What makes for an acceptable academic degree?

Is your degree opening doors for you? Or put it this way; Is the degree being pursued suitable to get the job of your dreams?

We all know that a regular university degree from a western country is generally acceptable for pretty much all purposes. We also know that within that group, school ratings can definitely help to get the holder into top companies fairly easily. Think of the top consulting firms, they mostly recruit from the best schools. Other people can get into those companies but they would need to compete with a much larger application pool to be considered.

As we can see then, in the traditional school realm, there are ratings and perceptions of which schools are considered high quality. However, all of these schools would allow the holder to fulfil immigration, employment and further education requirements in pretty much all cases. Basically, if they are licensed to operate by a government educational authority, all is good.

Now, moving into the world of alternative educational providers, the degree seeker needs to be careful on what is acceptable. There are several basic requirements that could be useful to rate schools.

1. Accreditation – Many alternative schools try to run around in circles about this topic. For example, if they are based outside the US, they would say that the term accreditation only applies to US schools. However, for simplified understanding; Accreditation means that the school has been sanctioned by a central government approved educational body which also provides some form of supervision of educational practice and quality. This would be the equivalent to a ministry of education in most countries. In the US, these organizations are typically private but would be recognized by the US department of education or CHEA. The simple way to measure is whether the school is listed in the international handbook of universities.
2. Professional Development – While every university should provide instruction to help with the development of a student, we could take this from the angle that the school is not fully accredited but is legal from the perspective of issuing degrees. In this case, they could have failed the test for #1 above but at least is making some efforts to enrich the lives of the students.  One example that comes to mind would be Rushmore University. While they have an arrangement with CMI UK to accredit some of their degrees, the school is not formally accredited. However, they would train students to publish academic articles which ultimately, develop their research and writing skills while learning a new subject. Another example would be Gull University which works mostly with large corporations in emerging countries to practice “action learning” and earn a practical degree in the process. The graduate of such schools would walk away with new skills in the end. In contrast, one could attend a one-week executive development course at Stanford or MIT for over $10,000.  In other words, the student could see the degrees from these schools along the line of professional development and that is at least a base line requirement.
3. New University – Just to clarify in one last category. There are some legitimate schools that may not have accreditation currently but was just incorporated and would be in the process of developing such capability. In that case, the applicant can make a judgment on whether this school has good intention and offers real value. In many cases, these schools would have had approval from the local state educational body anyway.

We have spent many years following this subject and read many forums on all kinds of educational models. The bottom line is that if a school is not fully accredited, then unless the degree is just needed for social purposes, its best to be careful about such. Many of these providers do have good intentions but the other ones with bad intention do not help this group.

A simple test of any degree would be immigration or government employment acceptance. If the degree cannot be used for either of these, then it’s best to stay away.  Surprisingly, many large corporations will not verify if a degree is accredited as they focus more on the experience of the individual.

Many times people fall prey to these unaccredited schools since they already have many years of experience and training which these institutions try to exploit. However, many legitimate schools are offering ways to convert various credits in a much simpler way nowadays. A good example would be Western Governors University (wgu.edu).

It’s important to seek out the best educational opportunities and enrich your development to compete at the highest levels in the job market.