U.S. News site mistakenly endorses Almeda University

From today's Inside Higher Education. I was unaware that Almeda's accreditation was "in question"...

At the same time that U.S. News was promoting its expansion into online college ranking, a spin-off site it opened two years ago unwittingly wrote a plug for a new program at an online institution, Almeda University, that is not recognized as a legitimate degree-granting university by the U.S. Department of Education or any mainstream accrediting agency, and which has been flagged as a “degree mill” by the Oregon state government.

“Working adults who want to pursue a psychology master’s degree can benefit from the flexibility of online programs, such as the one offered by Almeda University’s School of Psychology,” said a news brief posted Monday on U.S. News University Directory.
The editors of the site took down the posting after it was brought to their attention by Inside Higher Ed, which was tipped off by the watchdog site GetEducated.com. “As a matter of principle we generally focus on accredited colleges and universities and the programs they offer,” the University Directory editors wrote in an e-mail. “On the rare occasion, such as this, when we learn that the institution’s accreditation is in question, we take appropriate action.”

The publication opened University Directory two years ago in bid to move into the business of lead generation through a partnership with Bisk Education, Inc.
The move raised eyebrows among some critics, who wondered whether U.S. News’s attempts to capitalize on its authority in the higher education world might in fact compromise its credibility as a disinterested observer of the industry.

Kelly said the news brief about Almeda’s psychology program was the result of simple editorial oversight, not any kind of advertising deal with Almeda.

Press releases might be parroted in the pages of University Directory, not always with attribution, said Kelly; not because universities are paying for the exposure, but because such releases are just “part of the news flow” in the content-obsessed world of the modern news industry. Another effect of the push for more content is that errors are more common than they were before — at U.S. News as elsewhere, Kelly said.

Indeed, the gaffe suggests that the opportunities and demands of the Internet age complicate matters both for higher education institutions and for those who cover them.
“As our model has changed to a digital model, we are publishing so much more content in so many different areas,” said Kelly. “The demand for the information we publish is enormous — it’s bottomless. And we are continuing to experiment and monitor the best ways to produce that information.”

 

Oops!!!!!!!!!


Abner