Validity of CA Universities Claim of Employer Assistance

Has anyone investigated most CA universities claim that most employers provide overwhemingly financial assistance/support for their employees that pursue the CA degrees? If so, do these same employers supports their employees that pursues RA degrees? Is this a worthy cause these employers are spearheading?
Rich, your input and others will be appreciated. Thank you folks.

 

Are you referring specifically to CA State Approved schools? For example, Cal Coast (and others) has a long list (100+) of entities which they state have paid for tuition or reimbursed for such. These entities include the following:

US Air Force
US Postal Service
GE
US Dept of Defense
US Dept of Treasury
Etc...........................................

When one reads the CCU bulletin it does indeed indicate that these organizations have provided financial assistance to their employee(s) toward earning a CCU degree.

 

I don't know of any employers who will offer tuition reimbursement or other forms of recognition to/for unaccredited degrees while denying the same for accredited ones. Have you any examples of this? I've never seen a situation where an unaccredited degree program would be acceptable while an accredited one would not. Is that what you're asking?

 

My employer will only reimbuse for AACSB (national) accreditation for business degrees, while the bigger aerospace companies, like Boeing reimburses for RA and above. I think it depends.

 

Kristie's post leads us to a simple, yet significant point: that there is a hierarchy about these things.

An employer who will accept a diploma mill degree will also accept an unaccredited degree.

One who will accept an unaccredited degree will also accept a DETC-accredited degree.

One who will accept a DETC-accredited degree will also accept an RA one.

One who will accept an RA degree will also accept a professionally accredited one.


But the reverse is not always so.

I'd like to see the argument that refutes this. (Except by mistake, of course.)

 

Rich - You are exactly rihgt, I tried to get an RA school acceptance, and it would have not been accepted for reimbursement.

 

Thanks to all of you. Actually, I was referring to California (CA) State Approved (SA) Schools and you folks have addressed the issues very thoughtfully. It is still worthy of probing why some employers like US Postal Services provides tuition assistance to their employees pursuing degrees both at RA and SA Schools. Is this a recognition that SA are okay and that their degrees are also okay afterall? Does it mean that CA approval of institutions carries some weight that encourages employers to financially support their employees to pursue the SA degrees?, or does it mean that some employers just do not know the difference between RA and SA?

Russell, Rich , and Kristie, I thank you all for the feedback.

 

First, most corporations do not have central organizations that review and approve educational assistance requests. This is almost always done at a local level with reference to corporate guidelines.

Second since it is mostly a local issue, if a corporation with 100's of branches and 1,000's+ employees has ONE (1) person submit and get approved a tuition support request, for even ONE (1) course, some time in since the "school" was opened, then it is legitimate to say that that corporation provides tuition reimbursement to its employees attending that "school".

So, if a postal employee in San Dimas applied for and was reimbursed for a class in Introductory Management from SCUPS, then SCUPS can say: "US Postal Service reimburses employees for attending SCUPS” and be totally accurate.

If the employee and his supervisor were later reprimanded for doing this the SCUPS statement is still valid!

 

Keep in mind that about 90% of CA-approved schools aren't degree level. It's easy to imagine a clerical or word-processing employee being reimbursed for some vocational office computing skills courses or something.

One of my former coworkers (in a CA county law enforcement agency) actually taught in a state-approved vocational program (auto mechanics as I recall). Everyone in our office thought that was cool.

So a person takes a few business classes each semester as continuing education and self improvement, gets them reimbursed, and eventually is handed an MBA. Would that mean that the county reimbursed earning the MBA? Technically, I guess that it would.

None of this is to say that state approved degrees are being endorsed or even recognized.

 

Good reasoning, Bill and Mike. Thank you.

 

My experience backs up Mike Albrecht's statements.

Educational reimbursement is frequently not strictly monitored. If the employee can get their first line manager to sign the reimbursement request then they frequently will automatically get reimbursed. In other words my belief is that in most of these cases where the company has reimbursed tuition at an unaccredited school, it has been done out of ignorance or indifference. I've personally seen cases where after the degree was earned the degree was then not accepted by the company for personal advancement even though the company paid for it. The reason is exactly as I said. The first line manager signed the reimbursement requests but human resources wouldn't accept the degree.

 

What was the degree level in the cases, Bill? And from which school(s) were the degree(s) earned?

 

I've seen two cases, both Bachelor degrees from National University. One person was a hardware tech and the other was a technical writer and they both graduated in either computer science or information science (I forget which). They wanted to transfer into software engineering but human resources stopped it. Afterwards, HR tried to stop reimbursements for tuition from National and there was a big political battle, IIRC, HR lost that fight.

Note that this was all very long ago.

 

Interesting!

 

Re: Re: Validity of CA Universities Claim of Employer Assistance

Greetings.

Not that it matters, but AFAIK the "US Postal Service" (currently) offers no tuition reinbursement whatsoever.

 

Here is another one - when I was at CSU Sac. I had one required class that was never offered at night, so I petitioned the school to take it at National University. I had a tough road there, but met with enough people that I got it through.

My employer did not want to reimburse for it!!!

We have one secretary who has been doing the paperwork for about 20 years, and she has deemed herself the one that makes the decisions. She would also deduct the parts of the tuition out that she did not feel we should have paid (though required) - like $14.00 to health services, $2.00 to the school newspaper - deducting about $250 a semester.

Since the policy stated "100% tuition and required fees", I had to get a letter from the school stating that they were tuition requirements, not that I was purchasing these from the school -

We have to get two levels of signatures from management, then a HR director to sign.

I am waiting for acceptance into a doctorate program to see if they will accept, they do not cover that in their policy......

 

Kristie: "I am waiting for acceptance into a doctorate program to see if they will accept, they do not cover that in their policy......


I think you can make a case with your employer as to the job relatedness of your Ph.D to the them. I would also go further by explaining to the powers to be the value of your proposed dissertation to the employer. Most employers want and like to see the benefits of your work to the organization. I have seen a case whereby an employee was denied reimbursement for a Ph.D because the employer felt that it was not part of the qualification for the job for the employee seeking the support. However, the employee spent her own money over a 4 years span and obtained her DSW. Her employee has been struggling on developing a diversity initiative. Her dissertation focused on the same employer's effort to organize, mobilize, seek input, and develop a diversity initiative for the organization. She completed her dissertation and obtained her DSW. Guess what, she shared the dissertation with her boss (HR Guru). Her boss was impressed and recommended that she be reimbursed for the tuition costs (ofcourse, she has to pay tax too). She was equally promoted to become the Administrative Director for the organization's new Center for Organizational Improvement along with her regular job as the Manager for Training and Development. So, my point is that, don't give up. Sell your ideas with your boss and you will be surprised to see the illumination of all the light bulbs at the end of the tunnel. Good luck.

 

"Her employee has been struggling......" I meant "her employer has been struggling......." Thanks.

 

When the literature of the phony LaSalle University in Louisiana was listing more than 300 companies that, they said, reimbursed tuition, I started calling the companies.

Of my ten calls, five said yes, they pay for accredited schools, and LaSalle is accredited. (They did not understand that there is such a thing as fake accreditation.)

And the other five said yes, we pay, because LaSalle is a regionally accredited school in Philadelphia, so of course we pay. It had not occurred to them that there could be a fake LaSalle; it was not listed in any of their reference books (unless they happened to have mine), so they made the wrong assumption.

So yes, 10 out of 10 paid, and all for the wrong reasons.

As Rich Douglas' doctoral research shows,* very clearly, most HR decision makers are clueless.

_________
* No, it still can't be public until approved by his committee
and the Dean at UI&U, but that could be within 60 days.

 

Thank you Dr. Bear for your insights. I look forward to read the soon to be public, dissertation of Dr. Douglas. He has shown depth of knowledge on this topic.