Like the substitute teacher who sits in lieu of the contracted teacher,
the distance learning college works in the place of the actual college one would
drive to, take a bus to, or live on campus at. And like the substitute
teacher who has the same credentials and concerns for the evolution of learners,
the distance learning college has the accreditation and acclaim that the physical,
real-time college has. Or it usually does. What you have to watch
out for are the phonies, the fakes, the distance learning colleges that are
giving distance learning a bad name.
The kind of distance learning college to undermine the legitimacy of online
education is the one which, first, is not accredited. An accredited distance
learning college is one which meets the standards set by the state’s,
province’s, or country’s accreditation body, agency, or board.
In the U.S., for instance, the Department of Education (the DOE) oversees and
regulates American universities, though each state is responsible for its own
higher learning authorization standards.
This where a distance learner can get into the wrong kind of distance learning
college: because unscrupulous and greedy money mongers can be “licensed”
to run a business (in this case, the business of running a degree mill, a fake
college); because every state has different ways of regulating standards, and
because con artists and scammers claiming to be legitimate e-universities will
link their pages to the real sites of DOE or of the Council of Higher Education
Accreditation (CHEA), the learner seeking the valuable online degree will be
duped. He or she will read the website’s claim of being accredited—or
will infer from the official links or the way the text is worded, in lies, or
implications, that the institution is accredited when it is not—he or
she will pay unreasonably high fees, will sign a few documents (and do very
little actual work or studying), and will “graduate” online…with
a bogus degree.
The safest thing to do before signing anything or paying any amount, then, is
look for the distance learning college accreditation info. Or ask directly
about it. When the said distance learning institution names an accreditation
agency—whether it is DOE or CHEA in the U.S., The British Quality Assurance
Agency for Higher Education in England, a named Private Colleges Accreditation
Board in Canada, or any other Authoritative body—contact that named agency
and check to see that the school is in fact accredited. NOT just licensed
to do business. Because that’s their business: to take your money
and leave you with a fake degree you will find about as useful as a pig farmer
posing as a substitute teacher for your epidemiology class.
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