Alcott Center for Educational Research

CER to undertake evaluation of foreign educational credentials from mid-2009

2009-06-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

The Center is to offer services in the evaluation and interpretation of foreign educational credentials. From mid-2009, the Center will absorb the work previously undertaken by Marquess Educational Consultants, a foreign credential evaluation firm established in 2005 by the University President, and will therefore build on an established reputation in the field. The Center works particularly with the most complex and difficult cases in credential evaluation, and provides consultancy and expert opinion on an advisory basis. Since 2005, the business that has now been taken over by the Center has provided over 1,500 expert opinions on education for use before the United States Government Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) and consulted on over 10,000 cases.

At present, the Center will accept requests for evaluation only from existing clients, and not directly from the public.

Less homework? That's the right answer

2008-09-24T12:21:00.000-07:00

From The Times
September 24, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/richard_morrison/article4810130.ece

Less homework? That's the right answer

The mental oppression of leaving school for the day, and then facing hours of slog, alienates many

Richard Morrison

Some poems strike a chord. Others ring a bell. But Philip Larkin's Toads bongs like Big Ben inside my head. If I had my life again I would change nothing except the mental affliction that this sad, sardonic masterpiece describes so pithily and accurately. But changing that would change everything.

“Why should I let the toad work squat on my life?” Larkin asks. But, deep down, he already knows the answer - as all workaholics do:

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on.

The toad work has certainly squatted on my life. It has controlled, constrained and coloured (or discoloured) it. There aren't many waking hours when I'm not thinking about it. And of the 12,000-odd days that I've notched up as a theoretically free-willed adult, far too few have passed without me bowing to work's whims.

Like Larkin I am envious of those who can blithely murmur “easy come, easy go!” when demands for their labours intrude on more enjoyable activities. He suggests that the toad work has ganged up with a fellow amphibian burrowed in his soul, stopping him from breaking free. In my darker moments I can relate to that.

Only in one respect do I differ from Larkin. I don't think that it is fear - of losing my pension, upsetting the boss, or whatever - that keeps me in this work-addicted state. It's guilt. And I know exactly where and when that guilt originated. At school, 40 years ago.

The school was, and is, a fine institution. But as with most independent London day-schools, competing fiercely for kudos and Oxbridge places, it tended to instil a feeling that nothing could be achieved in life without hard slog - hours and hours of it, after school, every evening. At 14 I was doing two hours of homework a night; by 17 it was more like five. Consequently my A-level results were sparkling. But my social life was the opposite. Even at parties, the memory of quadratic equations still to be solved and irregular French verbs left unconjugated hung over me like a cloud. As for any interest in the world outside, how could I develop that? There weren't enough hours in the day.

What's worse, the nagging sense of guilt if I wasn't working persisted through university and into my adult life. It lingers even now, this feeling that time not spent doing the job is time wasted. The one saving grace is that, by chance, I fell into an occupation that takes me to fascinating places to report on fascinating people. Otherwise, I think my horizons would be as narrow as a Victorian alley.

Homework has a lot to answer for. It doesn't mess up every child. But the mental oppression of leaving school for the day, and then facing hours of slog, alienates many. And there's another sizeable minority in whom it triggers a cosmic conscientiousness, out of all proportion to the task at hand, that will blight the rest of their lives, impinging not just on social activities but on their responsibilities as parents too. Which is tragic, because those are the very people whose work ethic and intellectual capability could be so vital for society, if properly balanced by a healthy attitude to recreation and family life.

In the 40 years since I last wore a blazer, the culture of excessive homework, especially in “high-flying” schools, has become far worse. There is one obvious reason for that. Education is now controlled by a generation of politicians who, on the whole, have no cultural hinterlands themselves - no interests outside politics. So they find it almost impossible to understand the value of giving children the time and opportunities to discover the infinite richness and possibilities of life, whether that means striving to sing like Amy, cook like Jamie, or spin like Monty. The narrowing of the British educational curriculum over the past 30 years - pushing art, music, sport and drama to the margins or beyond - has been shocking.

At the same time the fetish with league tables has forced teachers to turn schools into fact-cramming, rote-learning factories in which narrowly focused lessons are reinforced by stacks of homework. Our education system is now as blinkered, as grindingly utilitarian, as in the era mocked by Dickens in Hard Times. Is it any wonder that so many school-leavers have no pastimes except shopping, watching telly and binge-drinking?

So the news that one leading state school has announced a huge reduction in its homework requirements, releasing five or more hours each week for a broader exploration of the world, brought joy to my heart. Especially as Tiffin's initiative seems to be part of a wider move among free-thinking schools to recognise - or rather, recognise again, after decades of denial - the importance of non-curricular activities in the nurturing of a rounded individual.

The question is whether this trend can be turned into a sea-change. Don't underestimate the difficulties of doing that. Thousands of playing fields have been sold. There are far fewer after-school groups such as scouts or youth clubs around. Many potential adult volunteers who could pass on skills and life-experiences are scared off by excessive red tape. Lots of parents are only too grateful if their kids get sacks of homework, because then they don't feel any obligation to devise activities themselves to stimulate their offspring's minds. And teachers have become so conditioned to following a narrow curriculum to the letter that many would feel terrified if asked to run “enrichment activities”.

But change the system we must. Piling mountains of homework on children is the surest way to turn education into drudgery. And once that happens, curiosity dies and a soulless, sullen, mechanistic compliance takes over. The lucky ones escape the system as soon as they can and start exploring the world properly. The unlucky ones never escape. Larkin's toad has got them in his clutches for life.

I know. I'm still there.

"It's time for the bold universities to go private"

2008-09-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/susan-bassnett-its-time-for-the-bold-universities-to-go-private-835572.html

"Susan Bassnett: It's time for the bold universities to go private

Another of my friends is retiring this summer. She works in one of the many countries where university lecturers all retire at the age of 60, but she will certainly not be giving up teaching or research. She is moving to one of the many private universities that cream off talent from the state sector, either by offering higher salaries and better working conditions or by taking on top-flight academics when they hit the age barrier. Other friends who have done this all say they wish they had moved years ago.

Here in the UK, we have not encouraged private higher education. There is only one private university, Buckingham, set up in the 1970s. But a sea change is afoot, barely noticed in the media and not trumpeted by the Government, which is sticking to its mantra about how expansion of higher education has led to huge improvements in quality, despite all the evidence from those who teach in universities to the contrary.

That sea change is a gradual process of movement towards private provision, a tacit recognition that the amount of state funding being put into universities is not enough. Over the past few years, fees have risen and student debt is rocketing. My daughter owes more than £12,000, which is apparently on the low side, though it doesn't look like that as she completes an MSc and searches for a job and somewhere to live.

University managers talk cheerfully about the point when the cap will come off fees, and they will be able to charge a great deal more for an undergraduate degree. We have yet to see what more will be provided by cash-strapped universities for those higher fees. No obvious changes were discernible when the first phase of fees was put in place, nor when that rose to the current level. Class sizes have gone on increasing, student contact hours have diminished, research time has declined and I doubt whether any academic who has been in a university for more than a decade could honestly say that anyone gets better value for money since fees came in. No one in government wants to think about the fallout from the prospect of raising the £3,000 fee cap, so instead universities are exhorted to get out and raise money from private sources – from alumni, business, industry, and high fee-paying students who fail to gain entry to decent institutions in their own countries.

Universities are all rushing into the business of fund-raising, setting up development offices and sending vice-chancellors out with begging bowls. Some money is trickling in, but nothing like the much-vaunted US example.

Research shows that there is deep seated resistance to making private contributions to state-funded organisations such as universities in the UK. Comparisons with the US are pointless – Americans invest capital in their former university because they can be certain that there will not be endless state interference. Here in the UK, about the only thing you can be certain of is that the state will interfere – in who is taught, what is taught and how it is taught. This level of interference impedes innovation and creative thinking. No wonder we have difficulty filling academic posts in certain subjects and suffer from a massive brain drain of talent.

But changes are afoot. In 2006, the College of Law, a private, specialist institution, was given degree-awarding powers. Last autumn, the BPP College became the first commercial enterprise to offer higher degrees in law and business. These ventures have been approved by the Quality Assurance Agency. Other bids are in the pipeline from other companies. Meanwhile, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has approved the development of courses up to the equivalent of A-level by three companies, McDonald's, Flybe and Network Rail. A trend similar to that seen in the health service is apparent – privatisation is creeping in, aided by government, even as ministers try to conceal the fact that it is happening.

It is highly likely that private providers will offer an excellent service. Across the world, private universities have flourished, often for a very long time. On the Continent there has been a proliferation of private universities, some of which are extremely good and have attracted first-class academic staff and high quality students. It is, perhaps, not so far-fetched to think that some of the bolder UK universities may soon raise enough money to stick two fingers up to government and set off down the private path, knowing that they would be in good company internationally and could finally offer students a quality education. But at what cost to the system?

The writer is pro vice chancellor of the University of Warwick"

The Alcott Center comments: In general, an article that makes some excellent points. However, private status within the web of government constraint, as is the case with BPP and the others mentioned here, is not truly private status at all - it is simply a state institution under private ownership. A genuine free market in education requires that its providers are free from overbearing regulation in order to compete at the level of market demand, and not be shackled for the sake of keeping the weakest of their state-owned competitors afloat.

School of everything

2008-04-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting idea: http://www.schoolofeverything.com/

Via Brian, who includes some interesting thoughts. The concept of a "knowledge exchange" is a good one,
particularly since informal education and its formal cousins
need to develop a closer relationship.

“Neither Irish, nor a university” – Some observations on the Irish International University controversy

2008-01-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

by John Kersey

This week, the BBC has been broadcasting an investigative feature on the Irish International University that has been revealing to say the least. The candour with which its honorary chancellor, Professor Jeff Wooller, now a tax exile in Monte Carlo, openly admitted that the university was “dodgy” was refreshing, if somewhat worrying.

The BBC is right to highlight the poor quality and misleading practices that are characteristic of some private sector institutions. In the case of IIU, its claim of independent “accreditation” was shown to be by a body of its own creation, while its governing council, by the admission of its honorary chancellor, did not exist. Nor did the claimed campus in Ireland, which was in fact a mailbox.

There has been extensive negative publicity concerning IIU on the Internet for several years now, particularly emanating from Malaysia, where the university has been active. In the UK, IIU has operated through making arrangements with private residential colleges which have then offered courses that lead to IIU degrees. It is not an offence to offer overseas degrees in the UK provided it is made clear that they are not from a UK institution, and it is not suggested anywhere in the BBC’s report that IIU has been acting illegally.

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Roger Scruton on totalitarianism

2008-01-01T03:47:00.000-08:00

"A state may also be defined as totalitarian on the grounds that it does not permit autonomous institutions in any sphere in which the state has an interest - e.g. in education...."

Roger Scruton, The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought, p 264

Peter Jarvis on learning

2008-01-01T03:46:00.001-08:00

"Learning is constrained by the sociocultural milieu into which individuals are born, it is directed through pressures exerted by social structures, and it is subject to control by the power elites."

Peter Jarvis, Paradoxes of Learning, 1991.

Deprogramming from the Academic Cult

2007-12-16T15:51:00.000-08:00

The CER has written about the way in which the Ph.D. has become in recent years little more than an apprenticeship for mainstream academia, instead of taking on the wider societal significance that has marked the doctorate out through history. The article "Different routes to the doctorate" is particularly relevant here.

Further food for thought comes in this 1999 article by Margaret Newhouse. Her perspective is more mainstream and less non-traditional than ours. But she nevertheless makes valuable points such as,

"One of the recurring themes from my mail has been about "deprogramming" from the cult that academic research careers are superior to others. Graduate students spend years in a culture that views academic careers as the crème de la crème (this is especially true at elite institutions), and pretty soon they begin to believe it. Not pursuing an academic career can be seen as settling for second best, if not downright failure."

At EAU, our doctoral students are there precisely because they have chosen a path that doesn't fit into mainstream academia. They challenge the cult; and in doing so they redefine its parameters and question its legitimacy. They also question the intellectual basis of a system which - in the time-honored fashion of doctrinaire socialism - relies on patronage rather than on merit.

A further article in the Chronicle of 2004 revisits these issues. The pseudonymous author writes,

"For all its claims to the contrary, graduate education does not seem to enhance the mental freedom of many students, some of whom are psychologically damaged by the experience. As Newhouse suggested -- perhaps more rhetorically than seriously -- graduate school these days seems to have a lot in common with mind-control cults...

For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar. Reading through it, your initial tendency may be to laugh out loud. But proceed down the list and the parallels between cults and the experiences of many graduate students can become mildly disturbing.

Hassan calls his outline the "BITE Model," which stands for behavior, information, thought, and emotional control. Let's review a few of the traits of each category and see if any of them sound familiar.

Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."

Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."

Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."

Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"

Are you experiencing some shock of recognition? I was particularly startled when I learned that recent college graduates are one of the groups most frequently targeted by cult recruiters."

The writer, himself a mainstream assistant professor, has hit the nail on the head. What he has identified is the tactics of the mainstream academic system as it seeks to preserve and concentrate power in its chosen structures - the tenure system, the campus, the precepts of the teaching unions - and to resist and demonize all external competitive forces. Academic initiates are encouraged to "believe in academia" and to embrace those structures as the price of their initiation.

His comment "What's the difference between indoctrination and professionalization, anyway?" echoes the above in as direct an indictment as could be desired.

In Memoriam - Raymond Spencer Rodgers

2007-12-03T03:25:00.000-08:00

Raymond Spencer Rodgers, founder and president of Vancouver University Worldwide, died in June. A notable educational innovator, he took VUW (a private global consortium university operating according to non-traditional principles) to international recognition, including the position of runner-up in the American Association of University Administrators' Khaladjian Award for Innovation in Higher Education in 1997.

In contrast to earlier times, when prominent BC politicians were happy to endorse VUW's work, much of Rodgers' last years at VUW were taken up with fighting political opposition to VUW from its commercial competitors and left-wing government appointees who were determined to falsely discredit the university (Canada's only private secular university), ride roughshod over its legal authority, and drive it out of existence. They did not succeed. At the time of writing, VUW continues in operation both within British Columbia (delivering theology programs) and outside the province (all other programs).

Rodgers summed up these problems as follows,

"In recent decades the unions of the BC bureaucracy, and certain post-secondary faculty and journalist union members, have mistakenly believed that a public-sector monopoly of post-secondary education could be maintained inter alia by stunting BC's domestic independent secular Vancouver University.

Throughout this period, since the commencement of the Vancouver Institute of Post-secondary Studies and Point Roberts WA Institute in 1970, Dr Rodgers has endeavoured to explain the folly of this strategy. He has also for decades urged the few struggling domestic BC independent institutions to network for collective strength, and to express appreciation for exceptional public sector individuals who at times tried to put broad social benefit above petty, narrow, public-sector-union covert bully tactics.

The BC governments (Social Credit Party) of the Seventies and Eighties could have provided the basis for a healthy domestic independent post-secondary sector in BC [and an example for all of Canada] if they had extended their partial funding of non-profit independent schools to the secular non-profit post-secondary sector.

The failure to do so set the ground for the unhealthy contemporary state of the post-secondary sector in BC: one in which the public institutions and bureaucracy have generally denigrated domestic BC independent post-secondaries and thereby unwittingly invited a flock of satellite programs to parachute into the province from abroad. [A collateral problem has been the self-defeating habit of the few BC independents themselves snidely denigrating each other]."

The obituary published by the AAUA reads as follows:

"Raymond Spencer Rodgers, long-time member of AAUA, member of the Board of Directors, and site-host for the 2006 AAUA Summer Assembly departed this life on June 5, 2007.

British by birth, Raymond was adopted during World War II by his American step-father and then spent most of his life in Canada. After serving in Canada’s military, parliamentary press gallery, and government—and following the completion of his Ph.D. degree in government from Columbia University—Rodgers began life as an academic. He taught for a short time at the University of South Alabama prior to his appointment as an associate professor at the University of Louisiana Lafayette (then the University of Southwestern Louisiana). Alarmed by Louisiana’s lack of attention to preserving its French language heritage, Raymond initiated a much publicized challenge to Louisianans for the preservation of their heritage cultures. Those efforts, and his subsequent efforts to help found the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, led to him being recognized as a important figure in the French preservation movement of the late 1960s and to his informal designation as the intellectual father of the Cajun revival.

After returning to Canada, Raymond expanded his interests to focus on the educational and cultural impacts and potential benefits of technology. In his 1971 book, Man in the Telesphere, he specifically predicted the development of an “electronic web” (the Internet) and discussed the social and educational impacts of such a phenomenon. Connecting with his other interest—the preservation of French-Cajun culture—Raymond cited Acadians as an example of dispersed cultures that could be revitalized into living communities by means of “electronic presence.” (Today we would refer to this as an Internet-based virtual community.) Clearly, Raymond was a pioneer thinker in the potential uses of electronic modalities to enhance education specifically and life in general.

At the time of his death, Raymond was serving as President of Vancouver University Worldwide, dubbed by the Vancouver Sun as the world’s first global university consortium. Consistent with the creative and intellectual leadership he had demonstrated during the early decades of his academic life, Raymond was a catalyst for the expansion of access to university degrees through consortia-based programming. His continuing efforts to challenge bureaucratic constraints and to confront traditionally held limiting perspectives resulted in a vigorous extension of the British university model to settings previously not considered.

Raymond was appreciated by his AAUA colleagues for his insights, intellectual vitality, challenging perspectives, good humor, and generosity. Through his work as a member of the Board of Directors he helped to significantly advance the organization. He is survived by his wife, Lola, who is known to many AAUA members through her attendance at past assemblies."

Rodgers summed up a number of the issues regarding the recent conflicts involving VUW in a discussion at Inside Higher Education in January where he defended VUW's policy on the award of prior credit for educational experiences outside the classroom, and pointed out VUW's pioneering role in that process. Here, as so often, the private sector was leading the public sector, but saw the proper credit for this pioneering action stolen by aggressive public sector supporters.

"Worldwide (adjective) Vancouver University has granted credit for credible prior learning assessment for 36 years. We actually commenced a few months before Excelsior (then Regents) and Thomas Edison State College, etc. The credibility of our programs is to be readily noted at http://www.VancouverUniversity.ca/alumni.php Our problem, however, is summarized in the third text paragraph at http://www.WorldwideUniversity.edu/worldu.php

Because of this problem, we are regularly defamed by people like [Alan] Contreras [administrator of Oregon's "Office of Degree Authorization"], [John]Bear [distance education writer], and public-sector union activists in Canada. We get silly remarks like one in Wikipedia saying that we have been controversial in the “national” (i.e. US) media — when in fact all that happened in that context was that USA Today simply parroted Contreras’ ODA list. It later published a correction — but only in print, not on-line! The copy-cat process in the United States means that Contreras’ list is repeated by various state and other agencies, without any research into how valid or invalid it is to defame us insuch context.

We have supported PLAR for 36 years. We would like a little support back in turn.

Raymond Spencer Rodgers PhD"

Resources on the issues of bias, standards and related problems in mainstream education

2007-10-08T07:07:00.001-07:00

CER Resources

Resources on the issues of bias, standards and related problems in mainstream education

Resources on the issues of online, distance and nontraditional education

2007-10-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

CER Resources

Resources on the issues of online, distance and nontraditional education

Resources on the issue of accreditation

2007-10-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

CER Resources

Resources on the issue of accreditation

Resources on the issue of private sector education

2007-10-08T07:01:00.000-07:00

CER Resources

Resources on the issue of private sector education

Register of Independent Music Colleges in Britain and Ireland

2007-10-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Register is a UK-based independent directory (established in 2003) of examining and membership organizations for musicians, many of them small and long-standing, which exist outside state control and funding. Contact details and a brief description are provided for each entry.

Register of Independent Music Colleges

The IBC as e-University - A New Frontier in Global Education

2007-10-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

"It is today possible, to a greater extent than at any time in the world's history, for a company to locate anywhere, to use resources from anywhere to produce a product that can be sold anywhere."- Milton Friedman

"The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global-economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state...What the Net offers is the promise of a new social space, global and anti-sovereign, within which anybody, anywhere can express to the rest of humanity whatever he or she believes without fear. There is in these new media a foreshadowing of the intellectual and economic liberty that might undo all the authoritarian powers on earth."- John Perry Barlow, Thinking Locally, Acting Globally, Time, January 15, 1996, p 57

What is an IBC?
An IBC, or International Business Company, is a legal corporate entity created within the scope of an International Business Companies Act by a jurisdiction.

Several jurisdictions, seeking to attract international trade, have enacted IBC legislation in order to provide access to this uniquely flexible and highly effective corporate instrument. Although (as will be seen) exemption from domestic taxation is one feature of an IBC that may prove superficially attractive, it is the legal capacity of the IBC as an outstandingly flexible corporate vehicle that distinguishes it from the merely exempt company and instead gives it an unique status within international corporate structures.

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Buckingham and elsewhere - some viewpoints from the U.K.

2007-10-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

Forty years ago, British universities regulated themselves in a culture of independence. Government was prohibited by a Treasury minute from interfering with the administration of the universities, which were regarded as sovereign institutions, and such government bodies as there were (including the University Grants Commission, which was founded in 1889) were generally remote and strictly non-interventionist. Academic standards were regarded as a matter of common agreement between institutions, largely maintained by means of external examining. Reading statist material on the universities now, one would never imagine that the stifling web of university regulation was such a relatively modern encumbrance. Those who wish to destroy institutions begin with the re-writing of their history.

The increasing dominance of the authoritarian Left and the negligent concentration of the free-market Right on areas other than education has allowed the ties between state and universities to become a stranglehold. Not only this, but statist academics have effectively ensured that their ideas now dominate the academic agenda and that academic appointments are largely restricted to those who support that agenda. That post-war period saw an expansion in university provision; in 1992 this was to be further augmented. More universities may not have resulted in a lowering of standards, but more universities certainly did not mean an increased variety or an increased choice. Rather, expansion led to ever more oppressive centralisation. The coming of the Research Assessment Exercise standardised postgraduate education to little more than a tick-box procedure whose blandness insults genuine innovation and subjects every subject to explicitly political strictures.

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Wikipedia woes: what happens when the neutral point of view isn't neutral?

2007-10-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

CER Report

In this paper we address a number of issues concerning online encyclopedia Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org).

Wikipedia seems like a great idea. An open access encyclopedia which anyone can edit, dealing with the majority of subjects of interest to the modern reader, all for free on the internet. And for many of its editors it is a great idea. Hours of (more or less) innocent enjoyment can be had in editing articles, sharing knowledge and discussing areas of interest with others.

Unfortunately, there's a series of problems attached to Wikipedia, and they have a particular impact on self-regulating universities.

In many areas of the project, editors will never come up against the difficulties we describe below. Even in contentious areas where there is obvious disagreement and divided viewpoints, the discussion is usually somewhat measured and an attempt is made to achieve neutrality. This is not the case in an area such as private postsecondary education where there are major establishment and political interests at stake, and where an establishment cabal is capable of exerting a stranglehold over what is allowed to be posted in pursuit of their own agenda. This area is unique because it is one where the establishment can only win on the basis of presenting its opinions as dogma. It cannot win on the facts alone, and it cannot win if the facts are presented in a genuinely neutral or balanced manner. The only answer is to ensure tight control of what is allowed to be presented on this subject and to hide behind arguments of public protection when challenged.

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The responsible choice? Some considerations in choosing between accredited and self-regulating universities

2007-10-08T06:48:00.000-07:00

CER Report

Faced with the multitude of online programs offered by universities, how does the consumer make a responsible choice? Quality has become a buzzword in contemporary university marketing, along with the word "accreditation". Yet the more the state shouts about quality and "consumer protection", the more it becomes clear that its statements concerning quality are not actually about quality at all.

"The credibility of voluntary accreditation has sunk so low that we have to do something dramatic if it's going to survive."
Dr Robert E. Atwell, President, American Council on Education, January 28, 1994

Professor James Tooley of the University of Newcastle in the UK puts the argument directly,

"Once a brand name becomes formed and known, customers — parents and children — have to be reassured about the quality of the service on offer. This government, and the previous one, thinks that the only way parents can be thus reassured is to have a hugely expensive and cumbersome apparatus of nationalised curriculum, nationalised testing, nationalised inspection, nationalised targets and nationalised league tables. But the problem with these state surveillance measures is that they become politicised. So, for example, instead of it being a matter of educational importance which testing procedures are used, what works best and what is most effective at raising standards, it becomes a matter of finding testing procedures which pass political muster; similarly the politically correct inspection procedures are mired in subjectivity and waffle. And throughout it all, mediocre schools can acquiesce in their mediocrity, and can always blame central or local government, or the class of children in the school, without addressing their own incompetence. In the for-profit private education sector, such an approach is not an option. The schools or colleges have as their raison d’être the provision of quality educational services. If they don’t do this, they’ll go out of business.
[Source: James Tooley, "Should the Private Sector Profit from Education? The Seven Virtues of Highly Effective Markets", Libertarian Alliance, Educational Notes no. 31, available here.]

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The University of the Internet Age - and why it's better than a traditional university

2007-10-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

The advent of the World Wide Web has caused fundamental change to affect the way in which information is disseminated worldwide. In this paper, we shall look at the way in which this change has brought about a redefinition of the role and nature of the university, such that we may expect a seismic shift in educational provision and its take-up in the medium-term future.

Historically, dissemination of information within higher education has depended on bringing scholars and learners together in a single location, where a variety of learning techniques can be employed (such as tutorials, supervisions, research seminars etc.) The expansion of numbers within the university has caused the lecture to be increasingly employed as a keynote of academic practise, but whilst cost-effective, the mass nature of the lecture is often considered to be an inefficient means of learning when compared to more personally-directed alternatives. Few would argue with the assertion that dissemination of information is at its most effective when directed one-to-one or in small groups, for this enables levels of understanding to be easily ascertained and intellectual debate to take place. The Oxbridge tutorial model of individual or small group mentoring is rightly held up as a supremely effective means of university teaching, and given that in itself it represents a direct continuation of the learning techniques bequeathed to us by classical antiquity, it may fairly be regarded as tried and tested. As a result, we would suggest that teaching in subjects that are not substantially practical in nature (such as the clinical stages of medicine, or fine art) could take the tutorial system, coupled with small-group seminars, as a worthy learning paradigm from undergraduate study up to the doctoral level.

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Collaboration between public and private universities - what are the benefits?

2007-10-08T06:46:00.000-07:00

CER Report

History shows that in respect of most private-sector tertiary institutions not controlled by the state or quasi-state organizations, collaboration with public sector counterparts tends to be isolated to particular cases and has not usually resulted in longer-term relationships.

At first sight, there appears to be much to be gained from collaboration as far as research and scholarship is concerned. Most private-sector institutions are deliberately excluded when it comes to the dissemination of what is often pioneering research conducted under their auspices or submitted by independent scholars for the purpose of assessment for an award. Learned journals are restricted to those associated with publically-funded institutions regardless of the merits of work conducted outside the academy, and that this discrimination is effectively justified on the basis of a cartel of vested interests rather than on genuinely scholarly grounds. This means that the academy loses out on the potential for genuinely innovative and unconventional approaches which are all the more at the heart of intellectual inquiry for their rejection of the mainstream.

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State licensing of private universities in the United States - a discursive examination

2007-10-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

CER Report

Part 2: Oregon and the ODA

Wyoming and other states such as South Dakota, Missouri and Montana that have taken similar paths are in a rather different category from states such as Oregon, which has adopted what comes near to a socialist law system when it comes to postsecondary education. In 1997, the state, acting in the interests of Oregon public sector schools, established what is now the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization (ODA) as part of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission (OSAC) as a consumer protection agency. ODA in turn vests its authority in a single Administrator (now Director) (currently Alan Contreras, J.D.) who is assisted by a program reviewer and a part-time administrative assistant.

The statutes that established ODA (ORS 348.606, 348.594 to 348.615 and 348.992) are covered by OAR 583-030 which sets out the framework for ODA and its scope of activity. The operation in-state of institutions that do not hold accreditation or that are not otherwise specifically approved by ODA is prohibited, as is the operation of such out-of-state institutions assisted by in-state representatives. ODA charges per-program fees for its program approval services, but will not evaluate doctoral programs from schools that are not regionally accredited, a position which is not explained or justified on its website.

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State licensing of private universities in the United States - a discursive examination

2007-10-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

CER Report

Part 1 - States excluding Oregon and the "Oregon group"

Historically in the United States, the control of the university title and the granting of degrees has been the preserve of individual states rather than Federal law. State laws on these areas vary considerably. Until the 1990s, in many states, anyone could form a university and grant degrees without further ado, and without the requirement of external authority, providing they adhered to the relevant statutes as far as they affected them. In many cases these statutes were not particularly restrictive. Since the 1990s this has changed in response to protectionism on behalf of the public sector against self-regulating private sector competition via distance learning, and it is now more likely that statutes will demand that external authority be sought for the operation of private universities, if such operation is permitted at all.

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Some observations from "Inequality and Progress" (1897)

2007-10-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

by the Revd. George Harris (later president of Amherst College)

Savagery is uniformity. The principal distinctions are sex, age, size and strength. Savages...think alike or not at all, and converse therefore in monosyllables. There is scarcely any variety, only a horde of men, women and children. The next higher stage, which is called barbarism, is marked by increased variety of functions. There is some division of labor, some interchange of thought, better leadership, more intellectual and aesthetic cultivation. The highest stage, which is called civilization, shows the greatest degree of specialization. Distinct functions become more numerous. Mechanical, commercial, educational, scientific, political and artistic occupations multiply. The rudimentary societies are characterized by the likeness of equality; the developed societies are marked by the unlikeness of inequality or variety. As we go down, monotony; as we go up, variety. As we go down, persons are more alike; as we go up, persons are more unlike, it certainly seems...as though [the] approach to equality is decline towards the conditions of savagery, and as though variety is an advance towards higher civilization...

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College Accreditation: A True/False Test

2007-10-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

by Frederick DiUlus

Here’s a college entrance exam no accredited college or university will ever give to their entering students. Perhaps they should if Truth is what they seek.

It requires answering three statements with either a True or False response. Each incorporates major ethical issues plaguing American higher education. The fallout of the answers may affect potential students everywhere.

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Of "Narratives and Nonsense"; A fundamental misunderstanding in the area of self-regulating schools

2007-10-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

William L. Anderson's paper "Narratives and Nonsense" (LewRockwell.com) puts its finger on one of modern academia's most pervasive problems, and one which is spreading from the traditional campuses into wider public discourse.

Definitions
A definition of the concept of "narratives" as it is formulated within Marxist literary theory is offered by Wikipedia:

In critical theory, and particularly postmodernism, a metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience" (Stephens). The prefix meta means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and a narrative is a story. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other 'little stories' within totalizing schemas.

This concept of metanarrative has been applied beyond literature to encompass a Marxist worldview that now dominates the arts and humanities on many campuses, and is carried forward into non-academic discussion, being applied especially to the interpretation of historical events and thus to contemporary current affairs, social and cultural developments. Anderson explains,

"The answer lies in the modern application of academic Marxism, for while Marx and his Labor Theory of Value have long been discredited among economists, the Marxian "narrative" and the "polylogism" of which Ludwig von Mises writes in Human Action have become the polestar of higher education. One cannot understand what is happening in disciplines such as literature, English, history, sociology, and the gaggle of "identity studies" (such as African American Studies, Womens’ Studies, Queer Studies, and the like) that are dominating much of the academic curriculum, unless one understands the Marxist mindset, with its emphasis upon "narratives" and power."

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Diploma mills - what are they and why are they a problem?

2007-10-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

CER Report

Executive summary
Diploma mills are entities that claim to be universities or colleges, but in reality are organizations that award "degrees" for a payment and very little or (usually) no academic work. Diploma mills often operate illegally and their existence devalues the work done at real online schools. During the past decade legislators, usually in the U.S., have taken action to stop diploma mills from operating. However, because this action has also been politically driven by accredited schools, it has had the additional anti-competitive effect of driving out legitimate schools that have chosen not to seek accreditation. This paper helps explain the difference between diploma mills and legitimate unaccredited schools, and also helps the consumer to understand the issue of schools that are legitimate but of low quality. It explains that accreditation is not a proxy for quality, and that the argument to the contrary is politically driven.

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No Campus? No Problem! Why the virtual university doesn't need a traditional campus

2007-10-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

CER Report

For the past hundred-or-so years, there have been legitimate correspondence schools, and more recently online schools, that have operated without a traditional campus or substantial offices. They have evolved a proprietary model of an educational institution as a diversified organism rather than one that is traditionally centralized. Since this concept is essential to non-traditional education, it is also important that it be understood fully.

Harvard College, now Harvard University, began with nine students and a single master. Princeton's first class numbered ten young men who met for class in the parlour of the Revd. Jonathan Dickinson. Yale began when local academics placed forty books from their own libraries on a table and called for the foundation of a college. Just as universities can begin with the fanfare of a multi-million dollar campus, so they can also grow from the grass roots, with some private institutions that are today well-established not far removed from their former bases in residential and small office properties.

The university of tomorrow can operate fully online. This statement is so important that we are going to repeat it. The university of tomorrow can operate fully online. The technology exists now - affordably, reliably and with high user-friendliness, to make an online university work, and work well. The online concept brings with it massive cost savings and increases in efficiency. It also does away with many of the things that traditional college students pay dearly for but don't actually need. It brings about a student focus that is an ideal match for the philosophy of non-traditional education, where the student, not the educational establishment, is at the center of their education, and the campus is wherever the student may be located - the "university without walls" concept.

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The legal basis for the operation of private universities ...and the myth of "external degree-granting authority" debunked

2007-10-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

CER Report

The legal basis for the operation of private universities is one of the most frequently misunderstood areas in discussions of the subject. Not unsurprisingly, this misunderstanding has at its root the desire to further the agenda and commercial interests of the public sector by claiming its own procedures and status as universal constructs. That these are false premises will be shown in this paper.

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"Regulate the Stew out of Them" - Public and Private Sector Education at War

2007-10-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

CER Report

An anatomy of the war between the regional accreditation agencies and their supporters, and the independent private sector

Preface
This article discusses events in education from a United States perspective with some wider thoughts for good measure. The phrase "self-regulating" is used to describe for-profit or non-profit institutions that have not sought or gained regional or national accreditation in the United States from an accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or Council on Higher Education Accreditation. This sector is distinguished from those institutions that hold regional accreditation, although some of these are also in the "private sector" in that they are controlled by shareholder capital or operated by private for-profit or non-profit concerns.

Although the term "unaccredited" is often used to describe these institutions, we are concerned that this term has become politicized by the public sector, describing "lack of accreditation" as a negative where in fact there are several positive reasons why an institution may choose not to seek accreditation. In addition, it is highly inaccurate to apply the term "unaccredited" to foreign institutions in countries where there is no system of accreditation applicable to that category of institution. Our search for a more neutral descriptor has led us to the term "self-regulating".

This article does not discuss professional or programmatic accreditation in the United States, and its reference to the national accreditation agencies is peripheral. While there may be some exceptions, it takes the view that these accreditors, unlike the regional accreditors, are not the most substantial part of the problems described.

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In Explanation of the Independent University

2007-10-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

"As we look towards the future...colleges will be judged not by what some educational bureaucracy declares but by what they can do for their students. "
Alexander Mood, The Future of Higher Education: Some Speculations and Suggestions, Carnegie Commission on Higher Education

What is an independent university? An independent university as discussed in this paper is a post-secondary educational institution which is not funded or controlled (directly or indirectly) by government. It is important to be clear that universities (such as a number in the USA) may well be under private ownership but nevertheless controlled by government or quasi-governmental institutions as a condition of access to public funds. The extent of government control usually embraces what is taught and how, and will also impose conditions on admissions and facilities to accord with government policies and targets. In general, it may be said that public funding always comes with strings attached.

Why should the issue of independence arise? Because in practice, the control of educational institutions by government is ultimately in conflict with academic freedom, which can only be maintained either under conditions of financial independence from government or given specific governmental commitments in law to allow university autonomy, and academic freedom is a vital condition for the pursuit of scholarship.

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A Wish-List: Some Specific Advocacy Goals for the Private University Sector

2007-10-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

CER Report

CER has identified specific goals in advocacy that are the outcome of its mission to support and strengthen the self-regulating private sector.

CER Calls for an End to Moves to Standardize Education Globally
In the United States, through UNESCO and through the European Union, there are proposals under consideration and in action that will destroy the historic and cultural roots of individual countries' education systems in favor of a homogenized universal system of curriculums and awards. CER calls for the recognition that diversity and innovation is at the heart of education, and that historic practices in postsecondary education should not merely be cast aside in favor of inferior alternatives. It calls for greater individualization of programs and greater independence for institutions to devise and carry out the programs that meet the needs of their learners.

CER Calls for a Return to University Independence and an End to Government Control of Universities
CER calls for governments to end centralized control of universities and to allow universities once more to regain the autonomy that they formerly enjoyed. It calls for a lessening of the massive bureaucracy that has been imposed on the university sector as a consequence of measures that do little or nothing to assure the quality and accountability that they claim. It calls for an end to public funds being used to artificially prop up universities that would fail and close if subjected to the free market. It advocates the funding of postsecondary education by the market rather than through state patronage which is wasteful and offers poor value for money. It advocates the end of bias towards authoritarianism, political correctness and the related false ideologies that have become a feature of most of today's universities and have been promoted vigorously by the accrediting agencies.

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Current Brain Research Applied to Education

2007-10-08T05:17:00.000-07:00

by Columbia Pacific University

Brain Functioning and Its Implications
A great deal has been learned in recent years about the functioning of the human brain. Studies have ranged from microscopic manipulation of nerve cells and their parts to elaborate statistical analyses and computer simulations designed to deduce cognitive functions.

There is, to be sure, a lot we do not know. In addition, it is often difficult to translate findings from laboratory and field research into useful practices for education in general, and the self-educating adult in particular. Nevertheless, there are some interesting and useful ideas for this course that can be gleaned from modern neurosciences. The following summary is excerpted and adapted from a valuable book on this subject, Making Connections: Teaching and the Human Brain by Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine (Alexandria, Virginia: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1991).

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Wholistic Education

2007-10-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

by Columbia Pacific University

Origins of Wholistic Thinking
Modern awareness of the breath and power of the perspective of wholism is based largely on the intellectual work of Jan C. Smuts. Born in 1870 of Dutch ancestry on a South African farm, Smuts had a brilliant and broadly ranging mind. At sixteen he attended Victoria College where he won first class honors in both science and arts. He pursued graduate studies at Cambridge where he became the first student in history to take both parts of the law tripos examination in the same year—and he ranked first place in both. Upon graduation he won first place in the Inns of Court honours examination in London. He read widely and published works in physical sciences (primarily botany), social sciences (principally law and international relations), literary criticism, and philosophy. After a distinguished career as a military and political leader and an international statesman, he spent his later years studying and expounding on the broad and powerful implications of a wholistic perspective.

Smuts enunciated the basic tenets of wholism: that there is a natural tendency found in a wide variety of systems—biological, social, cosmological, and others—for the evolution of ever larger and more complex wholes, and that these cannot be fully comprehended through analysis of their parts. In essence, in other words (for human dimensions), whether one considers a cell, a human being, a nation, or a world of nations, the whole is somehow, perhaps subtly but profoundly, greater than the sum of its parts.

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Modern Higher, Adult and Continuing Education

2007-10-08T05:11:00.000-07:00

by Columbia Pacific University

Modern Education: Strategy Not Content
Modern education, as we have come to understand it at Columbia Pacific University, focuses on strategy rather than content. In our modern society, the tide of the information revolution is rising around us. Increasing waves of new technology, new literature, new media, new politics, new cross-cultural exposures, and new risks to the planet wash over us day by day. As educators and as students (that is, as self-educators) we must confront the reality that our society’s data load is overwhelming. Interim responses within academia have been substantial, sometimes even heroic, but inadequate, for example:

‘back to basics’ (i.e. new content is irrelevant and transient),
departmentalization (i.e. the right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing),
specialization within departments (the index finger doesn’t need to know what the thumb is doing),
longer schooling (the median time in graduate school to earn a doctorate in the humanities in 1987 was 8.4 years; in 1967 it was 5.5 years),
adult and continuing education (part-time and off-campus students now outnumber full-time students in degree-granting institutions).

But the “Third Wave” (as Toffler puts it) is not merely one of quantity. Education’s response must involve a profound philosophical upheaval. We can no longer teach content. Our students will drown in it. We must teach thinking strategies which will enable them to swim in any ocean of data.

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Competency Education, by Columbia Pacific University

2007-10-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

‘Competency’ or ‘competence’ is an important term in education, but also one that is hard to define and elusive to use. It has been widely used to specify the links between educational processes and their applications. It is related to other terms like ‘skills’, ‘abilities’, ‘learning outcomes’, and ‘means of assessment’.

A competency (or ‘educational competence’ or ‘competency statement’) is a description of some particular skill, ability, body of data, or level of understanding of a particular subject which the student is expected to gain from some particular educational experience. In general, a competency has the following characteristics:

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European-University Press Publication: A History of the Central School of Religion by John Kersey

2007-10-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

European-American University Press in association with the Alcott CER announces the publication of "A History of the Central School of Religion" by John Kersey.

Description:
This book traces the history of one of the pioneers of distance and non-traditional education. The Central School of Religion, founded in 1896, is the oldest still-extant correspondence theological school. A concluding section addresses the distinctive academic dress of the School.

Product Details:Printed: 75 pages, 6" x 9", jacket-hardcover binding, black and white interior ink
Publisher: European-American University Press
Copyright: © 2007 European-American University Press
Language: English

Visit the University Press website to purchase

An interview with John Kersey, President of European-American University

2007-10-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

by Kathleen Lucia, EAU Vice-President for Public Relations and Administration

Why EAU? Does the world really need another university?
One of the main conditions behind the establishment of EAU was that it must bring something different and valuable to the global table. Many new universities originate in the desire simply to start a school that will then become a part of the prevailing educational establishment with whatever values this implies. EAU, by contrast, is the fulfilment of a very specific philosophy and spirituality that is clearly distinct from that of the current mainstream, and indeed that represents what amounts to a robust challenge to the dominant non-student centered approaches of today.

It is important to understand that the vision that EAU represents - non-traditional education - is a specifically political set of values, using that word both within its sociological and its wider context, and thence the foundation of EAU itself constitutes a political act within a context of religious activism in favor of the educationally disempowered. Carl Rogers in The Politics of Education says, "Time and again I have observed that if one teacher in a traditional system, without talk or fanfare, institutes a person-centered process of learning in one classroom, that teacher becomes a threat to the whole system. The ferment of responsible freedom and shared power is recognized for what it is - a revolutionary force - and is suppressed if possible."

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Some observations from Reinventing the Corporation

2007-10-08T04:31:00.000-07:00

by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene (1985).

It is essential to bring quality and accountability back into education, but it is not enough. We must go further and introduce the new skills that are appropriate to the information society, skills that are equally valuable in the classroom and in the corporation — thinking, learning, and creating.

Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information. The dilemma is that there is never enough time to teach all the information that could usefully be taught.

In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.

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Some observations from The Third Wave

2007-10-08T04:21:00.000-07:00

by Alvin Toffler (1979).

Children in industrial cultures were taught to tell time at an early age. Pupils were conditioned to arrive at school when the bell rang so that later on they would arrive reliably at the factory or office when the whistle blew.

Children began and ended the school year at uniform times.

By setting up mass education systems, governments not only helped to machine youngsters for their future roles in the industrial work force but also simultaneously encouraged the spread of the nuclear family form. By relieving the family of educational and other traditional functions, governments accelerated the adaptation of family structure to the needs of the factory system.

Together these three — the nuclear family, the factory-style school, and the giant corporation — became the defining social institutions of all Second Wave societies.

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Some observations from Philosophical & Historical Perspectives

2007-10-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

by Malcolm S. Knowles and Chester Klevins, editor of the compendium (of which this is a chapter): Materials and Methods in Adult and Continuing Education (Los Angeles: Klevins Pubs., 1987).

The concept of lifelong learning is accepted in most every country and culture throughout the world.

Education is no longer construed as something which children need in order to get ready for life. Rather it is embodied in the total constellation of living — requiring all people to learn new skills, and new attitudes and behaviors so they may better meet their survival needs.

Adult and continuing education (lifelong learning) can help provide a better quality of life for people here and throughout the world.

Adult education is, or ought to be, a highly political and value laden activity. When individuals are involved in education, they tend to expand their awareness of self and environment, their range of wants and interests, their sense of justice, their need to participate in decision-making activities, their ability to think critically and reason rationally, their ability to create alternative choices of action, and, ultimately, their power or control over the forces and factors which affect them — this is political action.

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Experiential credit for degree awards with particular reference to the non-traditional movement in the USA

2007-10-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

CER Report

The topic of experiential credit lies at the cutting edge of modern education and represents one of the principal challenges to the status quo within the mainstream educational establishment. This monograph will endeavour to define the concept of experiential credit, to give examples of where and how it may be found and evidenced, and to discuss its use in innovative degree programmes within the USA and elsewhere.

The idea of credit being given for learning that takes place off-campus or outside an academic setting, or that has taken place before a student's enrollment on a given course of study, remains controversial within mainstream universities, but has made considerable headway within the past twenty years. Such success is testament to the development of institutions initially outside the mainstream (principally within the USA) that have shown that these processes can be carried out in a way that preserves academic integrity, empowers the student and provides a qualification that is regarded by employers as worthwhile and focussed towards the discipline in question. Usually experiential learning can be assessed either through face-to-face methods at a campus or (and these days more popularly) via distance learning, requiring no campus attendance and enabling a degree programme to be integrated with the demands of employment and family.

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Universals and Particulars: A Tale of Two Places

2007-10-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

by Jerry L. Martin, Assistant Chairman for Programs and Policy, National Endowment for the Humanities.

My subject for today is the age-old issue of universals and particulars. But let me begin with a story, an account of two particular situations - a tale, as it were, of two places.

The first place is a prison in Pavia, near Milan, Italy. The year is 525 A.D., during the twilight of the Roman Empire. The person is Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius who, among other things, happens to have invented the problem of universals and particulars, at least in its medieval form. Boethius was a remarkable man, a Roman of the most noble birth - among his ancestors and kinsmen he could count many consuls, two emperors, and a pope. A child prodigy, he was given the best education of his day and became not only a scholar of classics, philosophy, and theology, but an expert in mechanics, music, and finance as well. He followed his family tradition of public service and, serving in one office after another, rose to become first minister.

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Some observations from the Carnegie Commission on Non-Traditional Education

2007-10-08T04:14:00.000-07:00

Almost as many Americans seek some form of education outside the established educational system as within it...There is, then, a very large group of people outside the formal structure of education with obvious educational needs. If society is to develop mechanisms to help meet these needs, an essential early step is to analyze the populations reached by the nonformal systems.

A new set of terms and concepts is being developed, some of which represent very old ideas and all of which, like other innovations, will doubtless be carried to a cultish excess.

The Commission believes that the potential of these approaches outweighs the possibility of excess. The rigidities of time, space, and academic credentialing have worked directly to foster elitism in higher education. The aims of education properly involve the achievement of competence, understanding, knowledge, and sensitivity. If attention is focused on diverse means to these objectives and not on rigid structure, many people not now thought to be "college material" can achieve these goals.

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Some observations from Degrees Through Distance Education

2007-10-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

by Robert Obradovic, Ph.D., Ed.D. (Granice Press, Toronto, 1987)

There are many adults who would like to earn a degree but are unable to take courses on a full-time, on-campus basis due to either work and family commitments or geographic location. The needs of these adults can be met through distance learning...

Accreditation is often misunderstood by both the public and those working in institutions of higher learning. One should not assume that an accredited college or university offers a higher quality of education than in institution that is not accredited. Furthermore, it should be noted that no accrediting agency ranks or grades colleges and universities.

While some educators argue in favour of regional accreditation as a means of maintaining the quality of education offered in postsecondary institutions, others have criticized any attempts at standardizing in higher education.

Recently, a Carnegie Commission report concluded that the major disadvantage of accreditation lies "in the suppression of innovation." The fear of not being accredited, it further argues, "tends to prevent colleges from striking out in new directions."

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Some observations from Self-Directed Learning

2007-10-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

by Malcolm Knowles (Follett, 1975)

It is a tragic fact that most of us only know how to be taught; we haven't learned how to learn.

There is convincing evidence that people who take the initiative in learning (proactive learners) learn more things, and learn better, than do people who sit at the feet of teachers passively waiting to be taught (reactive learners).

Proactive learners enter into learning more purposefully and with greater motivation. They also tend to retain and make use of what they learn better and longer than do the reactive learners.

Self-directed learning is more in tune with our natural processes of psychological development.

Many of the new developments in education - the new curriculums, open classrooms, nongraded schools, learning resource centers, independent study, nontraditional study programs, external degree programs, universities-without-walls, and the like - put a heavy responsibility on the learners to take a good deal of initiative in their own learning.

We are entering into a strange new world in which rapid change will be the only stable characteristic...This implies that it is no longer realistic to define the purpose of education as transmitting what is known. In a world in which the half-life of many facts (and skills) may be ten years or less, half of what a person has acquired at age twenty may be obsolete by the time that person is thirty.

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Some observations from The Future of Adult Education

2007-10-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

by Fred Harvey Harrington (Jossey-Bass, 1977)

Our colleges and universities can never again be described as exclusively the province of the young.

Older men and women already outnumber what the Census Bureau chooses to call "college-age" students (the eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds).

The experts say that the adult education revolution - if that is what it should be called - is barely under way.

Adult education has a wide range. It includes both further education for advanced professionals and activity below college level.

Much of adult education is elitist, but some of it is designed especially for the disadvantaged.

Adult education has been praised as a wave of the future and denounced as a threat to standards.

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Why Robert Burns was Right About Best-Laid Plans, or What's Wrong with the Curriculum the Way It Is?

2007-10-08T04:01:00.000-07:00

by Frank Heppner (an honors professor at The University of Rhode Island)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In 1987, I received a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for a project entitled "Rational Curricular Review for College Departments." Perhaps the most important finding from this project was that "Rational Curricular Review" is an oxymoron. When the project was over and it was time to submit the final report, I was confronted with the problem that almost nothing had gone the way it was planned. Since I was tenured, and in the possession of certain pieces of information kept in a strong box in a distant country that almost guaranteed my continued employment, I decided I had little to lose by telling the following, very-nearly true story; let it serve as a warning for other departments considering "rational curricular review."

What follows is an only slightly altered version of my report to FIPSE. As the condemned man said as the noose was being adjusted, "Well, I'm certainly never going to do that again!"

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Academic Jeremiad: The Neoconservative View of American Higher Education

2007-10-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

by Edward Jayne

Almost everybody agrees that education has deteriorated in the United States over the past couple of decades. From kindergarten through the Ph.D., the ability and preparation of students has been steadily declining, and, in response, our educational establishment has reduced academic standards to accommodate their more basic needs. At primary and secondary levels, teaching has been program-packaged to accommodate the lowest common denominator, and at secondary and college levels, core-curriculum courses have been de-emphasized in favor of electives posing little intellectual challenge. College tuition costs have become a major financial burden, but student-faculty ratios have increased, and overall real wages of the faculty per student credit hour (if part-time instructors are included) have substantially diminished. Today, approximately one-third of our college faculty are part-time instructors, and among permanent faculty the current emphasis on research no longer bears much relationship to the education of students. Often, in fact, the most eminent scholars teach few, if any, classes.

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Some observations from "Diplomaism" (1971)

2007-10-08T03:58:00.000-07:00

by David Hapgood

The diploma, then, is a way of measuring a person's conformity to the dominant culture. As the evidence presented in Chapter Two indicates, although the diploma does not tell much about a person's ability to produce, it does give the personnel department another kind of information about the applicant. It proves that he was docile enough (or good, or patient, or stupid enough: choose your adjective) to stay out of trouble for 13 or 17 or 20 years in a series of institutions that demand a high degree of unthinking conformity, doing things not because they made sense but because that was what the authorities wanted...By choosing the graduate, the personnel man gets a trouble-free, standardized part and, equally important, he pledges his and his institution's allegiance to the prevailing cultural values...

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Different routes to the doctorate - variations on a theme of Charles Franklyn

2007-10-08T03:57:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

In Deuteronomy 31:28, Moses says, "Gather unto me all the ancients of your tribes, and your doctors, that I may speak these words in their hearing, and will call heaven and earth to witness against them." What did Moses (or his translators) mean in choosing the word "doctor"? Certainly not a medical practitioner, nor one who had completed a three-year programme of research at a university under an academic supervisor, nor yet an honoured celebrity or financial donor to the campus. Rather, this quotation suggests an older, and indeed a more profound, meaning of the word that is of relevance as we seek to establish how the concept of the doctoral award may be defined and indeed redefined in today's world.

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Questions and Answers on the Non-Traditional Concept of Post-Secondary Education

2007-10-08T03:52:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

What is non-traditional education?
Non-traditional education is an established philosophy of education that places the student, rather than the institution or its faculty, at the heart of the learning experience. It understands that learning is an individual and personal matter and that learning can occur in both formal and informal settings. Crucially, it holds that learning that can be evidenced is worthy of being granted academic credit, no matter when or where it was acquired, and so the time spent on studying a subject is unimportant compared to what can be demonstrated as the end product of the learning. As a result, non-traditional learning places great emphasis on the demonstration of competences in the real world, and on learning how to learn. It is the educational equivalent of the saying that if you give a man a fish, it will feed him for a day, whilst if you teach him to fish, it will feed him for a lifetime.

Non-traditional education is a philosophy of individual freedom. Its theories can be found in a number of educationalists, including Carl Rogers, Jung, Maslow, Homer Lane, A.S. Neill and the other pioneers of the democratic school movement. In general, non-traditional education finds common cause wherever educationalists advocate learning as an individualised, lifelong process to be pursued at one's own pace, following one's interests and in one's own chosen setting.

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A Brief Word on Accreditation

2007-10-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

by Henrik Fyrst Kristensen

The term accreditation is chiefly relevant where discussing US institutions. Very simply put, there are a number of accrediting agencies, which in turn are recognised by a government authority. It is up to the institution whether they wish to seek accreditation, in other words, it is voluntary. However, there is a certain element of pressure involved to pursue accreditation, as the accredited institutions tend to attract much, much higher fees. In essence, they have to, because the cost of reaching and maintaining accredited status is staggering.

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An introduction to adult education - and the role of the private sector in it

2007-10-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

The concept of postsecondary education aimed specifically at adults has a long and at times controversial history. In the nineteenth-century, institutions began to offer programs that would form the foundations of contemporary night school and distance education offerings. These programs led to the concept of the "external degree", whereby a student could prepare at teaching colleges or privately for a degree which was then earned by sitting formal examinations audited by the degree-awarding university.

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An Introduction to Accreditation: What is it, who does it and what does it mean?

2007-10-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

Postsecondary accreditation is historically largely a U.S. phenomenon, although similar activities are undertaken in many other countries of the world today, and the word "accreditation" has its greatest usage and understanding within the United States. Although its roots are in the earlier part of the twentieth-century, university accreditation as a whole has seen its greatest growth in the post-war years. In keeping with the increased focus on "accountability" issues during the 1990s, accreditation has become an increasingly discussed issue in postsecondary education today.

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An Introduction to Non-Traditional Education

2007-10-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

Closely related to our discussion of adult education is the concept of non-traditional education. Non-traditional education, despite its name, is not new, and is not necessarily disconnected from traditions that predate our present educational mainstream. However, it presents what to many is a deliberate challenge to the way education is organized and conceptualized. Many find this challenge profound in its call to understand education as a holistic experience integral to the human condition.

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An Introduction to Distance Education

2007-10-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

by John Kersey

You might be forgiven for thinking that distance learning is a new phenomenon. Far from it – it is actually well over one hundred years old and draws on the extension models of the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Since that time, institutions have been giving men and women all over the world the opportunity to earn a college degree without setting foot on campus. Your college may be separated from you by a town, a country or even a continent; nevertheless your degree is awarded in recognition of the meeting of equivalent standards to those who pay their dues on campus.

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Who was Amos Bronson Alcott?

2007-10-08T03:03:00.000-07:00

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was one of the pioneers of non-traditional education within a spiritual setting. Along with Emerson and Thoreau, he was part of the Transcendentalist group of philosophers, and as such was a remarkable advancer of individualism in education. Acting largely alone and unsupported, Alcott undertook experiments in radical person-centered education at private schools that directly prefigured the non-traditional movement. Elizabeth Peabody said, "What I witnessed in his school room threw for me a new light into the profoundest mysteries that have been consecrated by the Christian symbols; and the study of childhood made there I would not exchange for anything else I have experienced in life."

Alcott's teaching methods and publications issued an explicit challenge to the conservative educational establishment of his time, and were met with repeated hostility and financial difficulties. However, he never wavered from his adherence to his principles. He asserted, pre-echoing many later non-traditional educators, that "Education, to be decidedly religious, should reach man's universal faculties, those faculties which contain the laws that connect man with his maker." In this way, Alcott was referring to the concept of holistic education, as well as confirming that the religious principle cannot be confined to a narrow training in religious subjects, but instead must permeate all educational processes.

Resources on Alcott:
The Amos Bronson Alcott Network (includes e-texts of Alcott's books)
Encyclopedia Britannica article
Bibliography by Paul P. Reuben

Launch of CER blog

2007-10-07T15:07:00.001-07:00

In preparation for the launch of the main European-American University website, which will also house the Alcott CER, we extend a warm welcome to the official blog of the CER. EAU has three official blogs in all - the general University conduit for news, views and information, and two specialist newsblogs for the Amos Bronson Alcott Center for Educational Research and the Arnold Harris Mathew Center for the Study of the Independent Sacramental Movement.

The CER is unique in being devoted to the study of private non-traditional education, particularly through distance and online methods. This is an area of scholarship which has not been covered in depth even by those few university centers that are concerned with the private sector. Broadly libertarian, the outlook of the CER is to explore alternatives to state control of the higher education sector, initially through both introductory and in-depth articles and reports written in an accessible style and suitable for the general reader with an interest in the topic at hand.

Inevitably a certain amount of the work of the CER consists in countering the propaganda and misinformation put about by state universities and accreditation bodies concerning private higher education outside state regulation, where crude anti-competitive arguments are often dressed up in consumer protection rhetoric. CER seeks to examine these arguments from an opposing perspective and where necessary, to show their falsehood. Equally, we must acknowledge that a lack of quality has been a serious problem within the private higher education sector in the past, and to that end the CER also writes on the problems of diploma mills and conducts research into that area on an ongoing basis.

Now with over 40 articles published or republished online, and its first book out in hardback via European-American University Press, one pattern that emerges particularly clearly from the CER's studies is the remarkable degree to which governments have been prepared to collude in blatant protectionism against private sector provision, and to regulate the private sector in such a way that it is unable - through cost or the nature of what it provides - to offer a genuine competitive threat to the state sector. Those institutions that escape such regulation and control find themselves vilified by the state apparatus. Key to the truth of this is that, where regulation is put in place, it uniformly fails to distinguish between institutions that are no more than degree mills and those which are legitimate private sector competitors to the state institutions. Alternatively, and more subtly, definitions of degree mills are put about that deliberately encompass legitimate self-regulating and progressive schools.

The public demand for private sector higher education has intensified since the coming of the internet, to the point where few self-regulating institutions have failed to survive simply through lack of custom (regulatory changes are the leading cause of closure). Such a market demand points to the folly of ring-fencing the state sector; by outlawing the competition, competing institutions simply decamp to more favorable shores abroad rather than contributing their profits to the national economy. This leaves the state sector unchallenged and turgid as academic conservatism and insularity within the "academic system" become a vital survival tactic. A more enlightened approach trusts the free market to determine the value of educational alternatives, and informs consumers as to their choices.

The CER draws on an extremely broad base for its advocacy. With the key points summed up in its "Wish List", CER elsewhere quotes spiritual, philosophical, political and educational writings that point towards the primacy and validity of individually-determined solutions to education in place of "mass" or "group" higher education for those who wish to take advantage of them. In an age where educational conformity and the greyness of institutional groupthink dominate the major campuses, CER offers a striking alternative perspective; one that empowers the learner and points the way to a wholesale root and branch reform of higher education as we enter the technological age.

This blog will provide links to each of the books and articles published or republished by the CER, with the intention of providing a snapshot of its public activities.