The Community College Secret

 

By Professor Doom

 

“Take your first courses here. We’re much cheaper than the local university.”

--typical promotional line to get students to come to the community college first.

So there’s no real higher education in community college, but that’s not the only false promise made by these faux institutions of faux higher learning. They also promise “cheap” education, or at least cheaper than at the local university. Many are sucked in by such promises, but only a few really come out ahead.

For a small percentage of very focused students, community college does represent a real opportunity. In decades of education, these students are the only ones I’ve seen to come out ahead from community college, and they do so using a strategy that no community college advisor would give them. Allow me to share the secret:

These students first go to the university. Once they’re established there, they enter a real degree program. Then, they find out what courses specifically transfer to the university from a specific community college, and take those courses at the community college.

Seriously, the only people I’ve known to actually “save money” via a community college have gone the route in the previous paragraph. Now let me explain how and why this is the only way to do it.

Universities know full well what’s going on at a typical CC, and thus don’t transfer credit willy-nilly, claims of “accreditation makes it legit” notwithstanding. Typically a student that wants to transfer in, say, a credit for “College Algebra” has to take a placement test at the university—with my own eyes I’ve seen these tests are well past the College Algebra taught at a CC, and I doubt I could have passed them when I was 18. The student will invariably have to take the course again at the university ; if this sounds unfair, well, the university wants that tuition dollar every bit as much as the CC. Additionally, faculty at the university are entitled not to have students from bogus courses  making things difficult in their classes.

So, if it’s just one course, it makes more sense to get the university’s permission first, then take it at the CC. Take the course without permission, and it probably won’t transfer.

“2 year degree + 2 more years = 6 years for a 4 year degree”

---most students think if they get a 2 year degree from a community college, it’ll only take 2 more years at a university to get a 4 year degree. Sadly, university administrators use a different sort of mathematics for that, as the 2 year degree is generally useless.

If it’s a bunch of courses, well, most all institutions have a hard cap on how many hours can transfer (12 hours, four courses, is the most common, and accreditation even mandates that most of the coursework has to be done on the campus awarding the degree). So, a student that takes many courses at the CC, but has no 2-year degree, will likely lose most, if not all, of it when he goes to the institution.

 

“I find it frustrating that our students can get 2 year degrees, but it still takes them 4 more years to get a 4 year degree when they transfer to [nearby university].”

--CC administrator, trying to change things, 8 years ago. Nothing’s changed. I should note here that no CC warns the students about the very limited transferability of most coursework. I again remind that accredited institutions promise to “act with integrity.”

 

But what of the student that specifically gets some sort of associate’s degree? Surely he can transfer that to the university? Not really. Again, what matters is the coursework, so it’ll only transfer if the coursework in the associate’s degree directly applies to the degree the student is trying for at the university. Typically, much of it doesn’t, so the hours might transfer, but ultimately, the student will still need to take at least 3 years (and, more likely, more, since the coursework at the CC didn’t prepare the student for university coursework) to get that 4 year degree.

So, once again, the only way for a student to come out ahead by going to CC is to first go to the university and find out what they’ll let him get away with taking at the CC.

Most students don’t know any better, and certainly won’t be warned by any CC administrator or advisor (there was a time when faculty advised students, but that’s not so common anymore, “for some reason”). The student will merrily take his “cheap” courses for a few years, thinking he’s getting a good deal. Only after priceless years of his youth and tens of thousands of dollars of loan money and lost wages are squandered will the student find out how he’s been tricked into wasting his time and money on bogus pseudo-courses that won’t apply to any real degree, or to any job.

Don’t get me wrong, if you want to learn about cupcake decorating or karate or how to speak in public and don’t mind paying a fortune, then community college is a decent enough way to go…but anyone serious about education should be extremely wary of community college.

So, for the students, at least those looking for an education, community college does not represent any savings, only a great opportunity to waste time and money.

Hmm, “money” and “opportunity”…those words have great appeal, especially if “integrity” isn’t part of the picture. It turns out community college is a great opportunity for a certain group of folks to make money, exploiting the opportunity. Long time readers of my humble blog can probably guess, but newcomers are encouraged to read older posts.

Or, think about it. As a hint, realize that community colleges mostly just take students away from the university, which has to let go of faculty…which get hired at the CC. Who else does the CC need to employ, and won’t be taken from the pool of faculty let go at the university?

 

Continuing to look at the community college scam

 

By Professor Doom

 

A couple of posts back around I was searching through the course offerings of a large, well established community college to see if there was any college coursework. Alas, there were many, many, sections of openly remedial courses of no college content, a few high school courses deceptively labeled as college, and several openly bogus courses just to give “cheap and easy” credits to students that don’t know how they’re being cheated into turning over those sweet student loan checks.

Let’s continue to wade through all the crud to see if there’s any higher education going on here.

“0”

--With College Algebra so watered down now, it’s all but impossible to address even a very simplified version of calculus. The above is the number of students that, with the opportunity to copy down the definition of the word “derivative” on their formula sheet for the final exam, elected to do so, despite being explicitly told they would need to provide that definition for the exam. It’s also the number of students that elected to simply memorize the definition of the word, and were able to write it down on the final. Performance on the other questions was likewise minimal, but I still had to pass half the class, to lessen somewhat the condemnation from admin. Honest, lowering the standards to this point doesn’t do any good for anyone.

 

Only after well  over a hundred sections of openly dubious courses do we come to a course that, sort of, is college material, “Calculus for Non-Science Majors”, Math 201. Seven sections, no less. The material in this course is far inferior to the “AP Calculus” taught in the high schools, and a bit lighter than the less demanding (non AP) high school calculus. The numbering makes one think this is a second year course, but in a university setting, this is a “first year math for very weak math students” course, with extra watering down. I remember a friend of mine that took (non AP) calculus in high school, laughing about how stupid this course was when she took it in college. A course that is offered for non-college credit in high school just shouldn’t count as college credit in college.

Then comes 9 statistics courses, but nothing like the statistics courses that used to be offered, or even the 2000 level courses I taught over a decade ago. BRCC makes no illusion about how watered down the material is. Some courses are called “Basic Statistics”, some are called “Elementary Statistics”…I imagine someday there will be courses called “Basic Elementary Statistics.” For the sake of argument, we’ll call these college level since not every high school offers this material, although many advanced students would have access to it in high school.

Finally, there are 8 courses on (real) calculus and differential equations. I could quibble some of these, since some is taught in the AP courses in high school, but that’s hardly fair—the whole point of AP is for college credit, after all. Let’s call all 8 of these college courses. Two of these courses, multivariate calculus and differential equations, require a year of college material (i.e., calculus 1 and calculus 2) before they could be taken. Thus, we finally come to some second year courses, a single section each.

Again to emphasize, amongst all the offerings, there are 2 sections of second year material offered.

So, let’s tally up here.  BRCC teaches 198 sections of math classes. A mere 17 of those courses, many arguably, are beyond the high school level, or not offered in many high schools.  Even more stunning, there are 2 (!) courses out of those 198 that are 2^nd year courses. A 2-year college where 99% of the material is first year or lower, even after 10 YEARS?  What does that say about the percent of students that are getting a real education?

A high school where only 1% of the students actually make it to the 12^th grade would be shut down immediately as totally ineffective; heck, it would be a national embarrassment!  A community college that performs similarly is quite common, and will be considered successful merely based on its size.

Outside of these 17 courses, all the rest of the material has been paid for already by the community, for their children to learn before they go to the community college. Then those children get to pay again, via student loans. Then they pay again, and again, and again, via interest on those loans…why am I the only one that thinks there’s something unfair about this?

While CUNY could be forgiven for not having “advanced” courses on account of only being a year old, BRCC is a mature school. After 10 years, BRCC has basically done nothing with 99% of their students. More than 90% of what BRCC does is at the remedial, high school or lower, level. How is it a wonder that more than 90% of these students get nothing out of college but debt? BRCC has been offering “higher education” for 10 years, but still is hard pressed to bring even 10% of their students up to the “first year of college” level.

It is a damn lie to claim that community colleges are about higher education. When over 99% of students in a 2 year college are not in second year courses, over 90% aren’t even in college courses after ten freakin’ years, how much progress could they be making? On the other hand, all of those students are spending a great deal of time and considerable (borrowed) money in “higher education.” How did it happen that these schools ended up being 90% fraudulent? Hint: if accreditation had any academics looking at course offerings, it wouldn’t be possible for schools of “higher education” to offer almost all high school material…and nobody is making any claims that high school material is particularly advanced nowadays.

Think about it.

A few student stories....

A recent post where I talk about how insane it is to teach calculus to students that refuse to learn how to add fractions reminded me of a few other stories, which I thought I'd share.

I’m not feeling so bad after the other math teacher said what happened in his calculus class. He told them that they, the students, were going to make up the final exam: each student was to write down 5 problems and answers, and turn them in. He had 9 students, and he told them he would take 15 out of the 45 questions to use on the final. Out of 9 students, zero turned in problems. It’s brutally hard to teach much when so little effort is being put forward.

     I taught three sections of algebra one semester, but for some reason all the problem children were in the Tuesday/Thursday course (which tends to do worse, since the class only meets—coming to class is the bulk of student effort—twice a week, as opposed to the three times of the MWF class). The top student scored an F+ on the final (unlike the many A’s and B’s of the other two classes), to give an idea of the “good” students there. Four students in the problem class showed up over an hour late to take the final exam, a new record.

     The bad students were over-the-top. One student took the trouble to write me a hate letter after failing the third test. “you dont teach to good” was the first statement, and every single line had at least one grammatical error in it. The gist of it was, of course, that her inability to learn was my fault. She really needed to pass the course, and was “dong great” in her other courses. She needed math so that she could eventually become a nurse.

     Since she bothered to hand write a letter, I wrote back. I gave her the chance to prove me wrong, by learning the material from 8 pages in the book, over the course of three weeks. If she could learn 8 pages on her own, that would give me reason to believe she was right, that I can’t teach. I told her if she could answer questions about those 8 pages, I’d pass her in this course she so desperately needed to pass. Three weeks came and went, but she didn’t take me up on the offer: she never bought the book. I actually had several students not bother to get the book even though they get plenty of loan money for it. One complained she wanted her $400 back for the course; at least she won’t have to resell her book (doubtless it would have been in “like new” condition if she had bought it in the first place).

     Thanks to administrative pressure, I took another chapter out of the course material (I’m was barely covering half of what we tell accreditation we cover...so glad to be gone from that place). The A students still get A’s, but it doesn’t really seem to help the F students any. I always get the student with the F, F, F, and F on the tests, then turns in a blank sheet of paper for the final, and then hopefully asks if he/she passed…but this semester had at least five such students. I did what I could to not have them complain to the Dean about what a monster I was, because invariably I’m asked to not be such a meanie. An evil part of me wishes some of these students succeed in becoming nurses and take care of the Dean’s children when they need real medical help.

     Most of these “all F” students wanted to know what they could do to pass, hoping for extra credit on the last day of the course. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum, I know at least one teacher here gives about 50% of the grade via extra credit. A few other students just wanted flat out a better grade. “I know my average is  45, but can’t you just round that to a 70 so I get a C?” Yoiks.

     I did have a great highlight in statistics. One student was really annoying with the questions, flurries of them, and always basic stuff that the rest of the class knew and learned weeks earlier. “What’s that x with a bar over it mean again?” “What’s that u looking thing?” “How do you know where the = sign goes?” “What’s the x thing mean again?” “How do you know .02 is lower than .05?” “How can you tell when the numbers are negative?” “Wait, what’s that x thing?”

     Just an endless barrage, and it slowed the class down to a crawl. Finally, another student snapped, and snarled at her:

     “Why don’t you just study?!”

     The class laughed uproariously, and the student chilled out a bit, at least for one class. It was all I could do not to laugh as well. I wish I could catch the oceans of annoyance in the inflection on “study”, it was quite remarkable.

The Community College Scam, Part 2

 The Community College Scam, part 2

By Professor Doom

 

So, last time I looked at a new community college, and saw that it was a joke, with no intention of helping students get an education or a job…any such claim by this community college would be a lie. I assert that this lie applies to most all community colleges, but it’s fair to say that the reason the new community college has no higher education is because they’re currently bringing their (far behind) students up to speed. A new school can hardly be expected to have advanced coursework, I concede.

Let’s demonstrate the lie by looking at a mature institution, say Baton Rouge Community College, BRCC, which has been around a decade and has thousands of students. It is, of course, fully accredited.

Surely, a decade-old 2-year college that’s seriously educating students would offer a great number of 2^nd year courses, right? Even if it might take an extra year to bring students up to speed, there still should be plenty of 2^nd year offerings after ten years. Let’s check the course offerings—a legitimate educational institution would have lots of definitely college material, and quite a bit of it should be appropriate for a 2^nd year student.

I’ve never set foot on the campus, but it’s easy enough to see their course offerings, since they list them online (You can see for yourself the Fall 2013 offerings here, although that might change at some point). I’ll concede I’m only qualified to judge the math courses, so that’s what I’ll make my determination by. My standard will be “if a high school offers it, it’s not college material.” Nobody’s ever made any claims that what’s going on the high schools is particularly advanced, so this is hardly a tough standard.

First, we have 40 sections of their 092 mathematics course, the pre-sub-remedial course I’ve discussed before, covering 3^rd to 5^th grade material. Yes, 40 sections, and each could hold 30 or more students. I’ve mentioned before that the”0” in “092” makes the course explicitly not college material.  While in general if you know someone taking a course with a 0 in front of it, you take them out of college, immediately (not that administrators will give such honest advice), this particular course, to judge by the description, is roughly 3^rd grade material, so a strong “get out, now” applies.

Next we have 37 sections of 093 math, sub-remedial, covering 6^th to 8^th grade material…again, a student in this math has no business being in college. He’s just going to waste years of his life and get deep into debt taking and retaking the material he didn’t learn in the 6^th, 7^th, 8^th,9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. Anyone who’s serious about learning this level of material should just go to the library and learn it for free.

Next, we have another 33 sections of 094 math, the first remedial course to prepare a student for even pseudo-college material, covering 7^th to 9^th grade. I can’t make this stuff up, three levels of explicitly remedial math.

Next there are 25 sections of Math 101; this is high school level math offered in the 10^th grade, re-packaged as “college” material, as “College Algebra.” With my own eyes, I have seen that the high schools really do cover the same material, with the same depth, as this course, which is, of course, somewhat behind what I took when I was in high school, nigh thirty years ago.

Then comes another 20 sections of college algebra, but with a different number, Math 110; BRCC apparently teaches the algebra in two formats. This latter format has classes start in June and end in September, and thus is listed as a Fall offering. But, we’re still in high school here.

Next are 11 sections of trigonometry; I took this in my senior year in high school, but quite a number of my friends took it in their junior year. The high schools around here still offer it for 11^th grade students.

BRCC also offers a single section of precalculus; there’s no listing of what’s in this course, but I imagine it’s basically a refresher course of algebra and trig (since those are the precalculus courses). Twenty years ago, this was the only “remedial” course, intended for students that have been out of school for ten years or more, and just wanted a review. It wasn’t for college credit, then, and there were only a few sections, instead of remedial courses being the bulk of “college” work in community colleges.

 

It covers a variety of topics, that include problems of growth, size, measurement, handling of qualified data, and optimization using basic concepts form (sic) algebra,…

--from the course description of Math 130.  Even though it has a higher number than algebra (101), it’s clear the material is a watered down version of the course, described with very big words to make it sound more challenging.

 

Then there are 4 sections of “Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics”—Math 130. The course description makes it clear this is a bogus math course, intended as math credit for students that can’t otherwise get math credit, and are going into degrees where knowledge is irrelevant. A degree in Urban Studies, for example.

There’s a single section of something called “Transitional Mathematics”—Math 131. Again, it’s presented as a bogus course meant for students that need two math credits but have no chance of actually passing a college math course. The course outline makes it clear that it covers the material of college algebra, just at a lighter level. Colleges offer this sort of stuff to make students feel good, but in terms of preparation for more advanced study, or preparation for a professional job, these courses are a massive waste of time and money.

 

“If a 12 foot ladder is broken into 3 equal parts, how long is each part?”

--final exam material in a “Math for Education Majors” course, with other questions comparable, and no question much more difficult than this. I proctored the test. I’m not joking.

 

Two more courses, Math 167 and Math 168, are “Math for Education Majors” courses. I’ve written extensively how bogus these types of courses are, and, again, not college material.

Let’s summarize where we are right now. The catalogue features 198 course offerings. 110 of these, a clear majority, are offering 9^th grade or lower material. Another 57 are at the high school level. Seven are sham courses that exist simply to fill up the credit hours of students that are never going to make it.

How much room is there for actual college material when 174 of 198 courses are high school level, lower, or bogus courses? Now, don’t get me wrong, there have always been bogus courses in schools, even in major schools. Bogus courses have their place, and there should be a crack or two for slackers to fake their way into a degree, I suppose.

One example of a tolerable bogus course is  “Geology of our National Parks”, AKA “Rocks for Jocks,” an important course for many athletes that were nonetheless forced to take college classes, and this course satisfied the science requirement—a discussion of the immense fraud in collegiate athletic programs is for another day. A fraud course for fraud students seemed fair enough, and it was tough for “real” students to register for this course, which, like the bogus courses above, was only offered a section or two a semester--athletes were given first priority to register for all courses, filling up the seats in this course long before “normal” students could get to it. Folks that graduated from this course had no illusions about what they were doing…and a real student that somehow got in, figured out real quick the nature of the course.

Now, of course, nearly the whole campus is bogus, and there’s simply no way a real accreditation review can’t notice what anyone with access to a computer and the course offerings can see. There’s also no way a student can tell the legitimate from the fake, since so much is fake.  Still, we’ll look at the rest of the courses next time to get another interesting revelation.

Until then, consider all the students being swept into CC programs, with the lie that they’re saving time and money by taking these types of classes. Years later when/if they graduate, they learn that they’ve been duped from start to finish. How is this not fraud?

Think about it.

 

 

 

The Community College Scam

 

 

     Ah, community college, the “great opportunity” for a student to get higher education, right in this own community instead of going off to some expensive university. What community wouldn’t want a college, giving its citizens access to all that great knowledge that, supposedly, is only otherwise available at a university?

In August 2012 The New Community College at CUNY opened with 300 students and a mission to rethink community college education. We and our students are now midway through NCC’s first year, and I’m delighted that the fall-to-spring persistence rate of this first cohort is 92 percent. This is not only beyond our initial expectations, but is also 20 percentage points ahead of most community colleges. While “92” is our new favorite number, we will continue to strive for “100” as our retention goal.

--from an article about a college that opened last year. I point out, once again, that “retention” is the sole measure of success, it’s never high enough for an administrator. He knows 90% of those students will leave college with nothing in three years…but doesn’t care. He’d prefer a mother have her child starve rather than she leave college to care for the child.

    Following closely behind “retention” as the goal of an institution is graduation rate—get those degrees churned out as quickly as possible, no matter how useless they are! In the case of New Community College, they’re going to increase the graduation rate by limiting their degree programs. Requirements to get into this college, of course, are laughable:

”they must be college-ready, meaning that they don’t need more than two remedial courses.”

--and now, a pause for laughter, at least for those gentle readers that find humor in “college ready” being defined as “ need two non-college courses before being ready for college.” I’ve written before how insane these remedial courses are.

 

Realistically, the kind of students that are years behind don’t all catch up, and the high retention is just a lie—the students stay in college because it’s not really college, just a holding pen for students while their loan money is sucked away. Once the loan money is drained, the poor suckers are turned out into the world, to figure out some way to pay off the debt.

     However, some CUNY faculty remain skeptical of a curriculum whose main goal, they say, is to produce quick diplomas.

--if only faculty could actually make decisions about what goes on in a degree program. Accreditation rules say they do, but administrators control faculty and control accreditation, making such rules meaningless.

 

 As a public institution, there’s considerable pressure for degrees, so CUNY is focusing on just having a few degree programs, forcing students into programs requiring little effort: business administration, information technology, energy services management, environmental science, health information technology, human services, liberal arts and sciences, and urban studies.  I know, I’m cynical, but I can’t help but suspect the degree of “urban studies” is a bit of a dumping ground for the students that can’t handle the rigor (sic) of those other degree programs.

 Ultimately these community “institutions of higher education” promise some higher education, and that leads to our first big lie of the community college scam:

The First Big Lie of Community College:

There’s higher education in community colleges.

 

“The core curriculum for the new college barely reflects any…standards,” she says. “We don’t want to mislead students into thinking that when they finish a two-year degree, they are qualified to move on to a senior college, unless they are. I call that fraud. We worry that what’s going to be offered these students, while it may be wonderful in terms of support services, is pretty thin in terms of content.”

--a faculty member commenting on what’s going on at the new community college. It doesn’t matter that faculty say the “education” at a school is fraudulent, since administrators determine that sort of thing.

 

Now, some would say a community college shouldn’t be about higher education, it’s about servicing the community, but that means jobs. Open up the want ads of your local newspaper, and see with your own eyes how many positions advertised are for Urban Studies degree holders.

So, no, this college at least isn’t in it to help people get jobs. The above comment shows clearly it’s not about education, either.

It’s about the money, the huge flowing gobs of student loan money. Until states start opening up community colleges with the tag line of “we don’t let our students take student loan money,” there’s no reason to believe there’s any other factor involved, and most every community college opened in the last 20 years sure looks like a scam to indebt students and support massive administrative salaries.

 

Granted, I’m being a bit unfair to CUNY. They’re a year old, and, by their own admission standards, their students could easily need a year before they’re even ready for college. Thus, it’s no surprise that most of the courses offered at CUNY are just remedial courses and the most advanced coursework offered is barely appropriate for a first year college student.

So, next time I’ll take a look at a mature community college, to see if maybe after a few years, education and jobs become priorities.

 

 

 

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Even diploma mills are legitimately accredited now.

Another Accredited Institution Selling Bogus Degrees

By Professor Doom

 

“That’s a diploma mill.”

--typical epithet against a non-accredited institution.

 

     Ah, the diploma mill, the “bogus” institution that you can send a check to, and get a degree in short order, no classes, tests, paper, or study required. Perhaps the only thing that distinguishes an accredited institution from a non-accredited institution is that, hey, at least the accredited institution isn’t a dreaded diploma mill.

     Or is it? I’ve literally seen with my own eyes dozens of students graduate with degrees that I simply don’t understand how they’ve deserved, because either I’ve personally failed them or I know I didn’t see them in a course by me which the supposed graduate must have taken. But, perhaps my memory simply failed repeatedly.

     Then I came across this article, the title of which says it all:

If Issuing Hundreds Of Phony Degrees Doesn’t Lose You Accreditation, What Good Is Accreditation?

     Apparently, a completely legitimately accredited school, Dickenson State, was selling degrees to foreign students, by the boatload. The true extent of the fraud is unknown, of course, but it’s in the hundreds.  Dickenson State is a small school, so I rather imagine that at graduation there were plenty of faculty wondering who exactly these graduates were…much like I and other faculty at other small schools have wondered.

     The president of the institution was fired, and two other administrators retired, with the usual issuance of golden parachutes on the way out. No criminal charges, of course, and even though it’s obvious such degrees could only have been award with many co-conspirators, officials are confident that just those three guys leaving will solve the problem. One administration member killed himself; one can only guess why.

     Particularly stunning is how despite the cloud hanging over the former president, he had no difficulty landing another plum job in higher education. I’d ask “where else can you commit such open fraud and still be quite qualified to work in that same job?” but anyone reading the news nowadays knows the answer: banking and politics. I hate that my investigations of higher education have revealed how far it’s sunk.

     I should point out here, that in a mostly online institution, thousands of degrees could be issued without nearly as many conspirators as at a “traditional” institution, and faculty wouldn’t even have a clue…but I’ve already pointed out how nobody in their right mind should pay for (or hire) an online degree. If that link doesn’t convince you, go to www.boostmygrades.com and see with your own eyes how trivial it is to hire someone to take your online courses for you.

 

“The institution acts with integrity; its conduct is ethical and responsible.”

--as part of accreditation, Dickenson had to agree that it meets this obligation. Very few institutions do so, not that lack of integrity seems to ever be grounds for losing accreditation.

 

     Anyway, back to Dickenson State. Since accreditation is run by administrators, and since Dickenson State is taking REAL good care of their administrators (again, where else can you commit open fraud and retire on a fat pension from it…), it’s quite possible that even with hundreds of phony degrees issued, the school won’t lose accreditation. As is always the case, it takes years and years of fraud before anyone catches on—the phony degree scam started in 2003, and didn’t become public knowledge until 2012. One can hardly expect any less when the foxes are guarding the henhouse.

    Even if accreditation is pulled, it will take another year or two before that happens…one can’t help but wonder if the school won’t have a “degree fire sale” in that case, selling, I again emphasize, fully legitimately accredited degrees, right up until accreditation is pulled. Yes, this would further victimize the poor students that are legitimately going there, but why not grab a few more bucks on the way out? It would pay for more golden parachutes, after all.

     Time and again I’ve shown accreditation is an utterly blind and impotent regulator, incapable of noticing even the most overwhelming of fraud going on in the institutions being accredited. How can anyone view accreditation as a seal of legitimacy when a “legitimately accredited” diploma mill can operate for 9 years before being noticed? Who really believes this is the only one?

Think about it.

 (Update: after I wrote this, the accreditor made it clear there would be no loss of accreditation, even for this egregious act of fraud)

 

 

 

More laughs from accreditation

Losing Accredition: More Laughs

By Professor Doom

 

A while back, I wrote about City College of San Francisco getting its accreditation revoked, sort of. The reasons for this, in brief, involve insufficient administrative bloat (!) and lack of “assessments” regarding the students. These complaints from the accreditor began in 2006, and never were resolved, leading to a final threat of removing accreditation in July, 2014.

Not that long ago, a school didn’t even need accreditation to survive, and losing accreditation wasn’t a death knell for the institution. Unfortunately, there’s a massive Federal student loan scheme that just floods accredited schools with money…and gives absolutely nothing to non-accredited schools. The vast sums to accredited schools mean they have the money to provide huge administrative salaries and legions of administrators—faculty are a minority on campuses today. No matter how lean an unaccredited school is, it can’t survive—what student would go there when he can get “free checks” at an accredited institution?

 

Administrative Announcement: “Due to the budget crisis, there will be a hiring freeze for both faculty and administration. I trust we all agree this is fair.”

--it sure sounds fair, but  the “hiring freeze” makes it clear that administration is every bit as important to higher education as teaching and research. Feel free to look for a mission statement of any institution that says anything of the sort.

 

Take away that money, and the accredited school implodes immediately…no sweet loan checks to support the administrative bloat, and as shown in the past, administrators will gut faculty pay to the point that faculty qualify for welfare before sacrificing their own salary. That’s what admin thinks is “fair,” after all.

On top of this, of course, is the belief that accredited schools are legitimate, but this belief is pure rubbish, as I’ve shown repeatedly. The Federal government has a hands-off approach to accreditation, so never checks to see what accreditors are doing; in a similar vein, accreditors really only notice the most massive of fraud at schools they accredit. This is no surprise, since accreditation is run by the same people that run the schools.

Anyway, I wrote my essay on CCSF and ended with the belief that it would be considered “too big to fail.” Sure enough, it looks like I was right, as the Federal government is looking to overrule the loss of accreditation that is planned for 2014:

The accreditation crisis taking place at the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) took a turn in favor of campus advocates. The US Department of Education got involved, and sent the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) a notice that it is “out of compliance” with federal regulations.

Words cannot describe how jaw-dropping this is. Time and again I’ve seen accredited institutions engage in massive fraud, with nary a peep from the accreditor; any complaint to the Federal government just gets the response of basically “we let the accreditor determine such things, as we’re not the regulating body.”

Now, an accreditor makes a decision the Feds don’t like, and it’s a problem.

“Out of compliance,” they say. I’ve identified before that accreditation is run by administrators, not faculty, which is a big part of why accreditation is a joke—educators have no say in education. It’s been that way for years and years, and up until now, the Federal government hasn’t cared about this glaring problem, but now, suddenly, it is:

“One academician on an evaluation team comprised of eight and 16 individuals, as was the case for April 2013 and March 2012 evaluation teams, respectively, of CCSF, is not reasonable representation.”

--excerpt from the report. Only one academic on each team of evaluators of an academic institution? Accreditation really is this much of a joke. Does anyone really believe the one-sidedness of the evaluation teams is a fluke? The near complete lack of scholarship of the evaluators of an institution makes it clear that scholarship is all but irrelevant to accreditation. Anything that lone academic has to say will be brutally overruled by the administrators.

The pro-administrative bias doesn’t end just with the committee; the composition of the committee also included the spouse of the ACCJC’s president being on the commission (gee whiz). There is also some lack of clarity over what a “recommendation” means (sometimes it’s just advice, sometimes it’s something the institution MUST do). In short, the government wants CCSF to have more time, and will de-accredit ACCJC (putting them right out of business) if they don’t fix their own issues. I’m certain CCSF won’t eventually lose accreditation, as ACCJC will be committing suicide if they do.

 

...accreditation should “focus on faculty development, teacher training, overhaul the evaluation process which includes more observations and content review of some curriculum and assignments.”

--advice from faculty over what accreditation should actually be doing. Too bad administrators are wildly unqualified to do anything scholarly like that. I find the advice of “content review” particularly hilarious; I’m clearly not the only one sick of totally bogus courses being peddled as higher education, and sincerely wishes accreditation would have academics take a real look at the crap being sold to students for ridiculously large sums.

 

Hypocrisy aside, the Federal government does have some legitimate issues with what’s going on with CCSF. The question remains: why now? The Federal government has overlooked some awesome instances of fraud before, far worse than anything going on at CCSF, trusting accreditation to take care of it, but there’s an important message here:

Accreditation can overlook massive fraud as long as it keeps on accrediting. Accreditation can do nothing about accredited schools that are in violation year after year, as the Federal government will complain and annihilate the accreditor if need be.

Any accrediting body following what’s going on here is sure to get the message: never withdraw accreditation. This bodes even worse for the future of higher education.

Think about it.