Who is on "our" side?

[RespectableGent]

RespectableGent and Ham, I thank you for this interesting discussion but can we please return to the original question?

Really there seems to be so much opposition to what I believe is a basic individual liberty. It is in the US and elsewhere. This notion that a government sanctioned body must grant accreditation to an institution (even if that institution is licensed by the state,) for it to be considered valid.

Now I myself am not a political office holder, I am not a judge or a lawyer, I do not have a newspaper that I publish. I am without power or influence. But I really want to know if there are any individuals or groups who support the cause of acedemic freedom.

I want to do more than just talk about it. I want to take action.

There's no action to take because Regionally Accredited colleges are already giving out degrees for little work and no study. They call it competency based evaluation and say that they're measuring your skills through a series of aptitude tests, and trow some pdf's in your face which imply that taking a series of aptitude tests is worth as much as a Harvard education. These places are already walking the borderline between scam and school.

When the CHEA puts out its yearly warning pamphlet about what to look for when spotting a diploma mill they say that it may be a diploma mill if there are too few assignments and if the fees are charged as a lump sum. That's all they say to look for. That's all the CHEA can quantify as a diploma mill. Anything else and they start including their own ranks.

Are you discarding DE because it doesn't take place in a classroom?
You are free to have your opinion.

Yes, I'm discarding it.

Most DE schools are scams. Look at the University of Pheonix, for example. They operate on a short paper curriculum. For each class one must write a one page short paper. It doesn't matter how much you learn, or if you only spent a few minutes flipping through the basic concepts. UoP just wants the students to write a short paper, which is entirely objective, so they can pass them through and go on to pretend that thy have a curriculum.

Any school who wants you to do work without studying for it is just out to take your money. A real school would be interested in teaching and offering learning opportunities.

With some of these schools (regionally accredited) you can learn more on a family hiking trip than with their entire test/write-out-of-school scam program.

RA schools have done more harm to education than diploma mills will ever do. They've made the entire idea of higher education questionable. That's why no one can pin down what a diploma mill is or is not - because these so called "real" schools are capitalizing on the same thing. Going to school isn't about learning anymore.

They do the same thing at the High School level. Don't want to go to High School? Just walk over to your nearest adult education facility and "Test Out" with the GED.

So what should be done about it? Nothing. People just need to realize that all colleges and universities are nothing more than CORPORATIONS out to make a buck. The entire concept of higher education is a scam. There are no "standards" in quality.

A degree is only a piece of paper. Like money and religion, its value is in the eye of the beholder.