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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-the-rest-of-the-department-with-it dept.

The Higher Education "Industry" takes another hit. US Department of Education recommends killing ACICS:

The department's extraordinary recommendation to eliminate the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, a large national accreditor that was the gatekeeper for $4.76 billion in federal aid spending last year, follows widespread criticism of ACICS's oversight of Corinthian Colleges.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/16/education-department-recommends-eliminating-national-accreditor-many-profit-colleges

Recently, accreditation agencies have been insisting on accountability "metrics" to counter accusations of the "worthlessness" of higher education, with the usual neo-liberal assumption that privatization would result in greater efficiency. But it appears that the profit motive may only introduce corruption into academia.

In April the accreditor stepped up its scrutiny of ITT Technical Institutes, a large for-profit chain that is facing a broad range of federal and state investigations, including fraud allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Follow-up to the recent discussion of worthless Swedish Degrees.


Original Submission

Related Stories

US Student Wins Tuition Refund in Sweden for Useless Degree 25 comments

A Swedish college has been ordered to refund tuition fees to an American business student for giving her a poor economics education. The Vastmanland court ruled Tuesday the Malardalen University's two-year program "Analytical Finance" that Connie Askenback attended from 2011 to 2013 "had no practical value."

The court noted Sweden's Higher Education Authority in 2013 had expressed criticism of the program, and ordered the college to pay her back her tuition fees of 170,182 kronor ($20,544) plus interest.

http://phys.org/news/2016-06-student-tuition-refund-sweden-useless.html

[Also Covered By]:

WRAL.COM

Toronto Star Newspapers

abcnews

I am sure Soylentils would know about many such useless courses offered by other colleges / universities.


Original Submission

Education Department Terminates Agency That Allowed Predatory For-Profit Colleges to Thrive 40 comments

ProPublica reports

The Education Department announced [September 22] [1] that it is stripping the powers of one of the nation's largest accreditors of for-profit schools.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS, has been under scrutiny for continuing to accredit colleges whose students had strikingly poor outcomes.

As ProPublica has reported, schools accredited by the agency on average have the lowest graduation rates in the country and their students have the lowest loan repayment rates.

Accreditors are supposed to ensure college quality, and their seal of approval gives schools access to billions of federal student aid dollars.

As we have also reported, two-thirds of ACICS commissioners--who make the ultimate decisions about accreditation for schools--were executives at for-profit colleges. Many of the commissioners worked at colleges that were under investigation.

[1] Content hidden behind scripts, and then the text is displayed as images.

Previous: Department of Education Recommends Termination of Accreditor
A Degree from a For-Profit College is the Same as No College when Seeking a Job


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:32PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:32PM (#362083) Homepage Journal

    These don't go together:

    the usual neo-liberal assumption that privatization would result in greater efficiency

    a large national accreditor that was the gatekeeper for $4.76 billion in federal aid spending last year

    I know lots of fervent radical libertarians who vehemently oppose "privatization" like this.

    By the way, a college education can still be pretty worthless. Mine was good; not sure what it will be like for my kids.

    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:00PM (#362087)

      I know lots of fervent radical libertarians who vehemently oppose "privatization" like this.

      obviously they aren't really libertarians then

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:25PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:25PM (#362091) Journal

        obviously they aren't really libertarians then

        Or it wasn't privatization, which is what I took the quotation marks to suggest.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:33PM

      by Arik (4543) on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:33PM (#362094) Journal
      It's utterly absurd to pretend US higher education has anything to do with a free market. It's one of the most 'regulated' markets that exist, with the state  social-engineers fundamentally altering the market via public 'competition,' incentives, mandates, subsidies, tax law, and even criminal law.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 18 2016, @07:12PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 18 2016, @07:12PM (#362150) Journal

        Maybe education is not a "market" at all, but the American "student loan" regime is what has been converting it into one. Kind of like union pension funds, pools of money attract bad actors. And accordingly, the regulation of higher education is as well turning it into a market. Oh, btw, accrediting agencies are non-governmental organizations, but it is upon their credibility that government funding depends.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 18 2016, @07:35PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 18 2016, @07:35PM (#362154) Journal

          Maybe education is not a "market" at all, but the American "student loan" regime is what has been converting it into one.

          Whoa, education both isn't and is a "market". That's pretty deep, man.

          I'm reminded of a Wikipedia quote from an article about Plato:

          Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines.

          Here, we have a traditional case of a student shopping for a better education. And it predates you, Aristarchus. It even predates American "student loans".

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday June 18 2016, @08:04PM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 18 2016, @08:04PM (#362163) Journal

            Heraclitean education? That's a good one! But to the point: "courses" is something of a misnomer, listening to dialogues with Cratylus or anyone else was hardly a "unit" of education the way it is considered today. There were no "schools" then, Plato's Academy was perhaps the first. But even then, throughout most of the history of higher education, the "Degree" as a commodity produced by schools was lacking. Medieval schools did not have a rigid curriculum that entitled one to recognition on completion. Instead, one had to take over the podium when they were ready, and ready meant ready and able to defend their lecture against the questioning of the entire faculty.

            So the question really is, if higher education is a market, exactly what is it a market for? Or of? What is being bought and sold? What market mechanisms determine price? Is it just intellectual pimping?

            Side note: American universities originally were founded for the purpose of producing clergy, so getting a job with a college degree used to mean something quite different.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 19 2016, @12:49PM

        by VLM (445) on Sunday June 19 2016, @12:49PM (#362412)

        And on the "social" side of social engineering, there's Moldbug's cathedral theory, where an increasing proportion over time of "education" is Chinese cultural revolution era political activism.

        "Parroted the politically correct answer in feminism class to get a passing grade" or similar is required for the sheepskin, but its useless, or even worse than useless, in the real world. And the fraction of uselessness of a degree only increases over time.

        Being a devout believer is important in the cathedral. Outside the cathedral, not so much.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:26PM (#362137)

      We kicked that one around previously.
      A Degree from a For-Profit College is the Same as No College when Seeking a Job [soylentnews.org]

      lots of fervent radical libertarians who vehemently oppose "privatization" like this

      I will be happy to lead a cheer for that lot and their stand on that topic.
      N.B. Ralph Nader is correct that differing ideologies often support the same notion. [google.com]
      ...though he often uses the term "Left" when referring to Centrists who still haven't rejected Capitalism as a dead end.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Sunday June 19 2016, @01:58AM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Sunday June 19 2016, @01:58AM (#362247) Homepage Journal
        Murray Rothbard had quite an alliance of disparate ends of the spectrum back in the day. For awhile his journal was titled "Left and Right: the Prospects for Liberty." Honestly if you look at just the right moments from my family you'd think we are lefties or hippies or something.
        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:41PM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 18 2016, @02:41PM (#362096) Journal

    But it appears that the profit motive may only introduce corruption into academia.

    Oddly enough, when you define it that way, and start looking for it that way, you will only find the corruption in schools with a profit motive.

    Corruption (and uselessness) goes un-noticed, (expected even) in any institution that lives off of public funds. So much so that it becomes necessary to remove all other competitors from the field, just to keep the embarrassment level manageable.
    .

    Disclosure: Over the year, I've hired three network techs with ITT Technical credentials (and no other experience). Two guys and one gal. And they were good hires. Knew their shit and were instantly useful. Their problem solving skills were very good for entry level people. OTOH, the two I hired as programmer/analysts out of State Universities, with CS degrees took over a year to get anything out of them.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:05PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:05PM (#362104)

      I've noticed the same thing. CS degree holders learn the history of CS, what's been done in the field, terminology (Big O notation, etc), some data structure concepts, etc, but generally don't have enough education in programming fundamentals, problem solving, a nice survey of modern languages, etc. There isn't really much demand in general for "CS" as such ... so you're hiring the wrong people. CS is a great thing to know if you're a software developer, but it's a different skillset. When you hire a new CS, you frequently need to teach them how to be a programmer, and even if they're a great CS, they may be a lousy programmer.

      Conversely, you may have a good programmer that will never really grasp a lot of the CS concepts. In my opinion, these will never really be *great* developers though, only *good*.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:45PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:45PM (#362108) Journal

        Pretty much true.

        But when I hired the CS, I made sure they had training in the languages we were using. I expected to have to teach them our tool set and compilers etc.

        But when I assigned them something simple like, "when program xyz us called to post a lab test result with a value higher than what this record in the test parameter file says, call this subroutine abc with test code and value", I was astounded that after 3 days they could not determine where in xyz (a small single purpose module) they could detect if the criteria were met, nor how to call the subroutine,

        On the other hand, I turned a couple of those network techs loose in a 5 story building on their third day. They had to route something like 8 more network drops up 3 floors and down the hall to a new office. The found the risers, pulled the new cable, (and didn't forget to pull another leader cord through the conduit for next time), labeled everything, put in the drops with proper wall plates, tested the cables with the cat5 tester, patched into rack in the computer room, and had the whole thing ready to pop in the jumper cable to the switch in 5 hours flat. As I recall the only thing they did wrong-ish was use plenum cable rather than the cheaper standard cat5 cable, costing a penny a foot more than necessary. In those days, ITT Tech turned out a pretty good product.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:28PM

          by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:28PM (#362139) Journal

          On the other hand, I turned a couple of those network techs loose in a 5 story building on their third day. They had to route something like 8 more network drops up 3 floors and down the hall to a new office.

          ITT does offer a very specific course on this subject. From the course material I looked over, it seems to emphasize wireless these days. This sounded exactly like a group project an ITT student I know was doing.

          As concerns CS, looking back, it really isn't an appropriate degree for either a network admin or a software developer. There should be some other degree track that emphasizes the higher level components that go into information systems: data representation (file formats and parsing?), relational data, primitive operations like sort/join/etc, networking concepts/IPC, error handling, low-level concepts (filesystems, file formats?, ABI, etc), design patterns, and end-user psychology perhaps. I say end-user psychology because it really is astounding the things end users take for granted, even to the point that I find I can merely study it and likely will never intuitively understand it (things like users being utterly unable to grasp, no matter how you try to explain it to them, the difference between a PDF that was “printed” straight from Word and a PDF that's a print-out from Word to paper, that's been faxed, that's then been emailed as a PDF containing nothing but image data by the local fax-to-mail server).

          There's a lot of good stuff in CS, but I don't think I've ever once needed to implement a sorting algorithm or a dynamic array/linked list/b-tree/etc from scratch on a modern system. On the other hand, perhaps the information should be presented differently. For example, there's not really much difference between a pointer and a foreign key in a database. From there, it's intuitive to take a graph structure and store it in a relational database.

          I still haven't been able to determine exactly what it is about programming that makes it simply inaccessible to so many people beyond getting Princess Elsa the turtle to draw pretty pictures. I don't want to propose a theory there's some programmer “gene,” but it becomes more and more difficult to try to uphold the assumption it's a psychological barrier.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2016, @08:09AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 20 2016, @08:09AM (#362765)

            There should be some other degree track that emphasizes the higher level components that go into information systems: data representation (file formats and parsing?), relational data, primitive operations like sort/join/etc, networking concepts/IPC, error handling, low-level concepts (filesystems, file formats?, ABI, etc), design patterns, and end-user psychology perhaps.

            You get all that in a Software Engineering degree, though you won't go over parsing things like random binary files. End-user psychology not so much, but you do go over requirements gathering which is related.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 19 2016, @12:41PM

      by VLM (445) on Sunday June 19 2016, @12:41PM (#362410)

      with CS degrees

      Having gone thru this a bit more than a decade ago personally, an associates degree IS a bachelors degree minus half the liberal arts (oh noes your network administrator hasn't read Nietzsche "when you peer into the RF waveguide, the RF waveguide peers back into you") and minus half or maybe more of the senior year stuff.

      So I got an electronics associates degree and that covers ohms law and thevenin and norton and all kinds of linear ckt analysis and power supply and amplifier design and opamps and filter design (Chebyshev filter polynomial and WTF) , its just to get the EE you need to transfer to a 4-year school and take senior level DSP, control theory (hurray for Bode plots!) and stuff like that. I did some of that, but ended up going CS anyway. In retrospect I should have dual majored but in retrospect most teens and young adults are pretty stupid, so whatever. The electronics AA degree had me programming 68hc11s and z80s and basic programming which in those ancient days was sufficient, so I had to take some senior level classes about codd normal form database design, OO C++ design was senior level back in the old days, a systems analyst class, stuff like that.

      You're crazy if you let a new grad design a compiler (unless they're really good...) or your databases or whatever. And if your workplace requires the information learned in a sociology class or pre-civil war american history class, again you need a BS grad. For everyone else the AS degree is enough.

      Part of the problem with my fellow BSCS grads is now a days you learn introductory java or wtf in your first year, then F around for 3+ years doing everything except entry level java, then get a job doing entry level java (if you're lucky enough to avoid the IT helpdesk, etc) and are like "hmm, I remember most of compilers class last year, but at work today I need a CSS file included, not a set of ANTLR compiler parser rules, and I haven't done "web pages 101" in more than 3 years... Whereas the AS degree likely topped out at that level last semester so they're off and running.

      As a point of comparison when took my ham radio extra class exam a long time ago I remember solving an impedance matching problem and thinking this is like right off my exam for the AS (and the instructor who taught RF class for the associates being a ham, I kinda wondered) but the point of this analogy isn't so much that an extra class license is basically worth an AS degree, but that everyone knows some extra class license holders just memorized some test answers while some are the real thing; and its exactly the same with degree holders, some are merely good test takers vs some actually know their stuff. Unless you're legally required to consider it, I don't think degrees matter very much based on experience and observation.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by CirclesInSand on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:10PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Saturday June 18 2016, @03:10PM (#362105)

    with the usual neo-liberal assumption that privatization would result in greater efficiency.

    Neo-liberal? The advocacy for the privatization of industry goes all the way back to Adam Smith, one of the first people ever to write about economics. There is nothing neo [thefreedictionary.com] about it.

    And if you think that government being allowed to control education is a good thing, go look up the Harvard 1869 entrance exam and try to pass it, a pdf of it is online. Try without wikipedia and without a calculator. After failing, realize that this was an exam meant to be passed before entering college, not after graduation. Education was much better quality and much less dystopian before the government's hostile subjugation of it.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 18 2016, @04:04PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday June 18 2016, @04:04PM (#362114)

      It *is* "neo". You're failing to understand what "liberal" means, and how "neo-liberal" is different.

      "Liberals", in American parlance, are generally people who are somewhat left-of-center, and stereotypically prefer "big government" solutions. They're generally against privatization of things they see as the proper domain of government, which includes education, and even some college (namely state universities).

      "Neo-liberals" are basically the liberal counterpart to "neoconservatives": they ape some of the liberal talking points as the group they claim to be, but then push a bunch of non-liberal ideas. Neo-liberals therefore push a lot of privatization (such as with the prison system), reduced regulation, warmongering, etc., things that traditional American liberals oppose.

      Hillary Clinton is a great example of a neo-liberal.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:33PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:33PM (#362140)

        Nope.
        Liberalism is based on realigning/redistributing Capitalist profits.
        It is near the Center, but doesn't cross over into the Anti-Capitalist realm.
        Traditional (donkey) Democrats are Liberals [politicalcompass.org] separated just a bit from traditional Plantation-Capitalist Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats--but still in the same quadrant.

        neoconservatives

        You don't understand the word at all.
        It refers to Imperialists and World-Policeman types who always think that MILITARISM is the answer to every situation.

        Its overlap with Economics is only in that it is anti-"communist", wanting to exterminate anything that challenges Plantation Capitalism.
        This was illustrated by USA's logistical support[1] for the mass murder of a million people in Indonesia in 1965--many of them killed simply because they were poor and **might** have or **might** develop Anti-Capitalist ideologies.

        [1] In his memoirs, Bird Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty has documented the delivery of over 12,000 rifles from USA armories to the pro-USA side.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by compro01 on Saturday June 18 2016, @09:30PM

        by compro01 (2515) on Saturday June 18 2016, @09:30PM (#362185)

        No. Neoliberalism is the economic component of neoconservatism (it refers to economic liberalism, not social), and espouses deregulation, privatization, tax reduction, etc. It's the political ideology originally pushed by Reagan, etc., but which has now infected basically the entire length and breadth of the American political spectrum.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @10:54PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @10:54PM (#362204)

          Ronnie Raygun was Thatcher's disciple.
          Not giving her credit for kick-starting the ruination of the global economy seems ungracious.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @11:18PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @11:18PM (#362208)

          Wow. What a Klein flask of logic.

          Liberalism is about wealth redistribution.
          It attempts to be Progressive and Egalitarian (while leaving the exploitive system of Capitalism in place).

          Neoliberalism is Reactionary in nature.
          It is about concentration of wealth in the fewest number of hands possible.
          A related term is Plantation Capitalism.

          The term you may have been seeking is Libertarianism which has considerable overlap with Neoliberalism.

          deregulation, privatization, tax reduction, etc.

          You got that part right.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday June 19 2016, @02:49AM

        by CirclesInSand (2899) on Sunday June 19 2016, @02:49AM (#362256)

        Liberal means to advocate for significant political change. It comes from the French Revolution where those who opposed the monarchy sat on the left of the assembly. Americans and Europeans both want to indulge in the connotations of the word "liberal", but carefully avoid putting any definition to their use of it for political reasons. Once you define something, you can disagree with it.

        There is no such thing as "failing to understand" what a word that is purposely undefined means. Correctly used, it means to oppose the status quo. Modern misuse of it is to leave it undefined.

        There are actually words with definitions that define the coalition of the DNC political party. Socialist, military interventionist, military noninterventionist, prohibitionist, economic interventionist, etc. "Liberal" is just what they say when they want to avoid careful consideration, and they prey on people's lust for intellectual prestige to coerce them to act like they "understand" the nonsensical misuse of "liberal".

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @05:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @05:28PM (#362130)

      Link: http://bibletranslation.ws/down/Harvard_Entrance_Exam_1869.pdf [bibletranslation.ws]

      Latin and Greek. All I'd accomplish on this section is getting stern lectures from both John Cleese and Aristarchus. :) Almost took Latin but it wouldn't fit my schedule so took German instead. My other language was Spanish. Greek wasn't offered. (Guidance counselor thought I was crazy for taking two languages at once, but I aced them both.)

      History and geography. Couple questions about Europe and major rivers in the world. Mostly about the classical world.

      Arithmetic. This looks pretty basic. Yes, without a calculator.

      Logarithms, Trigonometry, and Algebra. When I was in high school, I wound have found this a breeze. Oh hey, some nice round numbers such as base 4 and 64—don't they mean 1,0004? Bah, just write it 0x40 :)

      Plane Geometry. I must be weird, because I actually loved geometry. I almost still remember how to prove these answers.

      So, had I taken AP History instead of AP American History, AP Latin instead of AP German, had there been a Greek course and AP Greek, I don't think I would have had difficulty with this test.

      Of course, after having the notion that education and hard work has any fucking thing to do with wealth and success thoroughly beaten out of me by the school of hard knocks, given that the only answers I care about these days are at the bottom of a bottle, I'm not nearly as academically capable as my former self.

      To compare, ACT score was in the mid 30s, so I can't even claim to be the best and brightest. (Never took SAT because that was for librul elitist Jew commie devil worshippers and wouldn't be had in dad's house!)

      I would bet most people on this board probably would be admitted to Harvard in 1869 given the ability to time travel and change some courses in high school. Then again, would most people on this board have had access to schooling in 1869?

      Welp, I think I've figure out how to bootstrap my bootstrapping! All I need to do is get cryogenically frozen until the mid-26th century, steal a time ship, head back to 19xx to tell my 14 year old self which classes to take (also leave a burned CD full of Greek instruction), head to 19xx + 4 to pick up my 18 year old self, then take him back to 1869, and hope like hell Temporal Investigations doesn't notice.

      Wonder what alternate 2016 will look li…

      *posts begin fading from Soylent retroactively as the temporal wave hits*

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 18 2016, @10:37PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday June 18 2016, @10:37PM (#362201) Journal

        Wonder what alternate 2016 will look li…

        *posts begin fading from Soylent retroactively as the temporal wave hits*

        That should be optative future pluperfect tense, with a genitive counterfactual. "It's a goddamn temporal paradox, Louise!"

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:57PM (#362148)

    That was a long, sordid saga.
    I tried to keep that story updated here.

    Both Google [google.com] and S/N's own search engine[1] [soylentnews.org] each miss some of the items.

    [1] It would be nice if the site's search utility included a Boolean NOT operator.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]