While reading about creationism vs. the forces of iniquity, i heard that patriot university was called a diploma mill by someone unsympathetic to them. i had to check the site out, and their link in re accreditation said that, basically, accreditaton was a group of combined interests, not federally linked, and that for all practical matters, a bona fide bachelor’s degree need only be accredited by the state (their school is accredited by the state of colorado). ergo…my questions are 1. will a b.a. from this school or any in similar circumstances be accepted by any other university so that i can get into a master’s program? 2. will my future employers see this as a valid 4 yr. degree? 3. do h.r. departments go to their ‘southwestern conference or whatever booklet of accredited colleges’ to check if these b.a.'s are in the loop, and if not, do they check their other accreditation lists or just pitch the resume in <i>le garbage</i>?
- Not likely.
- It depends.
- I don’t know.
You wouldn’t be looking for loopholes would you? :rolleyes:
First, a little accrediting primer for those of you with insomnia. There are all kinds of accrediting agencies, including one (or even more, I’m sure) for “diploma mills.” Because, as you’ve said, it’s a group of common organizations with combined interests who collectively come up with standards that they administer to themselves. There are accrediting agencies for cosmetology schools or any other kind of educational program you can think of.
Generally speaking, when we say a university is “accredited” we don’t mean just any old kind of accreditation; we mean that they are accredited by one of a handful of federally-recognized regional accrediting bodies. For example, my university is a member of something called the North Central Assocation of Colleges and Schools. There are others, each recognized by the U.S. Dept. of Education. For practical purposes, accreditation by one of these agencies means that (a) the students at that college are eligible for federally-funded financial aid and (b) credits at that college are eligible for transfer credit at other colleges and © your baccalaureate is accepted as a minimal requirement for graduate study.
Even though colleges are members of the very organization which grants accreditation, there is definite scrutiny and standards which much be met.
Now, there are other legitimate types of educational accreditation. State accrediting bodies are recognized by the U.S. Dept of Education for the accreditation of nursing schools and certain public vocational institutions. Maybe that’s the case for Patriot. I dunno.
Finally, there is one other important type of accreditation that you hear about in higher education, and that is disciplinary or professional accreditation. Some fields, like journalism, education, business, law, accounting, engineering (I could go on) have an arm of their professional association which sets and administers specific standards for academic programs. If a program within an institution chooses to seek that sort of accreditation, it’s a separate process. However, not seeking this kind of accreditation is not necessarily a sign of a weak program. Some schools/programs might disagree with the standards of the professional accrediting body for whatever reason, or feels that it interferes with the autonomy of the faculty to determine the correct academic programs for their majors.
So. For questions 1, 2, 3:
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If it’s not legitimately accredited, I suspect a grad school would look pretty hard at your application. They don’t know if your school offer a minimum level of library resources, for example.
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Future employers may not know much about educational instituation. If you’ve got a degree, they’ll probably consider you have a degree, end of story.
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Related to 2. I don’t know. I doubt they check, but it depends. Depends on the field, probably. I’d be surprised if the average HR department knows the difference between varied accreditation agencies.
Following up ultrafilter’s post on 2 and 3:
Large corporations will know what real schools are and which aren’t. They wouldn’t touch anyone from a inadequately accredited school. It’s not just that they think the school might suck and your knowledge lacking, but that you were a weird enough person to actually try to get a degree from one of these places. In university faculty hiring that I have recently been part of, any folder that has one of those places listed on the resume gets trash canned (really) immediately regardless of anything else. (Never used to see them, now they are common. Sigh.)
Small companies may not have the ability/knowhow/etc. to check up on all schools now. But these problems are becoming more common and companies will likely to be wary in the future after getting burned.
Here’s something to worry about: after sneaking by and getting hired you have this sword hanging over your head. Any Day Now they are Going To Find Out. What if your school is in the news? “Hey, didn’t handsomeharry say his degree was from there?”
well, all of the previous was about what i thought.
thanks for the input!
Cranky,
For Cosmetology, the students also have to pass state licencing examinations. So, if they have some kind of accreditation agency for them, it’s moot.
Monty: The National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences (NACCAS) is one of Cranky’s U.S. Department of ED recognized accreditors. Why do 1,000 Cosmetology Schools (with circa 100,000 students) put up with the fuss and expense of accreditation?
As Cranky mentioned unless the Cosmetology schools are Accredited their students are not eligible to draw on federal student financial aid (usually in these cases PELL Grants) to attend. These schools, operating on a shoe-string, are pulling the vast majority of their school income from SFA.
Also, any kid NOT going to an accredited cosmetology school needs to know why: There may be legit reasons, but unless it is in Beverly Hills, there is no guarantee that it is meeting the minimum standards of cosmetology education agreed as the industry standard (via NACCAS)
Following up a little more on Cranky’s post:
The second category, of State “accrediting” bodies vary far and wide.
In California, for instance, there is a relatively decent system of state-authorized but not Regionally Accredited degree/certificate-granting programs, whose degrees are considered good to go for getting a state government job or a professional license. It goes all the way up to Law Schools whose graduates are allowed to sit for the Californa Bar Exams. The regulators have been known to give the ax to schools or programs that don’t make the grade, and the graduates do have the hurdle of the Cal-only recognition.
OTOH you get places like Louisiana in the early 90’s, or Hawaii until about last year, where “state approval” really meant little more than incorporation and payment of a fee, and the only way to shut down a “mill” was to sic the Attorney General on them for mail fraud.
That is something in the OP’s school that bothers me: if the institution says “all that’s necessary is that the degree be accredited by the state”, they ignore that (a) different states may have different standards, and (b) degrees are not accredited, the school or program that grants them is accredited. States authorize the institution to grant degrees.
For trades and professions (such as cosmetology) the respective state licensing board itself may condition sitting for the examination on having had your training from an source they approve of – and they may decide that accreditation is good enough.
A key benefit of the recognized “accreditation” schemes lies in the transferability of recognition of the degrees and credits to other institutions, since it essentially tells you that school is mostly on the same page, as to academic and administrative practices, with that sector of education (be it formal colleges/universities, trade schools, certificate programs, whatever) across a large swath of the nation.
It’s a good rule-of-thumb to be wary of any claim that accreditation is not really that important.
It’s a diploma mill. Check out the website: http://www.patriotuniversity.com/index.html
$40 per credit hour, or pay what you like as you go, and it’s all home study in their own workbooks.
Another link I just found that has a sample page from one of the “textbooks.”
http://irregulartimes.com/quaking.html
ftg – I think you’re probably right, but given that there are over 1500 baccaulaureate-granting institutions in the U.S., I don’t think any corporation’s HR unit is going to know which are legit and which are not. I know there are many colleges I haven’t heard of that, and that’s not because they’re rotten little institutions. Some of them are actually quite selective–I’ve only got room in my brain for so much information about colleges and universities.
But you’re right about academic hiring–I don’t think any university would hire someone with a degree from a non-legit place (and they have the ability and drive to find out about anyone’s alma-mater).
Take a look at the page from a Patriot University course that’s quoted in the link from Irregular Times that’s quoted in stofsky’s post. In that one page, there’s at least two fake quotes (Washington and Jefferson didn’t say those things, and some of the other quotes look dubious too), a bad math calculation (50 million Bibles would make a pile closer to 1000 miles high than to 100 miles), and a bad definition (“testament” means “a will” or “a statement of belief,” not “an agreement”).
Interestingly, some dictionaries say that the word “Bible” comes from the Greek word for the inner bark of papyrus, while others say that it came from the name of the city Byblos.
My mother went to such a law school. Classes were held through correspondence using their own materials, but also the standard textbooks and other study materials.
Cal-only recognition isn’t the only problem. If my mother wanted to get any kind of real-world law experience that most standard law schools offer, she’d have to arrange it herself. Also, not every lawyer looks favorably upon such education. My brother is a licensed attorney in Texas, and my mother can sit for the Texas bar if she logs so many hours as an apprentice. My brother will allow my mother to apprentice with him on a cold day in hell. Not because he doesn’t want her to be a licensed attorney, but because he thinks her education was sub-standard. She’s had the same reaction from other attorneys she’s had to do business with.
Something to think about.
Robin