Union Institute

I am angry with Union because their fees are to high

 

I am not going to pursue a doctorate, but if I did... and if I had the time... and the money... then I would consider Union as a viable institution.

 

Are you sure you could handle the attitude that seems to come with it?

 

It all depends on the degree as well. Harvard and Stanford don't have accredited library schools, but they certainly have libraries. The University of Oklahoma does have a library school and it produces fine graduates.

Harvard would be up the creek as would all of the Ivy leagues. Stanford would as well because RA requires MLS degreed librarians from ALA accredited colleges.

My advice would be to ignore windbags like the genius at Berkeley, someday they will need help from someone with an advanced degree from other than the top tier schools. Berkeley does not have a librarian as director of their library but a Journalism professor with undergrad and graduate degrees in History. (a ccording to his faculty webpage which does not have a complete CV). One is not a librarian until one earns an MLS (or today's new Masters of Library and Information Studies, or the old fashioned Masters of Librarianship) from an ALA accredited graduate school. The genius at UC Berkeley should zip it.

 

Ii suspect they need janitors too - I hear some of them are pretty smart at MIT.

Librarians ain't academic staff.

 

Gee, then some one ought to tell these people that: http://www.ist.syr.edu/facstaff/faculty.asp

They think they are!

 

As if Dennis has any insight into Union at all!

Dennis, if you wonder why conversation seems to drift to your pursuit of a CCU doctorate (and the lies you intend to perpetrate), the comment above would be a good place to start looking. It is gratuitous, petty, and smacks of jealousy. If you have something to substantiate Union's "attitude," fine. Let's see it. Otherwise, you're just being argumentative and ad hominem, just asking for a return in kind.

 

Librarians are indespensable academic staff

Librarians are indeed academic staff. I doubt anyone here could have completed his or her degree without the assistance of a librarian. Use the library? Then you have had librarian assistance. Actually speaking to the librarian is not required, just using the library demonstrates that the work of librarians helped you.

The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Librarians, and the AAUP all agree that faculty designation is appropriate for academic librarians. Many colleges and universities grant them faculty status. Tenure is also granted to librarians in some institutions.

Librarians are the profession chosen to safeguard and preserve the knowledge created by all mankind throughout the ages. We are ethically bound to preserve and protect information and assist our patrons in accessing that information without bias.

Casanova, Archibald MacLeish, The Brothers Grimm, Benjamin Franklin, were all librarians at one time or another. Other librarians of whom most people have not heard have changed the way information is processed and stored. If it were not for these librarians and information scientists you would still be consulting bound volumes rather than electronic collections; you would have to learn a new organization system for each library you visited; you would have library collections that are put together without purpose or reason; without these people your studies would be an unbearable chore. S.R. Ranganathan, Melvil Dewey, Sandy Berman, Seymour Lebetzky, Vannevar Bush (no relation to that other librarian Laura Bush) are all important figures in librarianship and information science, they created the libraries you use today with their easy to use, organized, relevant collections by doing their research in years past.


Not convinced, go ask a librarian something. We studied and completed our graduate degrees so we could help everyone become lifelong learners.

I am both a librarian and a registered nurse and I take both professions very seriously. Both professions if performed properly can have lifelong impact. Few people can be as instrumental in the successful completion of an education, especially distance education, as a librarian. I relied on librarians heavily during my undergraduate and graduate study, and now that I am a librarian I am delighted to help distance learners, in fact my Masters research was in providing library services to students at a distance.

If you truly believe librarians are not academic staff I have remarkable pity on you. It seems that although have pursued an education you have failed to learn that the half of knowledge is to know where to find knowledge. We as librarians are entrusted with the safekeeping of that knowledge, and we will be glad to let you in and show you around.

 

Some of the faculty there were my instructors in Library School. Drs Bertot and McClure are excellent professors.

 

Certainly instructors in a library science program are academic as are accountants in the business faculty. This does not make their staff accountants academics any more than it makes a janitor an academic.

We obviously have a profession screaming for respect. Library science was a bachelors program, became a masters program, why not go the step further and make it a doctoral program?

 

Union doesn't have an attitude, just all the Union graduates around here.

That attitude would be one of disrespect. A Harvard graduate doesn't have to verbalize his snobbery, it is assumed.

When one has a degree from one of the lowest ranked R/A schools, one obviously has to attack the next tier of schools. Dammit I'm a PhD and I must be better than someone, must I not? I guess nobody will actually believe the snobbery unless it is verbalized.

Again, a criticism of CCU. In ordinal rankings of US doctoral programs might I suggest, as I have done before, that CCU is maybe a just a few positions from Union but both are hundreds back from the top tier.

In your characterization of Union as being for mid-career professionals, did you steal this from the CCU literature? Both shield and sword?

 

CCU?

• Posted by Dennis Ruhl
  Are you sure you could handle the attitude that seems to come with Union?
  
• Posted by Rich Douglas
  Snip...
  Dennis, if you wonder why conversation seems to drift to your pursuit of a CCU doctorate (and the lies you intend to perpetrate), the comment above would be a good place to start looking. It is gratuitous, petty, and smacks of jealousy. If you have something to substantiate Union's "attitude," fine. Let's see it.

Dennis, are you pursuing a doctorate from California Coast University (CCU)?

 

Re: CCU?

I was probably among the last people enrolled in the MBA/DBA program before they dropped the doctorates to apply for DETC accreditation.

I had wanted to eventually enroll in the doctoral program but timing forced me to do their MBA also.

If all goes according to plan, I will have an accredited MBA and can misrepresent the DBA as being accredited.

 

I didn't think you could support your statement. So now you revise it, stating an opinion about two people (Levicoff and me). Fine. Thanks for correcting yourself.

Your opinion about the ordinal ranking of Union vis-a-vis CCU is just that: opinion. The facts say otherwise. As we all know, there are situations where a Union degree will do, but a CCU degree will not. The reverse is never true. Understating the magnitude of this difference doesn't make it go away.

 

Yes and Dennis explicitly stated on this forum his intent to mislead others into believing that his DBA was accredited even though it is not. (assuming that CCU gets DETC accreditation and that Dennis completes his DBA from there)

 

Oh Bill, you knew that statement was a freebie.

 

As we all know, there are situations where a Podunk State degree will do, but a Union degree will not. The reverse is never true. Understating the magnitude of this difference doesn't make it go away.

That Union is ordinally way closer to CCU than Harvard is just an opinion? That it isn't is a reaching opinion. I think anyone could name hundreds of schools with levels of respect between Union and Harvard. I think it would be difficult to name many with levels of respect between CCU and Union. Of course, if one believes that Harvard and Union are equals .............

 

This is a very interesting concept, Dennis. I do not, however, believe that it supports you contention; on the contrary, it seems to negate it.

If, as you stated, it is possible to name hundreds of schools with levels of respect between Harvard and Union, then, by definition (or as you put it, “ordinally”), they are on the same continuum. If, you cannot name any schools with levels of respect between CCU and Union, rather than proving that they are “joined at the hip” it would appear that they are not on the same continuum.

That having been said, I do believe that CCU, Union, Harvard, and even degree mills can be viewed as being on the same continuum. On this continuum, however, we have the blatant degree mills anchoring one end, with the super prestigious regionally accredited or GAAP schools at the other extreme. On this continuum, even the lowest ranked regionally accredited or GAAP schools are still clustered at the same extreme as the super prestigious ones, while unaccredited schools generally fall into a cluster at the opposite end.

In any event, your point is moot; I can name quite a few schools that most everyone will agree are between Union and CCU in terms of respect. In fact, a very nice, albeit incomplete, list of these schools can be found at http://www.detc.org/degree.html .

 

If you had bothered to follow the link I provided, you would have seen that Syracuse (which some beleive is a fairly decent univeristy) does grant PhD in the the field.

Here are three from Canada that do also:
McGill University
Université de Montréal
University of Toronto

Oh, here are a few more US Schools:

Drexel University
Emporia State University
Florida State University
Indiana University Bloomington
Simmons College
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
University of Michigan
The University of Western Ontario
Nova Southeastern University
University of Baltimore
University of Vermont
Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus
State University of New York at Albany
Texas Woman's University
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
The University of Alabama
The University of Arizona
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Hawaii at Manoa
University of Missouri–Columbia
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Texas
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Texas at Austin
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Oh, and since this is on general DL fora:

You can study library science from these by DL (AA and up)

Central Missouri State University (Department of Library Science and Information Services)
East Carolina University
Florida State University
Indiana State University
Nova Southeastern University (Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences)
Syracuse University (Division of Continuing Education)
University of Illinois
The University of Montana–Missoula
The University of Tennessee
University of Washington
Azusa Pacific University
Central Carolina Community College
Central Missouri State University (Extended Campus–Distance Learning)
Clarion University of Pennsylvania
The College of St. Scholastica
Connecticut State University System
Mansfield University of Pennsylvania
Maui Community College
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Pueblo Community College
Texas Woman's University
The University of Maine at Augusta
University of Missouri–Columbia (MU Direct: Continuing and Distance Education)
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Texas
University of South Carolina
University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

GEt your facts straight Mr, Ruhl!

 

Re: Re: CCU?

Dennis,
Could you clarify your reply please? (Were you awarded a CCU DBA?)
Ian