Wyoming Legislator Slams Accreditation

I'm sure that if you or loved one had to undergo surgery you would like to get the most qualified doctor.

And not a sub standard butcher.

Sorry but some one has to monitor the quality of the educational system.

The Service has to be in compliance with expected norms.

 

You are right that accreditation in this country is not a government function nor should it be. The ONLY reason the Feds are involved is when it comes to the use of federal dollars (taxpayer dollars). If an institution is not interested in getting federal dollars they would have no need or desire to have to go through the expense or process of accreditation with the regionals or any other accrediting body. Their only goal would be to provide an excellent college program for their students but remain unaccredited.

What is wrong with that?

 

Well, your hiatus did nothing to improve your disposition.

And if you're going to step on my duck then may I ask to whom you refer with regards the rubber-ducky degree?

And, and, when did Lutherans turn to glossolalia?

 

Am I hallucinating or did janko fly through here with some ducks?

 

Besides the fact that you most likely won't get the most qualified doctor if you have surgery anyway, the real issue comes out. The premise you state is that only regional accredited schools can confer a "standard" education while all others (unaccredited) would be "substandard" or stated your way, would turn out "butchers."

Is Bill Gates a "butcher" of a CEO because he did not graduate from a RA school. What about Michael Dell of Dell Computer or Larry Ellison of Oracle or Paul Allen of Microsoft, etc. None of these individuals hold accredited college degrees. Are they substandard business people because they didn't get the right education?

 

There certainly ARE lawyers whose competence I question. Oddly enough, though, they tend NOT to be recent graduates and Bar examinees; instead they tend to be older, experienced attorneys who "burn out" or fail to "keep up" or both.

The Bar now almost universally requires a certain amount of "continuing legal education"every year. I think it helps but really, after the Bar exam, and three or four years of extremely intense education, no lawyer can really afford to be a "generalist". There's just too much to know. If, for example, a client approached me with a securities sale, I would either 1) run away as fast and as far as I could or 2) associate with securities counsel at ruinous expense. On the other hand, I'd rather have me to defend an armed robbery than all the silk shirts on Wall Street.

 

Does it matter whether or not Bill Gates or these others have a degree?

A degree is an academic achievement, and not a measure of success in an industry. There are a lot of people that have patents on things that have very little education, but they had a great idea. You are mixing apples with oranges with this argument. Most unaccredited schools do not share the standards that the accredited schools have, and that is why they are unaccredited. Do you have a particular unaccredited school that you think is on par with accredited schools that receives unfair criticism?

 

I really don't think I am mixing fruit if the person who I quoted first attacks the competency of a professional based on the origin of their degree. I may have used a different profession but one that still requires professional skills as much, if not more, than a surgeon. It was his argument I was addressing.

Your argument is that it is simply an academic achievement, not skill that we are discussing. The problem is that too many people equate the two just as the person in the last paragraph and his reference to "substandard butchers."

Would I trust a surgeon if he did not have an accredited degree? Absolutely, I don't think accreditation has anything to do with his or her skill level. If the person had another way of demonstrating professional competence without referring to the college they went to I would accept that.

In my humble opinion, we place too much emphasis on such 'official' stamps of approval without acknowledging that individuals can be autodidactic enough to turn any college into a high quality education or not go at all. Although my examples were in the business world, I believe they can apply to any profession including the proverbial "bridge builder" or medicine.

Yes, I am playing devil's advocate here and may be overreaching but there seems to be a lot of "mine is better than yours" based on the opinion of educational bureaucrats in separate regions of the country who decide who should or should not be part of their club.

 

People learn things in lots of different ways. People study independently. They learn on the job. Obviously it's not always necessary to study at a university. Nobody disputes that.

But that's not really what university degrees are about. Degrees are certifications. They inform those of us who aren't familiar with somebody's unique personal experiences that an expected program of study has been successfully negotiated.

If it isn't important what others think, if people are studying simply for their own personal growth and enjoyment, then why bother to earn a degree at all? What purpose would a degree serve? Why not just read books at the library or take classes without a degree objective?

If a person is going to earn a degree and then put it to use, other people need to be confident that the degree really means what they expect a degree to mean. If the degree can mean anything, if it communicates nothing to anybody, then what's the point of earning it?

So if a degree is going to be meaningful, there has to be some reason for other people to trust that it's credible. That's the purpose of accreditation.

If you want to dismiss accreditation, then that's the problem that you have to address.

What alternative method do you suggest to assure people that other people's educational claims really mean something?

 

IF employer requires a college degree for a specific job then there is a level of expectations.


If a person went to a sub standard school and graduated with degree that usualy in other standard degree program that person would cover additional material, labs etc then the employer got cheated.

When a person comes with unaccredited degree there is no way for the employer to know what that person studied and by whom
he was instructed etc.

Even if unaccredited school has very good above standard program how can the employer know?

Recognized accreditation is a mark of minimum standards
have been met.

 

Independent third party endorsement?

 

I am an Accountant - first license 1969 - and I was thinking that it is good that we have professional licenses as they don't work with substandard degrees unless you do what our Irish friends have done in getting their own association ... until I read the above comments. THEN I remembered Enron, and so on ...

I am also an Engineer [1965] so maybe I'll stick with that designation ... or have we crapped in the nest as well somewhere?

I am also a teacher [1992] and haven't molested any kids or educated Rita ...

You'll always find some rotten apple somewhere but it doesn't necessarily follow that all apples are bad. In the Bristish Commonwealth the degree gets one access to ones profession and we then have to do another 2-4 years study, and people will judge you on your professional fellowship and rarely ask wheree your degree comes from.

 

Let's assume we don't use accreditation. How can this be determined? If we eliminate government and accreditation, how are the consumers of higher education (students, employers, and the public) to discern between good and bad schools?

We don't do this with restaurants, for example. A restaurant may or may not prepare good food, but they're inspected to ensure they serve safe food.

Accreditation doesn't measure the differences between schools. It ensures accredited schools are operating at a sufficient level as to constitute a degree-granting institution. Some state governments also do this, others (like Wyoming) abandon it.

The Wyoming legislator is influenced by her engagement with Preston, no?

 

This is a common argument, but it has nothing to do with the quality of higher education.

A degree is a proxy, representing the accomplishment of a course of study. Someone who presents a degree, but has not mastered the course of study normally associated with such a degree, is a problem.

A lack of evidence is not evidence. That those persons lack college degrees is not an indicator of a lack of quality in accredited schools, nor is it an indicator that unaccredited schools are good. (None attended unaccredited schools anyway.)

The issue is whether or not a degree presented is bona fide. The burden is on the school to demonstrate this. Accredited schools do so by their accreditation. Unaccredited schools must take other means. The onus is on them. Unaccredited schools operating in Wyoming have not demonstrated such merely by holding a license in that state.

This argument goes on incessantly around here, but nothing changes. Schools like Kennedy-Wester, Century, Chadwick, and the like are not universities, and are not recognized as such. They're business who sell things that look like degrees and, thus, tend to fool others.

 

I can't speak for this other person but I believe you've misread herm. I don't see any call for the elimination of accreditation but rather an argument against legislated, i.e. coerced, i.e. dictated, accreditation by select organizations.

 

I agree. What is does concern, however, is the rampant credentialism of our generation. Credentialism is a different topic, worther of discussion and deconstruction. I think (just a hunch) that many would agree that the religion of credentialism has many flaws. But it's another discussion altogether.

In an ideal world, what a person knows should be as valued as who says what a person knows.

In an ideal world, that is.

In that same ideal world, the lamb and the lion go to the same tennis club, sip sodas together, and swap stock tips.

 

Accreditation has to be recognized by a body that is responsible for education and has legal empowerment to set the guide lines.

Uncontrolled agency can stray away and reduce it's standards
simply for business and profiting.

In US privet organizations such as RA, NA and PA are not really autonomous and have to be recognized by CHEA and USDE.

As far as skills and degrees - If the employer wants a person with skills he will specify no degree needed.
If the employer wants a person with academic degree and skills
then he expects exactly that

 

I asked those (Russ specifically) who are arguing against the value of accreditation: "What alternative method do you suggest to assure people that other people's educational claims really mean something?"

That's what accreditation is, isn't it?

The regional accreditors are associations of schools. When they accredit a new candidate, they are saying that they have found the new school's standards suitable. Many of the specialized accreditors are respected professional associations, such as the AMA, APA and ABA. ABET is an accrediting consortium of several engineering societies like the IEEE.

I agree that outside recognition can be less formal than full-scale accreditation. That's why I like to Google non-accredited schools. One of the things that I look for is how the questioned school is perceived out there in the academic, scholarly and professional communities.

I suppose that in some cases, that kind of informal recognition might be almost as good as accreditation, at least for some people in some cases. The City of Hope medical center in Duarte CA conducted an active non-degree-granting research activity for several decades, published extensively, and was known for pioneering some of the basic biotechnology techniques. (They got into a big lawsuit with Genentech over that.) So when City of Hope rolled out a CA-approved Ph.D. program in molecular biology a few years ago, I'm sure that it came with instant credibility in scientific circles. (The program was regionally accredited by WASC in due course.)

But as we progress down the food-chain, things get murkier and murkier as the endorsers become fewer and fewer, they become less and less trustworthy themselves, and/or their endorsements become more and more ambivalent.

There's another thing to consider as well. Most of these informal endorsers that we might want to use to substitute for accreditation are specialized and rather obscure. They may carry considerable weight, but only within a small community that's already familiar with them and trusts them. That's one of the reasons why I refer to the better non-accredited schools as niche players. A prominent Buddhist leader might approve of a certain California-approved Buddhist university, but how much weight is that endorsement likely to carry in rural Mississippi (assuming that people there even know about it, which is unlikely)?

One of the real strengths of formal institutional accreditation, especially regional accreditation, is that it's a third-party endorsement mechanism that's recognized throughout the broader community, whether or not people are familiar with higher education generally or with the subject of a particular degree specifically.

 

Responsible to whom? Which is to say, answerable to whom? The US President or some minion federal agency? Some US state government or some minion state agency?

The US regional accreditors have civil legal empowerment to set and enforce their guidelines with member institutions. Civil in more ways than one in that they can not send in the guys with guns and badges for enforcement and can not do anything to non-member institutions. How sweet that is.

They can't stray to bolshevism or fascism. Governments controlling all are defacto authoritarian or totalitarian.

 

Well maybe not to bolshevism or fascism but to accreditation to all for $$$$$, We will publish very demanding and impressive info on our web site but we will sell the accreditation to anyone who marginally meets the requirements and lets say to a family member who happens to run a fake school on the web .

Accreditation Mill in CHEA lexicon.