09-18-2009, 06:05 PM
ShotoJuku Wrote:Which of the following would you consider to be FURTHEST from being a mill and may actually provide some academic value?
BSU - www.breyerstate.com
ACU - www.acuniversity.edu
AIU - www.aiu.edu
Good question but not a simple answer. I don't have personal experience at any of the three, but as a general rule the measure of an unaccredited degree's value correlates with the level of acceptance of the degree by employers and mainstream universities.
Many if not most employers don't know the first thing about accreditation, and so as the Doogle diss proved, you're going to get a lot of acceptance just because Shoeless Rich or one of Bear's other clones isn't there to tell them the right answer.
Presumably accredited universities ought to know more, although that might be a big assumption in itself. But a factor I'd look at is how an unaccredited's undergrad degrees are being accepted by accredited grad schools.
Just as an example, here's a guy (third one down) with an unaccredited bachelor's degree who obviously had no trouble getting into a well-regarded Australian grad school. He also seems to have done alright in academia, as he's employed as Dean of Academics at a DETC school.
Now obviously schools take their students as they find them. Some guys might just be bright eggs and their particular circumstances could have kept them from going the traditional route. So the success a school's students enjoy may be more a reflection of the quality of the students rather than the quality of the school's program. Luck of the draw to a large degree in that sense.
Say you have a guy with 20 years experience in the degree subject field, a veteran, a stable work record, and an unaccredited bachelor's degree from any one of the three you listed. There are plenty of accredited grad schools who are going to do a "whole person" eval and admit the guy, particularly if they have empty seats and need the tuition. A guy with lesser credentials might not get the same mileage from the same degree.
For financial or other reasons the unaccredited route may well have been his only shot at an education, and so he took it rather than do without. And there are plenty of guys (and gals) just like that out there. To me that opportunity justifies the continued existence of the unaccredited but legit schools.
That's more than enough reason why the government and the cartel shills ought to keep their hands off schools such as these three. One size doesn't fit all. So as long as the cartel continues to underserve or ignore large segments of the public it ought not be allowed to restrict free access to education.
