dimanche 25 août 2013

Education scams: What's the solution?

Education scams are a growing problem in the U.S. Everywhere you look, there's a new "university", or "institute" sprouting up and offering worthless, unaccredited degrees for a huge price.



The most famous of these right now is "Trump University", which is finally getting sued by the state of NY for false claims and illegal business practices. Some suckers students paid as much as $35,000 to attend seminars and were made to believe they were going to meet Trump himself. As everyone knows, being with Trump for 5 minutes is guaranteed to make you wealthy like him :D



This "Trump University" is emblematic of a much bigger problem. Besides these phony business "schools", there's a growing number of "alternative" health, and "holistic" nutrition schools that hand out unaccredited degrees just for attending a few seminars or taking online tests. For a hefty price of course, and they have no educational requirements for admittance. It seems most people who call themselves "health coaches" these days have these phony degrees. Many of these people have little to no real education or real training in health, nutrition, or physiology(strangely, and sadly, I know some people who managed to get advanced degrees in biology or pharmacy who still thought it was a great idea to get "holistic" degree to become a "health coach").



These degrees are unaccredited and essentially worthless if they should want to get a real education or get a real job in health-care. These places are essentially no different from diploma mills; they use seminars and online tests or online classes to attempt to disguise the fact that they are diploma mills(this reminds me of successful pyramid schemes that use various underhanded tactics to hide the fact that they are pyramid schemes so they can legally operate).



So what can be done about this problem? Should the federal government prevent the use of the words "university", "institute" or "school" to only those institutions that adhere to some very strict criteria, the way it is in Germany?



According to Wikipedia:

Quote:








In Germany, it is a criminal offense to call an institution a Universität (university) or Fachhochschule, or to issue academic degrees, without authorization through an act of the respective state's Ministry of Education. It is also a criminal offense to falsely claim a degree in Germany if it is not accredited.



Diploma Mills



Although this problem isn't unique to the U.S, since I am American I am most familiar with how education scams operate in my country. Any ideas or suggestions from around the world are welcome.





via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=264286&goto=newpost

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