!

 

Re: A Proud SLU Grad

I've seen many school websites that list corporations which recognize the school. Can these lists always be trusted? No.

State licensure by itself is meaningless. Some states have lax laws; some have strict laws that are rarely enforced; some have laws that have loopholes that could accommodate a Mack truck (make that Saint Mack).

I'd like to hear more about the annual RA audits. I've never heard of regional accrediting associations providing this service. Even schools that are regionally accredited are generally reviewed only every few years, not annually.

Is the school accredited by a recognized national association that traditionally accredits career schools? For example: Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology, Council on Occupational Education. I know the first two have accredited distance learning programs.

 

Re: Re: A Proud SLU Grad

His school is Kennedy-Western University. It is not accredited as I'm sure that you're aware.

I'm still trying to decide if RJT is a shill or a victim of K-W marketing propaganda. I've asked him a number of times for a copy of the catalog but he won't send it to me. The K-W computer won't send it to me because I live in California and K-W doesn't want to get in trouble with California for victimizing the good citizens here. Would you happen to have a copy? I think what I'll find is that there's no set number of credits to graduate. It appears, based on a sample of three, that K-W hands out diplomas for passing five of their classes. Taking RJT's word for it, these classes are academically rigorous but I seriously doubt that they are worth 24 semester credits each (5X24=120).

Anyway, since RJT won't discuss these type of things nor will he send me the catalog, I'm starting to lean towards the possibility that he's a shill.

 

Responding to points raised

Bill:

As my school choses voluntarily not to recruit students form CA, and they do not distribute catologs there for that purpose, I feel that it would be unethical of me to do so.

I understand the concern Kristen, but, I do not feel my school falls within that catagory. They have several independent RA Phd. professors come in annually and review all couse content to certify the cirricula. The schol guarantees that they are as 100% effective as a traditional school, including the same calliber of RA professor, or they will refund tuition, if the student is unhappy. I wish I had this option with my former school.

I am not a shill, just passionate about my future ala mater.

The 5 classes are appropiate for me as I had 100 RA credits, plus the 5 classes + thesis = Hard Earned Degree!

As afa a five classes being outine, no way, a friend who reccomeded the school, when I bacame frustratated with the tarditional RA U, has to complete seven. When I start my MS cirricula, Ill have to complete all twelve courses and do a 150 page dissertation.

A Degree Mill? No way. Unique Approach, Yes. Good for me and other Mid-Carrer folks, possibly.

Thanks!