Silence?

I hate to K&R my own thing, but I thought this information was super useful. Does anybody know someone who wants to go back to school but can only pay $1000 a year? Anybody living out in the country without a reliable car and no way to get to class?

I did send it to a friend who is considering returning to finish a degree...

I need to tak a few classes myself. Awesome!

that would allow their students, for example, to transfer credits to established institutions.

I wouldn't put money into it without checking carefully first.

http://blogcritics.org/university-of-the-people-is-accredited-just-not-as-you-might-think/

The controversy surrounding such programs, though, concerns accreditation. Anyone can learn by reading a book, newspaper, or magazine. But can that knowledge be demonstrated at such a level that it will be transferable to legitimate, established institutions of higher education? This is the crux of the issue, one which often leaves aspiring programs like the University of the People out of national and international spotlights, not to mention failing to qualify their students for state licensure, certifications, certain career paths, or continuing with their education at established institutions of higher education.

On February 13, 2014, University of the People administrators announced that they had obtained national accreditation for their degree granting programs. Unfortunately, this “national accreditation” consists of accreditation by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC), a legitimate U.S.-based accreditation agency, but not one which carries much weight in the accreditation realm. DETC accreditation ensures that a program has proven to offer courses via distance learning, but it isn’t so much a recognized assurance of quality. The distance learning format could mean online or through traditional paper-based correspondence, and the accreditation is real, it’s just not what you expect when an institution of higher education states that it is accredited. This is a common problem in the prison education realm, as profiled regularly by Prison Education News.

SNIP

If the good people at New York University and the University of the People want to make a real statement of educational and academic rigor, then they must be honest and forthright about their accreditation status. Misleading students, and evidently even the New York Times, shouldn’t be a part of a public relations strategy in any manifestation. While, yes, obtaining regional accreditation is very expensive and can take upwards of 10 years, it would be better to seek authentic regional accreditation and to say as much rather than to assert that a different type of accreditation means regional accreditation. This just results in into shady business dealings and brings more questions to mind among those who understand the world of academic accreditation.

The only correct answer here is for the University of the People to right this wrong by ensuring that its students understand what its current DETC accreditation means: that the school offers quality courses via distance education, but that the courses will not transfer to most major colleges or universities and that degrees granted will probably not qualify students for state licensure. To fail to do so is to mislead students about their future career paths, even while offering a remarkable service to disadvantaged students in need.

You are absolutely right. I got overly excited about the fact that they're the first nonprofit online accredited degree program; I thought that the accreditation was the rarity for an online institution, but it's the nonprofit part. You did the research that I should have done.

Still, I would think that their computer science classes would be useful--I know plenty of people working as computer programmers who never got a bachelor's degree, but they can do the work. Four thousand bucks to get a quality education, even if the degree itself doesn't compare with a BS from another institution, might still be worth spending.

And they are partnering with some very respectable institutions, like NYU, the Yale Law School Information Society Project, the Clinton Initiative, Hewlett Packard, and the Clinton Global Initiative, among others.

You are absolutely right about the limits of the degree and especially of their accreditation, and I appreciate your doing the extra work of looking into this. They do say on their website that they currently don't accept credit earned at other institutions; I couldn't find anything either way about whether their credits transfer to other schools, so I would assume that they still don't. But I think this could still be pretty useful/cool for some people.

Thanks again!

benefit from an online program.

People just need to go into it with their eyes open and make sure it will meet all their needs.