In part seven, we look at the business of selling unearned degrees. Transcript of radio broadcast:
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
This week, in part seven of our Foreign Student Series, we talk more about accreditation of American colleges and universities.
To become accredited, programs have to meet quality standards that are set by an accrediting agency. In the United States, private organizations around the country handle this process.
Schools must be reaccredited every ten years, or sooner. They can lose their accreditation if they have problems that are not corrected within a given period of time.
For example, the George Washington University Medical School announced last week that it was correcting problems found by its accrediting agency. The medical school in Washington, D.C., has been given two years to meet the standards. School officials said the changes include writing more detailed course objectives and providing more study areas for students.
The process of accreditation is designed in part to protect against “diploma mills.” These operations call themselves colleges or universities but provide no real education.
In August, a husband and wife were sentenced to three years in federal prison in a case in the northwestern state of Washington. They operated Saint Regis University and more than one hundred other diploma mills. These businesses supplied worthless degrees to more than nine thousand people in the United States and around the world. The couple got seven million dollars.
George Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois, is an expert on accreditation who helped investigate the case. He advises students to get the exact name of a school they are interested in, then look for it on the Web site of a group known as CHEA. CHEA is the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The address is chea.org.
Make sure a school or program is accredited by a legally recognized accrediting agency before paying any money. Only legitimate schools and programs are listed on the site. It also lists the only legally recognized agencies.
Experts advise students to be suspicious of offers from schools that do not require much work or interaction with teachers. One warning sign is any offer of college credit for “life experience.”
And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. A link to the CHEA Web site can be found, along with our continuing Foreign Student Series, at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.
In part six, we discuss the quality control process used in U.S. higher education. Transcript of radio broadcast:
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Now, we continue our Foreign Student Series for those of you considering an American college or university.
One of the things you should make sure of is that the work you do will be recognized in your own country. Employers and schools are more likely to accept your American education if it came from an accredited program.
Accreditation is a process used for quality control. Across the United States, there are eighty accrediting agencies for higher education. These are private, nonprofit organizations. They develop educational goals, then examine schools to make sure the goals are met.
The first step is for a college or university to ask for accreditation. The school then measures its performance against the requirements.
After that, the accrediting agency sends a team of specialists to decide whether or not the school meets the standards. Accredited schools are observed every few years to see how they are doing.
Accrediting organizations must be recognized by either the federal government or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Almost half of all the agencies are recognized by both CHEA and the United States Department of Education.
Higher education groups created CHEA in nineteen ninety-six. But students who want to receive federal student aid must attend a school accredited by a government-recognized agency.
Foreign students might wonder why they should care much about all this. After all, foreign students in most cases do not receive aid from the United States government.
But accreditation is also meant to tell employers that your studies met a set of quality standards. And accreditation can make it easier to move credits from one school to another.
Seven thousand institutions and more than nineteen thousand programs were accredited by American organizations last year. Among them were almost five hundred foreign colleges, as well as foreign campuses of American universities.
All accredited schools and programs can be found on the CHEA Web site, chea.org. It also has advice about how to avoid worthless educational programs and accrediting agencies. We will talk more about that subject next week.
And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our Foreign Student Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.
