Why a non-RA school?

Re: I have strong opinions on THIS subject too

Playing a devil's advocate, where is your evidence to back this up? Do you have demographic information on the students that attend AIU such as income levels, test scores, or total loan amounts owed after graduation? Do you have firsthand knowledge that these people were "suckered" so to speak?

 

I selected an NA school over an RA school for the following reasons:

* Affordability
* Flexibility
* Recognized Distance Education Accreditor

It's plain and simple. NA schools were designed for the career established adult who needs a degree(s) for further promotional opportunities and/or a career change. NA degree(s) are not for someone who wants to teach academia in a university classroom setting. If your goal is to become a professor go to an RA bricks and mortar school.

My personal time line was as follows; manager of loss prevention at a multi-billion dollar retailer at age 19; reserve police officer and married with mortage payments at age 24; promoted where I was traveling all over the western states; full time police officer at 27 with baby. The above three bullet points are strong reasons why I selected a DETC school.

Now, do I recommend an NA degree for someone who just finished high school and is now off to college and has no idea as to what they want to do for a career? My opinion would be no. This type of individual needs the college experience and interaction with other students and professors. Most kids this age haven't matured enough for independent study programs (again, just my personal opinion).

Now, the flip side to this agrument is that the DETC accredits distance learning correspondence high schools, which one of the schools (Griggs International Academy) was founded back in 1909! So, now in my previous statement it appears I'm putting my foot in my mouth .

I selected a well respected DETC school because of the school's reputation, but also due in large part of the school being accredited by the DETC. I viewed the DETC as the "experts" in correspondence education and they are constantly leading the way for distance education accreditation standards. If you read the articles provided on the DETC website and read their history you'd be astounded.

Here are some facts about the DETC:

(A) They are the standard setting agency for correspondence and distance education programs.

(B) DETC is comprised of some 80+ distance education institutions located in 21 states and 7 countries. DETC institutions include non-profit institutions, trade associations, for profit companies, colleges and universities, and military organizations.

(C) DETC accredits some of the very largest educational institutions in the world, including the military distance learning institutes operated by the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.

(D) Since World War II, millions of veterans have studied with DETC institutions earning degrees and job-enhancing skills as they prepared to re-enter the workforce

(E) DETC accredits four household name government-owned universities in Australia: Deakin University, Monash University, University of New England and University of Southern Queensland.

(F) Over 2 million students are enrolled in DETC institutions, and over 500 fields of study are offered, ranging from accounting to yacht design. DETC institutions offer instruction at the Kindergarten through First Professional Degree level

(G) DETC institutions have been cutting edge in their visionary approach, were offering at home instruction in law degrees in 1908, radio electronics in 1914, in television electronics in 1935, robotics in 1975 and microcomputer repair in 1976. The first use of online learning in DETC was 1986, when the Gemological Institute of America created its GIA NET that combined telephone links and personal computers.

I most definitely did my research prior to enrolling into a DETC institution and believe me, I did consider some RA schools, but after a thorough analysis, I decided to enroll into a DETC accredited insitiution. And, after completing my bachelor's, I again considered an RA school for my graduate studies (University of North Alabama). For the same reasons listed, I decided to continue with my MBA at a DETC institution (Columbia Southern University) and it was an incredible and challenging experience. Now, I've got my accredited MBA, worked extremely hard for it and have no student debit whatsoever.

That's why I decided to pursue my education at a nationally accredited institution.

 

Wow! Excellent points.


Abner

 

My Reasons

Allright Faxinator I am conviced that you are not just a troll so here are some of my reasons for choosing both RA and NA schools.

My reasons:

I have several reasons that I enrolled in both an NA and an RA program. As you guys can gather from my signature line I am enrolled in two programs as of now.

#1 I enrolled at Ashworth due to several reasons, the first being price. The price of Ashworth cannot be beat for a total program DL. Comparable RA programs for me at least would cost twice as much even in my home state. I could do the classes through places like LSU and such and then transfer to one of the Big 3, however when you add in the over $1000 matriculation and graduation fee at those schools the price still comes oput to almost double what I will pay at Ashworth.

#2 The second reason I enrolled at Ashworth is that it is study as you go and it is rolling admission. This is great for me because being enrolled in the dual programs takes up a lot of my time and no deadlines thing at Ashworth helps when I am buried writing a 20pg paper for one of my Psych classes at the other school. Also Ashworth allowed me to enroll at anytime which was great because otherwise I would have had to wait until the fall semester was over as it was mid semester then.

#3 It is accredited! I almost got stuck at Lacrosse University which would have been a big no-no! (Of course then I bought my first Bear's Guide, which enlightened me tremendously!)

#4 Business is a common discipline among many schools, therefore it will allow an easier transfer of credits as the classes at Ashworth are not unique to the school. Even though it is NA the classes will transfer as electives even to then RA state school that my second program is located at. ( I did not know this prior, a nice poster on here actually emailed one of the deans and asked !)

#5 It had been a few years since I was in school, and although I am still only 27, the thought of the workload and deadlines at my previous undergrad school made me cringe. This was due to the fact that like many on here I have a lot of other obligations in my life that I have to meet and I didn't want to overwhelm myself at first.

Those are a few of the reasons that I was attracted to Ashworth. A few of the reasons I was attracted to Peru are:

#1 One of a very few schools at the time that offered a full BS in Pscyh that was not a degree completion program where you have to go in with at least 60 cr.

#2 I have to admit, it is RA and this was a deciding factor. This is because if I ever wanted to do an APA approved doctorate in Clinical Pscyh only an RA undergrad in Pscyh is going to get me into a school that is APA approved. And only APA approved Psy. D and Ph.D holders are allowed to sit for licesure in Massachusetts.

#3 Way cheap tuition for an RA school. It is only $114 a cr. for online classes. I could get that price here in Massachusetts too, but I would have to Community College it first though, and I would rather just go to a school that I can go straight through and not worry about all the BS that goes along with transfering credits to 9 different schools. The community colleges around here are great too but, just would rather not. I did transfer to a CC here after I stopped going to one of the local state colleges but in the mix I lost around 20 credits because they had no comparable classes to which the ones I recieved credit for.

#4 Right time and right place. I did it on whim.... This is because while I was browsing the degreeinfo boards I saw the school mentioned. When I saw them I was looking for a Pscyh program at the time and they fit the bill to a t. I investigated a bit and they said all the right things and had all the right answers so I took the plunge!

Well these are some of the reasons why I chose both RA and NA schools. They both meet my needs....

Justin

 

Re: I have strong opinions on THIS subject too

I agree with you on this one Steve. For those that don't know, AIU is RA.


Abner

 

My NA Story

When I first enrolled in a NA program to be honest the NA/RA thing was an after thought and to be honest it still doesn't matter that much to me besides not being able to transfer credits freely amogest NA/RA institutions

When I was in the military I was introduced to correspondence courses via (AIPD) Army Institute for Professional Development. Self paced correspondence.

I took two B&M class with UMUC and the traditional class room setting wasn't for me.

I liked the self paced correspondence format so I looked for a civilian school that offered simalar means of study as AIPD did. I wasn't looking for a degree proram just career courses that I could use for promotion points. I found 3 ICS, CIE, & NRI. All three schools where accredit by DETC and where affiliated with DANTES, which qualifies military personnel for tuition reimbursement.

I enrolled in 2 courses with CIE when I was in the military.

Electronics Communication
Electronics Tech w/ Digtal & Microprocessor Labs

http://www.cie-wc.edu/

The completion of these course where a big part of the reason way I got hired by my current employer. an Associate degree in a technical field was the minimum requirement

In 2001 I decided I was gonna use my GI-BILL and go back to school. I thought I'd be able to get some type of credit for the CIE courses that I took. To make a long story short they where nothing more than vocational diploma's and If I wanted to use them towards a degree I would have to continue my studies with CIE. Thats how I learned about the NA/RA thing.

Since I like the Self paced format and I wanted to be able to transfers credits to an RA school if need be I decideed to go with Education Direct a.k.a PennFoster because many of there course where evaluated by ACE.

At this point I have transfered approx 49 PennFoster credits to Excelsior and I'm 2 courses away from an AAS in Tech Studies.

I have 22 months worth of remaining benifits witht he GI-BILL and I'm considering in enrolling with CCU because once again the format works for me.. The NA/RA is still and after thought for me ..

 

Another success story among the millions of graduates and students from DETC institutions. How many times have you heard about a graduate from a nationally accredited school denied a promotion and/or could not gain employment because they had a nationally accredited degree? I haven't heard of any....have any of you? If there is it's in isolated incident and largely factored on the employer and/or decision maker not understanding recognized accreditation.

I found an article from the Dallas Morning News trying to make the agrument that regional accreditation is the gold standard:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/052806dnmetaccredsider.8b1178e.html

It goes into how the NCA regional accreditor broke the mold of accrediting the first regional distance education school, UoF in 1978 and that the WASC regional accreditor thought UoF was a diploma mill.

This again proves the point that the regional accreditors where never designed to accredit distance educational programs of higher learning. DETC has been accrediting distance education for over 80+ years. That's a lot longer than NCA. And now that NCA has broken the mold and designed standards for distance learning, the other regional accreditors are following suit. It continues to amaze me that people try to claim that regional accreditation is the gold standard for distance education.

Again, I'm not trying to claim that NA is superior to RA or vice versa. I'm simply trying to drive home a point that RA and NA are both stringent in their standards and the facts remain that DETC has been accrediting distance education longer than any other accreditor and that's all they do and it's their specialization. Yet people equate the RA elitism to whether or not the credits will transfer to every single RA college in existence. It seems to me to be a ridiculous philosophy. People tend to believe what they hear and not conduct any independent research.

 

Re: Warning: I have strong opinions on this subject

I very much agree, I'm going to pm you you later to ask you a couple questions since I don't want to go off topic on this thread.



National

 

Hi Steve:

I disagree with you on one minor point. You bring up "Prestige", as if a NA degree lacks prestige. I submit to you that prestige is a relative term. For instance, here in California, very few if not any, know about the big three(name recognition). One could say in this scenario, these schools lack "Prestige" due to poor name recognition. The fact that they are RA does not lend to their prestige in the real world, or at least by terms you may consider prestigious.

Just my two cents,

Abner

 

Then I apologize for having misunderstood you. I took your statemenet to mean you believed an NA school was not prestigious due to simply being NA, as opposed to a little or not known RA school. According to your response, I take it to mean you believe the prestige level is equal. In other words, an NA school versus one of the little known big three, or some other similar school. The issue of prestige is separate from utility.

Take care,


Abner