Every once in awhile, I am forced to defend my choice of
degree program at Penn Foster
College. This email that I received was actually a
response to my defense of nationally accredited schools such as Penn
Foster College
and Ashworth University:
“I know you Ashworth (or Penn Foster) students
are slow but, come on. nonetheless, I will gladly shred apart your statements.
First of all, Ashworth (and Penn Foster) are accredited by the DETC which
means.....absolutely nothing. You or I could submit an application for
accreditation to the DETC and
probably get it. As long as you pay the fee, and say your a college, you
can get the DETC seal of
approval. Secondly, If you are allowed to take your exams on-line with no
supervision, then your paying a fake college for a worthless
"degree". And spare me the whole "there is supposed to be a
proctor" sentiment. Ashworth can't enforce that rule and it is
embarrassingly easy to exploit the lameness of that rule. Any college that
is legit is going to require their student who take on-line classes to complete
their exams on campus with a teacher. If the college does
not require that-or can't require it because there ISN'T an actual
campus-the college is not legitimate, and no matter how much you rant and rave,
kick and scream, and pretend it isn't so, you can't change that fact.”
I will leave out the name
of the sender of the email to protect the ill-informed. Penn Foster College, and Ashworth University, are both nationally accredited by an accrediting body recognized by
the U.S. Department of Education and CHEA.
That means that both of these schools are legitimately accredited. Do they have the same accreditation, or carry
the same weight as a school like Harvard or MIT? No. However,
these schools serve a purpose.
Some students enroll in
programs at nationally accredited schools so they can beef up their own work
skills, which will later benefit them on the job. Others enroll at these schools and intend to
transfer their credits to another school so they can continue their
education. The schools they transfer to
may be either nationally or regionally accredited. Is there a guarantee that a regionally
accredited school will accept transfer credit from Penn Foster College or Ashworth University? No. Of course, there is no guarantee they will
accept all, or any, of a student's credits from another regionally accredited school,
either.
As for it being “easy” to
gain accreditation with the DETC, I
doubt that I could start my own university out of my home (TCord College) and obtain accreditation from the DETC. The DETC has site inspections. They are an accrediting agency which has been
around for several decades. Not all
schools which apply for DETC accreditation gain it. If it were so easy to gain DETC accreditation, there would be many, many more
schools accredited by the DETC.
There are other colleges,
including regionally accredited colleges, which use online and proctored
exams. In fact, some regionally
accredited schools don’t use exams at all, but instead use writing assignments
as a means of assessment. Schools such
as the “Big Three”…Excelsior, Thomas Edison State College and Charter Oak State
College, do not have college campuses in the traditional sense. Does that mean they are not “legitimate”?
I think this person’s
problem isn’t necessarily with nationally accredited schools like Penn Foster College, or Ashworth College, but with distance learning in general. Education has come a long way over the past
two or three decades, and distance learning is gaining wider acceptance every
day. Plenty of schools have embraced
distance learning (yes, this includes Harvard).
Employers recognize that workers who have distance learning degrees are
valuable assets. To believe otherwise
simply because a college doesn’t conform to your own ideas about what makes a
school a “real” school is simply foolish.