eLearners News is edited by Steve Foerster.
Steve has worked in higher education for nearly ten years, both as a staff person specializing in eLearning and international higher education, and as an adjunct instructor, designing and teaching online courses in IT and business.
He's also an eLearner himself, having completed a Bachelor's degree from Charter Oak State College and a Master's degree from George Washington University, both thanks to eLearning.
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Ever wonder what it really means when an institution uses the word "university" in its name? It may surprise you, but there isn't really a hard and fast definition for this term on which so many people place such great weight. In the U.S., usually there's a distinction between community colleges, which are public and offer Associate's degree programs; colleges, which offer Bachelor's degree programs; and universities, which offer graduate programs. There are all sorts of exceptions, though, like the occasional community college that offers a Bachelor's degree, or like Boston College, a prominent research university that offers Master's and doctoral programs.
Many people seem to have the sense that a university is a bigger deal than a college, leading to a number of institutions that had only offered Bachelor's degree programs adding graduate programs and changing their names as a result. Ten years ago I worked for what was then Keiser College. After I left, they made a strong push toward offering Master's programs, and on adding their first one changed their name to Keiser University. Not only were they quick to do this, I even received an automated email from them asking me to update the reference on my online resume — they were doing their very best not only to change the name at that time, but revise it backdated to the beginning of time!
The last few days here have seen a series of pieces regarding for-profit institutions. While many of them are universities in the sense that they offer Master's and doctoral degrees, one difference between them and a number of other more established universities is that their faculty members tend to teach only, and not conduct academic research. A few British observers have even said that these institutions aren't universities at all:
Quentin Hanley, reader in chemistry and forensic science at Nottingham Trent University, studied the research record of several US for-profit universities via Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge.[...] "Their impact is on a par with a single medium academic at an approximately mid-ranked UK university," he said. "Calling an organisation with no meaningful scholarship a university is a bit like calling a muddy path through a forest a motorway."
Considering that there are non-profit institutions in the same position, however, Dr. Hanley's objection may really be more about the presence of profit than the absence of research. This might also be the motivation for one of his colleagues:
John Holmwood, professor of sociology at the University of Nottingham, noted that although some not-for-profit universities also produced little research, they fulfilled "research-like obligations", such as keeping local businesses abreast of scholarship, which for-profits did not.
There's an old saying that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If for-profit institutions that don't conduct significant research can't possibly be universities, then neither can their public or non-profit counterparts. It's not that academic research is unimportant, it is. But perhaps the bottom line here is that the definition used by most normal people for universities is better than the ones used by these sorts of academic — it's an institution that awards advanced degrees to those who have learned enough to earn them.
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There are a lot of colleges that award master's degrees. I've always heard that a university has several doctoral programs.
There are colleges that award Master's degrees, like Boston College and the College of William and Mary, and there are a few universities that don't. But a lot of colleges will change their names as soon as they hit that single Master's program threshold.