This is a subject dear to my heart so I’m going to give a few points and clarifications.
Accreditation Several people have hit around the accreditation issue but here are a few specifics that you should look for in any school. There are two legitimate school accreditations schemes recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education. Regional accreditation: This is the “best” or at least most recognized accreditation you can find. This is the accreditation most public and private schools will fall under. Some distance and proprietary (for profit) schools also attain regional accreditation. There are seven regional accreditation groups that fall under the Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). Personally I would not go to a school that does not hold current good standing with one of the regional accreditors. UofP is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA-HLC). Here is a link to CHEA’s site: http://www.chea.org/Directories/regional.aspHere is the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation National Accreditation: National accreditation is just as legit from a legal standpoint as regional accreditation but not as prestigious. As the name implies, national accreditors typically accredit on a national or international basis. As a rule this used to be where distance education schools went for accreditation but that is not a universal any more. It can sometimes be difficult to transfer credits or even receive acceptance of a degree granted by a national accreditor when transferring to a regionally accredited school. ITT has been mentioned and its accreditation is through Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools which is a national accreditor. ITT students often have trouble when moving to other universities. As a side note at least in the past UofP accepted ITT credits but that may have changed. Other schools may take all, part or none of the credits earned from a given school. Honestly this is true of regionally accredited to regionally accredited school but it’s much less of an issue. Those are the only “legitimate” university level accreditations recognized by the government and other legitimate colleges and universities. Specialty accreditation: There are also what I will refer to as specialty accreditations. There are accreditations given to a given college or program instead of the entire university. The ones of interests for people looking into IT would be: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) – If you are in a school of business (CIS, MIS etc) this is the premier academic specialty accreditation. If I am not mistaken few or no purely distance program has achieved AACSB certification and their guidelines almost guarantee that that will remain the case. MTSU’s and TSU’s business programs are AACSB accredited. Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) – This is the other business school accreditation. It is a less academically prestigious but still worth looking for. This is the accreditation that is open to distance school and is often achieved by community colleges. The big difference is that AACSB concentrates on research while ACBSP looks more at teaching and practical applications. At least some of Nashville State’s business program is ACBSP accredited. Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) – I don’t know much about this one except it is the one engineering schools seem to go for. TSU’s Electrical and Computer Engineering programs are ABET accredited. Someone mentioned (jokingly maybe) just buying a degree from a mill. That has become more dangerous for the diploma recipient. Oregon was the first state to make it illegal to claim a degree from an unaccredited school. They have made an exception for a little over a dozen schools that are unaccredited but not mills. Notice here the rule is they are illegal until explicitly given an exception. Since Oregon’s law went into effect a few states have followed suit using Oregon’s legislation as a model and given time more states will follow suit. I believe the feds are tightening up their standards for federal employees as well and honestly a mill diploma is just a bomb waiting for the wrong person to find out and get you fired even if you live in a state like TN that does not have specific legislation making the paper illegal. As I mentioned earlier transfer credits get weird when going between different levels of accreditation. For the most part going from regionally accredited to regionally accredited school should mean you loose few if any credits (outside of program differences) but there are no guarantees. Any school can refuse to accept any other school’s credits. If you go with a nationally accredited school your chances of problems goes up. If you want to help protect yourself from the vagaries of transfer issues talk to the school you plan to go to for your Bachelor's degree before starting your Associate’s. That may help you in picking electives and such. As someone mentioned some community colleges have 2+2 programs with universities to help protect the student. A few people have talked about certs instead of or in additions to a degree. A degree has one great advantage it’s always “relevant”. A CS/CIS/Engineering degree will always fit the requirement of having that degree even 40 years from now when the technology has no resemblance to what you learned in school. Certs expire and even if they are evergreen like Comptia’s certs they just become irrelevant. I don’t think certs are bad I have several. I just think they are less valuable than a degree. Having said that, some schools work toward you getting certs while you are earning a degree. Nashville State falls in this category. The go so far as to use Cisco Academy as their training material in their Cisco classes. I don’t think they require student to pass the cert but why not? There is some debate on the value of certs. They serve two purposes as I see it. When you study for the cert they expose you to concepts you would not necessarily see in your day to day job and hopefully you will remember this months or years later when that technology or concept might save you some time or money. Secondly they fill check boxes for HR. I agree that certs without experience are useless but they do serve a purpose for the experienced person trying to give themselves an advantage. For anyone considering distance education I highly recommend taking a look at “Bears Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning”. It is the book that will get you up to speed on the terminology, pitfalls and advantages of distance education. It has gone through several iterations so make sure you get the latest greatest version. I also recommend the DegreeInfo Distance Learning Discussion Forums http://degreeinfo.com/ . You can learn more than you ever really needed to know about distance education over there but I would recommend the book first. Final note. If you don’t think a degree is important do a search on one of the major job boards and see how many of the jobs absolutely require a degree. Then add in the ones that give preference to applicants who have a degree. If you have several years in the industry you probably can get by without a degree but you will miss out on a few opportunities. If you are trying to break into the industry why hobble yourself? This is doubly true in a slow economy. The good news is by the time you finish a two or four year program the economy will probably be headed for a new boom again giving you time to get some experience before the next bust. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
