Thoughts about accrediaton

After reading a lot of valuable opinions on this, and other forums, I have now made up my own mind regarding accrediation.

I finished my bachelor some years ago, and I have worked in real-estate since, mainly dealing with economic transactions.

Before this I also had different other jobs.

My experience is this:

Education increases your opportunity to get higher wages, beacause you have something to show to your employer. It is also easier for the person who is hiring you to defend the employment of you towards others in the company, because "you have the education, and the others don´t". And last, it is also easier for you to get a possibility to present yourself to the company in the first place, because you have the education as an entrancepoint to the interview room.

When this is said, my experience when it comes to doing the actual work is as follows.

If you say: At school we learnt to do it this way, the employer says: Well son; that may be so in the academic world, but in REAL life, we do it like THIS.

In fact, I have not had so much use of my degree so far. The use I have gotten from is, is the quality of beeing able to think for myself, to analyze, and to evaluate different pathways to a goal.

Based on this, I think it is to easy to just say, as a lot of people does, that an unaccredited degree is of no use.
I think it is of use. As long as you tell your potential employers, before they hire you, that your degree is an unaccredited one, I see no wrong in this.

To put it another way: What is the alternative ? "What have you done besides working the last years, son?" "Well, i sat on my ass watching television."

By taking a degree, whether is it accredited or not, you show initiative, and initiative is much appreciated in the working life.

Based on this, I has made the following decision for myself.

I have now enrolled in an MBA at the unaccredited AMBAI Universitas, as well as sending my papers for admission at the MBA degree at Aspen University.

Why am I doing this ?

1. I am taking the Aspen degree, because I like to work with academics, and by taking the Aspen degree, which is accredited, I will upper my potential salary, and upper the possibilites of getting entrance to better jobs.


2. By taking the AMBAIU MBA, I will get a much more practial, and useful IN A DAILY WORKING ENVIRONMENT, MBA. I have already, as mentioned, started this degree, and it is quite practically laid out.

And please notice this: The secretaty of AMBAIU is answering questions more quickly than most accredited institutions, and they seem very well structured.

By doing these two degrees at the same time, I get the best of both worlds: Practical tools which makes me better at my work (AMBAIU), as well as academic power, which have the potential of increasing my salary, and which increases my academic status.

Any comments appreciated. :)

There is a problem with the logic in this theory in the sense that employers (especially the larger ones) don't have time to go and investigate every class you have ever taken to verify the content to make sure it is relevant to what you are hoping to do for a career.  Sure everyone knows about and has heard of Harvard, University of Texas, Michigan State, Arizona State, et. al.  And if a potential employee shows up with one of those well known schools on their resume, we as hiring employers are going to assume that the quality of education was at the very least, on par with most other schools that are accredited by the same agency.

If you go to a lesser known school (online or otherwise) that is still accredited, it may be important to mention that the school is in fact accredited.  That doesn't guarantee that you learned anything, but it does give the employer some level of satisfaction that you were offered rigorous courses that had some meat to them.

On the other hand, if you spend your money at a school that is not accredited, yet still offers degrees, you will remove that comfort level from the employer, and probably even have to explain your entire college career to them since they are not familiar with the school, and more importantly, have no idea about the curriculum.  While distance ed is still in it's infancy, and is growing by leaps and bounds, there is still that legacy relationship between accreditation and quality.

Just my opinion:  If you (or anyone) is going to spend a bunch of money on getting a degree from any school, it might as well be accredited by an agency that everyone recognizes and accepts.  It can only add value to your degree and your overall education.  As someone who hires about 30-50 people a year, I can tell you from experience that if two people with absolutely equal talents, skills, ability, etc... came into my office, and one had a degree that was accredited from a regional agency, and the other had an unaccredited degree, the accredited one wins all day long.  In the long term, I am just afraid that you will regret your decision and the amount of money you spent on it.  Knowing that for the same price or a little more, you could have done better.

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Scott

http://www.WheelCipher.net 

Well, you've heard me nag you before....but I'm always willing to nag again.

You keep speaking to earning an MBA as a way to enhance your career.  Point blank, whether it's fair or not, whether you did the work or not, whether it's even a BETTER program or not, having a degree from a school without CHEA accreditation will severely limit you. 

You can't even list the MBA on a résumé in the state of Oregon else you face criminal charges.  There are a handful of other schools with the same limitation, and more states have similar measures being considered.

You're not competing with the people sitting on their asses watching television...you're competing in the HIGHLY competitive MBA market.  If you work in any big city,  EVERYONE has an MBA.  Your school already lacks the Kellogg/Wharton/Tuck name on the diploma...if they can't even recognize the name of the school, your degree has little to no benefit.

I wholly applaud your efforts to gain an education, to work hard, and to be motivated to get ahead.  But please, don't waste your time. 

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Capt. Kangaroo
- fifty years, no promotions. *sigh*

Well put, Captain!  I especially have to agree with you about the highly competitive MBA market - and it's not just the 'big' cities ;-)  However, I think it's only going to make the next 20-30 years that much more interesting!  We'll see, as the Lone Gunmen would say, who's 'Kung-Fu' is better!

 

 

 

Agreed!  Perception is everything.  I think that any effort to take courses to better yourself or get a better job, etc.. and taking those classes at a place that is not accredited is no better than going to a diploma mill in the eyes of the hiring managers.