Surprise! Higher ed "quality assurance" is arbitrary. Who would have guessed?

Quote:Court Loss for an Accreditor
January 24, 2014
By Doug Lederman

A federal judge took the unusual step last week of blocking an accrediting agency's decision to strip an institution's accreditation, and the highly unusual (if not unprecedented) step of fining the agency for its action.

The ruling by the federal judge in Virginia came in a case involving a Missouri massage school, and so has remained under the radar.

But the approach the judge used in deciding the case could apply to any accreditor's review of any college, and so raises issues much more broadly for higher education quality assurance agencies, at a time when they are under broad political attack, too.

Professional Massage Training Center sued the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges in August 2012, after the agency revoked the school's accreditation, citing concerns about the continuity of its management, the adequacy of its learning resources, and its verification of faculty qualifications. The lawsuit argued that the agency denied the massage school due process; the court had granted a preliminary injunction in September 2012 blocking the denial of accreditation, but this was the judge's first full ruling on the merits of the case.

In his ruling, Judge Liam O'Grady, of the Eastern District of Virginia, acknowledged that in line with federal court precedent, judges owe "great deference" to the decisions of accrediting agencies, as they do to administrative decisions of federal agencies. (He also stated that the standard the school must meet for winning -- that the agency's decision was "arbitrary and unreasonable" -- is "a high bar.")

But O'Grady proceeded to find the agency's analysis lacking on several counts. The judge noted that ACCSC officials had declared the school's learning resources to be inadequate while passing up an opportunity to review a nearby university library to which the school's students had been granted access as part of an agreement. "To deem the [learning resource center] inadequate without having examined it is arbitrary by definition," the judge wrote.

The judge found the accreditor wanting in the other areas, as well, concluding that the agency did not have clear standards or documented evidence for dinging the school on faculty requirements, and that the accreditor had twice previously found the school's management to be adequate. (The judge also essentially accuses the agency of being biased against the school's longtime leader.)

"To summarize, ACCSC's decision to revoke PMTC's accreditation was based on an inadequate LRS that ACCSC didn't visit, the school's reasoned flexibility in applying its own faculty experience requirements, and application of a vague standard to find the same management that had previously been adequate is now inadequate. The Court considers these bases arbitrary and unreasonable, so finds in favor of PMTC" on its due process claim.

The judge sided with the accreditor on the lawsuit's other five counts -- but the one successful claim was enough for him not only to reverse the accreditor's decision but to require it to pay damages of $429,000, the school's lost profits from the students it was unable to enroll because its accreditation was stripped, plus legal fees and costs of rehiring employees.

And rather than simply vacating the loss of accreditation, he mandated that the accreditor must renew the school's accreditation until its next normal review cycle.

Supporters of the massage school characterized the judge's decision as a "David vs. Goliath"-style victory, which a news release characterized as "stunning."

A statement from ACCSC described the agency's officials as "disappointed" by the decision, which they called "flawed in several important respects."

Lawyers who work on accreditation issues said they were surprised by the judge's willingness to substitute his own judgments for those of the accreditor, and especially for the financial penalties, which one said he believed to be unprecedented.

http://www.studyinnorway.no/Tuition-Scho...ition-fees

Not only is education free for Norwegians but for anyone who wants to attend a Norwegian University. Anyone care to see the midnight sun? The fjords?

Where is stalker George Gollin when you need him? Finally an accreditation issue worthy of his giant intellect.

Now when the toe lickers discuss the important distinctions between RA and NA, they can use this helpful anal-ogy:

RA = two ply
NA = one ply

Quote:TCU Students Demand Higher Quality Toilet Paper
January 22, 2014 6:01 PM
Joel Thomas

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Behind closed doors in stalls around its campus, [regionally accredited] Texas Christian University has a tissue issue. The school only provides one ply toilet paper in its dorms, classroom and office buildings. At least for now.

“This is a big thing,” said student body president Cody Westphal. “You know, TCU has this reputation for the highest quality everything — whether it is education, technology, teachers, students — whatever. I think the next obvious step would be to take the step of quality toilet paper!”

Students in dorms craving the two-ply comfort of home were on their own.

“I know a lot of people have gone out of their way to go to the store to get two ply,” said TCU student Tora Coursey.

So, when the student government asked students “How can we help you?” the students overwhelmingly replied, “Two ply please!”

“One part of the issue is a simple comfort factor,” said Luke Baldwin. “You just can’t put a price tag on single ply versus double ply. You’ve got to think what’s more comfortable for the person using it.”

The student government passed a resolution asking administrators for a campus-wide change. Administrators said the change from one to two ply would only have a negligible impact on the budget. But Westphal said the school’s chancellor is on-board.

“I think he’s secretly got a supply of two-ply somewhere,” Westphal laughed. “So, he’s totally on-board!”

It seems it’s just a matter of staff doing some ‘paper’ work to figure out costs and the university will be able to put the T.P. issue behind them.

“It’s a winning day for us here!” Coursey exclaimed.

Many of the students even seem to feel flush with success.

“I’ve had people literally giving me a high five for toilet paper,” Wesphal chuckled.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/443655-t...niversity/

Is there a difference between a full ride and a free ride? As long as white liberals keep telling black people they are inferior and black people buy into it, society is doomed to failure. Liberal society might as well come with whips and chains. The way you make people succeed is by actually making them succeed. From then on it's contagious. You can send a couple of Obama's to Harvard law school but you can't keep their membership in the Illinois Bar. If not for the presidency, they'd be pumping gas somewhere. Did we really do them a favor?

Sustainability is bullshit, but the rest of these might put some money in your pocket in the future.

Quote:The 5 Degrees Of The Future
By Jeff Dunn on January 2, 2014

The world of education is in a state of flux. The typical college or university degree is undergoing a slow but steady shift towards being a bit more useful to the next generation of workers.

While I don’t think a degree in math or science is going to ever be unimportant, it’s important to know about the up and coming degrees that many of us don’t yet know about. For example, would you pursue a degree in computer science or perhaps something more targeted to cybersecurity? That’s the idea behind this visual guide to the degrees of the future you see below.

The below degrees are fabulous but there’s a particular listing that intrigues me. The degree in game design seems something truly interesting to modern students of just about any age. If you are a high school student looking for an interesting degree that will get you into a creative and technologically advanced field of learning, game design seems like a great option. I only wish this degree was offered when I was considering which degree to pursue!

Badass Quakers de-nut frat pledge!

Quote:January 3, 2014
Quaker College Bans Fraternity Over Hazing That Cost Pledge A Testicle

An Ohio college has leveled the death penalty against a fraternity for a Halloween hazing ritual that cost a 19-year-old pledge a testicle.

A judicial board at [regionally accredited] Wilmington College has ruled that Gamma Phi Gamma’s “rights…are permanently extinguished and henceforth the college will no longer recognize” the fraternity (which has previously been sanctioned for hazing at the Quaker institution).

Police are continuing to investigate the late-November incident in the basement of the fraternity home, which is known as “Gobbler House.” During the hazing, pledge Tyler Lawrence, 19, was struck in the testicles with “a towel fashioned as a weapon,” according to a search warrant affidavit.

As previously detailed in these pages, Lawrence and two other wannabe frat brothers were subjected to a series of indignities involving nudity, blindfolds, Icy Hot ointment, limburger cheese, vinegar-soaked bananas, and simulated intercourse with a ball of stuffing. Lawrence was injured when frat members struck the pledges with “towels and shirts that had the ends balled up in knots” or which had “items tied inside them to inflict pain.”



After Lawrence complained of significant pain in his testicles, he was taken to an area hospital where he underwent surgery to have a testicle removed. A cop noted that the student also had “large bruising and contusions upon much of his upper torso resulting from being struck during the initiation.”

According to police, about 20 fraternity members “were either watching or participating in the pledging.”

Quote:January 2nd, 2014
White House advisers push for accreditation flexibility
By Denny Carter, Managing Editor

Online college degrees won’t become more commonplace unless and until state agencies and accreditation organizations pledge to be more flexible in defining what counts as a credit-bearing course, President Obama’s council of technologists and scientists charged.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), created by the Obama administration in 2009, wrote in an open letter that the federal government “should continue to encourage the regional accrediting bodies to be flexible in recognizing that many standards normally required for an accredited degree should be modified in the online arena.”

It’s an oft-repeated argument among online education advocates who have seen web-based learning sometimes stunted by long-held accreditation practices and traditions created before the proliferation of high-speed internet: the college degree has changed, prompting a shift in how schools are accredited.

Unwillingness to push for more flexibility in degree accreditation, PCAST members wrote, could be a death knell for the massive open online course (MOOC) movement, of which the council was supportive.

“If the bar for accreditation is set too high, the infant industry developing MOOC and related technology platforms may struggle to realize its full potential,” the council wrote.

The PCAST letter conceded that accrediting agencies do a “reasonably good job of quality assurance,” though there are many established accreditation requirements that are irrelevant to online college programs.

Elizabeth Allen, an American Council on Education (ACE) accreditor who recently reviewed a MOOC, said her evaluation of the experimental online class followed the same standards as a traditional course.

“So what was different about the MOOC? Not that much,” Allen wrote in a blog post for WCET. “The course was reviewed using the ACE review criteria, no special considerations were given – the courses had to meet the requirements for content, scope, and rigor. A credit recommendation was given because the team determined that the course met the requirements.”

Natural questions of MOOC accreditation included how students would receive professorial feedback, how MOOC platforms assured the quality of the learning experience, and whether or not student concerns were addressed.

“What is significant is that the MOOCs I reviewed were science courses and did not have to address much more difficult issues that would have arisen from a course requiring essays, etc.,” she wrote. “I was pleased with what I saw, but the proof is in the student learning data.”

The Gold Standard at work again. Remember, regional accreditation is the mark of quality in higher education because, um, errr, because they say so.

And your punishment for scamming us out of $19 million??? You can't try to scam us again for three years! That'll fix him, yes sir.

Quote:Professor admits faking AIDS vaccine to get $19M in grants
By Andy Soltis
December 26, 2013 | 3:00pm

A [regionally accredited] Iowa State University professor resigned after admitting he falsely claimed rabbit blood could be turned into a vaccine for the AIDS virus.

Dr. Dong-Pyou Han spiked a clinical test sample with healthy human blood to make it appear that the rabbit serum produced disease-fighting antibodies, officials said.

The bogus findings helped Han’s team obtain $19 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, said James Bradac, who oversees the institutes’ AIDS research.

The remarkable findings were reported in scientific journals but raised suspicions when other researchers could not duplicate Han’s results.

The NIH uncovered the scam when it checked the rabbit serum at a lab and found the human antibodies.

Han resigned from his university post as an assistant professor of biomedical studies in October. His case came to light this week when it was reported in the Federal Register.

Han agreed last month not to seek government contracts for three years, the register said.

I will like to know if some one know something about a alleged accreditation and credential evaluations Global Accreditation Board for Distance Learning.

Good guy with a gun stops bad guy with a gun. What a heartbreak for the Obamunists--a perfectly good school shooting goes to waste because the shooter was a typical wild-eyed leftist nutcase, and stopped by an armed school security guard to boot. Woopsy, better luck next time, eh libtards?

Quote:Inconvenient Truths About Latest Colorado School Shooting
Roger Aronoff — December 16, 2013

Coming as it did on the weekend of the one-year anniversary of the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that killed 26, plus the killer, and wounded two more, it is not surprising that the media downplayed or ignored aspects of the Friday the 13th school shooting in Centennial, Colorado, just miles away from both Columbine and Aurora, the scenes of two other horrific mass shootings.

But this latest incident offered a couple of narratives that the media preferred to ignore. The shooter was Karl Pierson, an 18-year-old, described as very bright, and an excellent debater, who had had run-ins with his debate coach. Early stories said he had been kicked off the debate team, later that he had only been disciplined. But either way, he was no longer an active participant on the team.

He arrived at the school on Friday well-armed, with what was described as a “bandolier of ammunition,” “a backpack filled with three Molotov cocktails,” as well as a machete and a shotgun, which he used to shoot two of his classmates at Arapahoe High School. “His intent was evil, and his intent was to injure multiple people,” said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson on Saturday.

The entire event, from the time he walked into the school, until he shot and killed himself, was estimated to be about 80 seconds. And why did he kill himself? Because an armed deputy who was assigned to the school came running immediately after hearing the first shot. What if there had been an armed deputy at Sandy Hook school in Newtown? How many lives might have been saved? How many injuries prevented?

Sheriff Robinson, who briefed the press, “praised the deputy’s response as ‘a critical element to the shooter’s decision’ to kill himself, and lauded his response to hearing gunshots. ‘He went to the thunder,’ he said. ‘He heard the noise of gunshot and, when many would run away from it, he ran toward it to make other people safe.’” Arapahoe was not a gun-free zone, and, as a result, many lives were likely saved.

NBC News on Saturday called Pierson “someone who voiced strong political opinions,” but failed to say what those opinions were. Some of his views, however, were reported in The Denver Post.

In one Facebook post, Pierson attacks the philosophies of economist Adam Smith, who through his invisible-hand theory pushed the notion that the free market was self-regulating. In another post, he describes himself as ‘Keynesian.’

‘I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn’t the market correcting itself?’ he wrote. ‘If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn’t it be able to overpower regulations?’

Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing ‘you republicans are so cute’ and posting an image that reads: ‘The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ‘em Die, Climate Change: Let ‘em Die, Gun Violence: Let ‘em Die, Women’s Rights: Let ‘em Die, More War: Let ‘em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?’

The New York Daily News reported that Pierson was “described by students as having communist views,” and “hinted he felt strongly about curbing gun violence.”

The silence about Pierson’s political views stands in contrast to the liberal media’s immediate reaction to the shooting in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 by Jared Lee Loughner, who shot and killed six people, and wounded 13 others including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Many in the media suspected he harbored conservative views, which turned out to be false, and it led, for example, Paul Krugman of The New York Times to write, just hours after the incident:

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before…You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what hap­pen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

And there were many other such examples, as I documented at the time. But the fact that this latest shooting in Colorado does not neatly comport to the media’s depiction of such events, and thus to their supposed solutions, will make little difference in terms of lessons learned.

Quote:It’s safe to say Pierson really didn’t like Republicans and believes in climate change, gun control and abortion rights. Who does that sound like?