Academic Freedom Under Assault

[Virtual Bison]

The accreditation cartel nearly blew a gasket when Bush suggested measuring outcomes so that accreditation might actually stand for something.

It's hard to measure learning outcomes when you have a bunch of sleezy for-profit institutions which operate on "short paper curriculums," such as University of Phoenix.

Students can complete a degree attending one day a week in under a year. Rather than take a comprehensive exam at the end of each course like at most universities, at UoP the students write a short paper on the course topic because it allows the instructors to pass their students through and keep the tuition checks coming in. Basically they took the classic "write me an essay, everyone passes!" model and turned it into something they can charge tens of thousands of dollars for.

I believe the owner of UoP is actually a billionaire.

U of P actually has a sorded rep. If you check Online Degree Reviews there are several complaints about the school. I do know a woman at my work who got her MBA there. It did not seem to help her career all that much.