By Professor
Doom
The Federal student loan scam
program only disburses funds to accredited schools of higher education. The
reason this is so is due to the Higher Education Act (HEA), which specifies
that accreditation, and only accreditation, is key to getting all that sweet
student loan loot, loot that does nothing for education but pumps up mightily
the salaries of administrators in higher education.
Accreditation, before the Federal student
loan program existed, used to be about education. Accredited schools used to be legitimate
schools that cared about education…accreditation was a final seal of legitimacy.
The HEA changed that…accreditation became
about money. I was with a school that went through the accreditation process.
Once that school became accredited, being legitimate was no longer
necessary—the student loan money flows in mightily from scammers that are there
for the checks (after administration takes their cut). Once accredited, I, and
other legitimate faculty, were kicked in the balls repeatedly harassed
by the institution until we resigned because we no longer were desired.
The HEA is renewed every few years, and
the renewal scheduled for 2014 has a clause in it that’s devastating for
accreditation:
Ho. Lee. Crap. If accreditation is decoupled from federal financing,
whatever will it be for? Administration in higher education took over
accreditation years ago, warping into something that has nothing to do with
education at all. If accreditation isn’t linked to federal loans, it’ll become
a joke. Oh wait, it’s already a joke, as I’ve shown in detail, many times.
So the Federal government wants to
annihilate accreditation, and I have to admit they’re pretty justified in doing
so…accreditation as it stands today is a horrific embarrassment. My preference
would be to fix accreditation by putting
educators back in charge
(like it used to be), among many other things. Strangely, accreditation isn’t being
removed because it’s a fraud, a joke, and has nothing to do with education.
Instead, it’s being removed for other reasons:
“Currently, accreditation is a de
facto federal enterprise,
with federally sanctioned regional and national accrediting agencies being the
sole purveyors of accreditation.”
Absolutely, regional accreditation is a private
monopoly that is not
a government organization; a private monopoly that operated that way would be
deemed illegal and shut down. Yet somehow this monopoly regulator influences
the 1.2 trillion dollars of student debt we have now. How does anyone look at
that number and think accreditation has been a good steward of the student loan
money?
“The result has been a system that
has created barriers to entry for innovative start-ups by insulating
traditional brick-and-mortar schools from market forces that could reduce
costs.”
Ho. Lee. Crap. Times 2. More than $1,000,000,000,000 has been pissed
away via bogus accreditation, and accreditation is a barrier? Accreditation is
a “barrier” to spending like a sheet of toilet paper is a barrier to bullets.
I’m all for new ideas, but I know what will happen if a ton of money will get
splashed down for any cockamamie new idea. I’ve seen tons of money pissed away
on crazy, obviously bad, ideas for education as it is.
The HEA isn’t getting rid of accreditation
as a way to reduce the student loan scam, the new HEA is going to make it even
easier for that student loan money to be wasted. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting,
let’s read more explanation:
“ The existing accreditation regime
has also made it difficult for students to customize their higher education
experience to fully reach their earnings and career potential. “
It’s funny how government always refers to
a system it doesn’t like as a “regime.” That said, the federal regime is right
to insinuate that the current system of accreditation is illicit…the Feds
should totally know what illicit is.
Still, getting rid of accreditation will
allow “customization” of higher education by the student? I, uh, don’t think
that’s a good idea. Part of the reason the scam got so huge is avaricious
administrators reduced higher education to bogus courses about not shaving and such, while (understandably
clueless) high school graduates gladly signed up for coursework that they
couldn’t possibly know was bogus. Students have already been allowed to
customize themselves right out of an education. Asking students to “customize”
their education is a terrible idea. If it’s really about earnings and career
potential, then let’s use this money so that students can get career
apprenticeships.
And, incidentally, there’s no such thing
as an apprenticeship where the apprentice
gets to customize what he does.
“And
because entire institutions are accredited instead of individual courses,
accreditation is a poor measure of course quality and a poor indicator of the
skills acquired by students.”
This reasoning is wrong on several levels,
it has nothing to do with “because entire
institutions are accredited”, it’s the accredited
that is the problem. Bottom line, because accreditation is bogus and has
nothing to do with education, accreditation is a poor measure of course quality
and skills acquired…as I showed in detail, accreditation has nothing to do with
course quality and skills acquisition. To be honest, accreditation never makes
such a claim today, and it shouldn’t.
“As former Senator Hank Brown (R–CO) notes,
“The accountability metrics crucial to protecting students and taxpayers would
be much more effectively and efficiently handled outside the accreditation
process. “
I totally
agree. Since accreditation is a joke, students and taxpayers will totally be
MORE effectively and efficiently protected outside of the accreditation
process. Note: accreditation is currently completely
ineffective at protecting students and taxpayers, so improving on such
protection is a low bar indeed. You could have accreditation qualified and
renewed via Punxsutawney Phil and it would be far more effective
(and reasonable) than current accreditation.
“Theese eeese pure eediocy!”
--a German professor’s response at a
faculty meeting regarding accreditation recommendations to put an outreach
program to attract female STEM students inside of an outreach program to
attract female STEM students. The previous sentence is typed as intended.
So, the
Federal government is catching on that accreditation is a joke. Getting rid of
it is an option, but I don’t see a plan to replace it. Since the student loan
scam will continue, we probably should have something, right?
I’m seeing pretty hefty potential for
fraud here. I guess I can take some pleasure that a different set of fraudsters
will be looting the tax dollars? Looking around the ‘net, I don’t see any plan
for replacing accreditation, but I did see an accreditor crying that the new HEA will make
accreditation worthless. Yes, accreditor, that’s the point.
I've long believed that accreditation is a joke, largely because the process by which qualifications for it are assessed and the manner in which it's granted.
ReplyDeleteBeing accredited is a convenient tag that a department or institution fastens to itself in order to impress the "bread and circuses" crowd. It looks impressive, but, on the whole, it has about as much meaning as a company saying that it's "ISO XXXXX certified" or "green" or one one of Coleslawvania's "Top 100" firms.
Accreditation is like Shakespeare wrote in "Macbeth", "...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
I can say that because I was a part of three of such processes: two at the place where I used to teach and one where I completed my Ph. D. The latter turned out to be outstandingly bogus.
The accreditation committee that visited our department was comprised largely of university professors and corporate managers. Few of those, if any, had any first-hand knowledge of what graduates would be doing after they received their degrees. Frankly, I doubt that any of them ever spent any time in the field, let alone in a design office or a shop floor.
The only contribution the students were allowed to make was either by explaining what they were doing if the committee happened to stop by their labs or by filling out paper surveys. None, not one of them, ever asked me personally what I thought. If they did, I would have told them point-blank, particularly since I had spent several years in industry and I knew that the education the undergrads were getting was inadequate. As well, much of the research that was done was pure twaddle and had no place in an engineering department. (On the other hand, my Ph. D. supervisor was a physicist and he was of the opinion that engineers didn't belong in an engineering department as grad students. Figure that one out, if you can.)
Accreditation is based on a pre-determined conclusion or outcome, with the assessments merely there to gather or, perhaps, fabricate evidence to produce or support it.
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/white-house-finally-notices-that-education-degrees-are-a-total-joke-leading-to-bad-teachers/
ReplyDeleteThe White House is going to enforce better accreditation according to the news!
But reading the raw information for this story shows that the opposite is going to happen. Interestingly, the Huffington Post actually has a story about how easy it is to get a teaching degree!
Laughably easy! And the White House, to fix the 'teacher' problem is going to fix this by checking the actual courses being taught for teachers...and as Dr. Doom knows so very well, this is one cess pool that won't be flushed out so easy.