Fewer Schools Accept CLEP

[sanantone]

Can you name some RA degree mills? Is this just a snob type of thing? Are any State RA colleges degree mills? or just for profit?

UNC was a degree mill for athletes and many other students who took certain courses. They were able to turn in papers with a couple of lines of bad grammar and receive an "A." I don't know why you keep referring to RA. I made no distinction between RA and NA when it comes to degree mills and diploma mills. Any accredited school cannot be a diploma mill according to the federal government's definition of the term. An RA or NA school can be a degree mill. When I attended Western International University, which was regionally accredited, I learned absolutely nothing. The assignments were easy and didn't test knowledge of the subject. The instructors there seemed to care more about APA format than the content of our papers. When your sibling in middle school is laughing at your math assignments, then you know something is wrong.

The first school I taught at was a degree mill. If it were up to me, 80% of my students would have been failed out of the program. However, the administrators put pressure on us to accept sub-par work and give students an unlimited number of chances. If they can't read, then they don't belong in college; or, they need at least a year's-worth of remedial courses. My program chair got frustrated with me because I kept failing this student in a corrections course. If you don't know what deterrence is, then you don't deserve to pass.

[sanantone]

ITT Tech, the original University of Phoenix (though not so much the current one).

Real work was done, but it was sub-par. I know a guy from my CC who went to one such program. He had something like a BS in IT Security and Networking that he paid ~$40k for.
The kicker? Even in our most basic security course, he was constantly complaining about how much work he had to do. To get his original BS, he only had to take one test which was multiple choice, open-book, untimed PER CLASS. No papers, no homework, no reading, and (as he said), "Every answer was on Google."

Long story short, he basically couldn't get a job anywhere outside of retail.

It's not about being a snob or anything like that, its about avoiding a dumpster fire when you see one.

A few of my students at a for-profit college previously attended a community college and couldn't make it there. If you can't make it at a CC, then you know things are really bad. They came to our school and graduated. The downside was that the average wage for our graduates was low. I can't remember if it was $8 an hour or $11 an hour. Either way, that was pitifully low after paying $19,000 for an undergraduate certificate of lower level credits or $28,000 for an associate's degree. They could have paid $200 to get a security license in one week and made $11 an hour.

Oh, I have more. Most of our IT support people were graduates of that school. That's how they padded their job placement numbers. When they had to fix something on my computer, I knew more than they did; I just didn't have access to the administrator account to make the changes. I was standing over them telling them how to do their job.

[Life Long Learning]

It is not you. That is my own bias. NA = zero degree in the Federal Gov service in the 1980s and I picked up that bias with DOD. I was NOT allowed to get a NA degree in the late 1980s.

Looks like it may still be there? Not sure?
The DOD still has a bias against NA

Here a Grad student must have a RA degree
https://www.usfca.edu/student-life/stude...enrollment

One day I hope RA and NA will be equal.

I don't know why you keep referring to RA. I made no distinction between RA and NA when it comes to degree mills and diploma mills. Any accredited school cannot be a diploma mill according to the federal government's definition of the term. An RA or NA school can be a degree mill. When I attended Western International University, which was regionally accredited, I learned absolutely nothing. .

[Life Long Learning]

OK,

I know of many PAC-12 grads who can also only get retail jobs. Some are just lazy. No degree can generally compensate for that.

Reed College is not even in the to 20 (Salary after graduation data) even within the State of Oregon with
32 Rhodes Scholars—the second-highest number of any liberal arts college.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_College
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?...esc&page=1

Does that make them a degree mill? Talk about underachieving......

ITT Tech, which was recently shut down.

Real work was done, but it was sub-par. I know a guy from my CC who went to one such program. He had something like a BS in IT Security and Networking that he paid ~$40k for.
The kicker? Even in our most basic security course, he was constantly complaining about how much work he had to do. To get his original BS, he only had to take one test which was multiple choice, open-book, untimed PER CLASS. No papers, no homework, no reading, and (as he said), "Every answer was on Google."

Long story short, he basically couldn't get a job anywhere outside of retail.

It's not about being a snob or anything like that, its about avoiding a dumpster fire when you see one.

[Thorne]

Does that make them a degree mill? Talk about underachieving......

I don't know much about their curriculum, but I would assume not.

There's a difference between being lazy and not being taught adequately. Whilst in my CC, I witnessed a lot of people just doing barely enough to get by, even when they were more capable. Some of these guys with 20+ years of IT experience were outright failing coursework because they just didn't want to do it and some people in my age bracket (18-24) were going because mommy and daddy told them to and barely got C's. Enough to get by, not enough to excel. Like you said, no degree can compensate for this.

On the other hand, my alma mater actually teaches relevant material. People who actually get good grades at my school did earn it at an average level expected of many Texas-based, SACS-accredited, Community Colleges.

The trouble I see is when a for-profit, $400+ an hour school puts people $50k+ in debt to get a degree in IT Networking when I could talk that person under the table with what I learned at a CC. If year 1 and 2 courses offer greater knowledge than your entire 4 year degree, you're doing something wrong.

[Life Long Learning]

How well does the US Dept of Education website say your CC grads do? It list 228 Texas colleges. The link is below. I love this website. The best thing Obama ever did.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?...alary:desc

Most folks do not put much stock in degrees because in the workforce smart and lazy is a dud employee. The best educated employee in my office is the least productive....go figure! I see this in the Federal workforce all the time.

I don't know much about their curriculum, but I would assume not.

There's a difference between being lazy and not being taught adequately. Whilst in my CC, I witnessed a lot of people just doing barely enough to get by, even when they were more capable. Some of these guys with 20+ years of IT experience were outright failing coursework because they just didn't want to do it and some people in my age bracket (18-24) were going because mommy and daddy told them to and barely got C's. Enough to get by, not enough to excel. Like you said, no degree can compensate for this.

On the other hand, my alma mater actually teaches relevant material. People who actually get good grades at my school did earn it at an average level expected of many Texas-based, SACS-accredited, Community Colleges.

The trouble I see is when a for-profit, $400+ an hour school puts people $50k+ in debt to get a degree in IT Networking when I could talk that person under the table with what I learned at a CC. If year 1 and 2 courses offer greater knowledge than your entire 4 year degree, you're doing something wrong.

[dfrecore]

All 23 State schools in the California system (not UC's but ones that have "state" in their name) accept CLEP, and many take DSST's. Many are so impacted, it's a good way to get more people through the lower level courses and into the UL ones. When no one can graduate in 4 years because they can't get their first 2 years done, it starts to become a problem, and they figured this out and put out a system-wide memo that they would HAVE to take at least some CLEP exams from people. Each school gets to decide how many exams, and which ones, but in general, they will each take up to 30cr of CLEP.

They key is to find the school you want that will take the exams you want to take. It does no good to take the College Comp exam if the school you want to go to doesn't accept it, for instance - and most CSU schools that I've looked at will not take it. But some will. Some also will give 6/9cr for a foreign language, while others give 3/6.

[Thorne]

How well does the US Dept of Education website say your CC grads do? It list 228 Texas colleges. The link is below. I love this website. The best thing Obama ever did.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?...alary:desc

Most folks do not put much stock in degrees because in the workforce smart and lazy is a dud employee. The best educated employee in my office is the least productive....go figure!

Cool site! I'll have to use this during my grad school hunt to compare UG to UG success.
My school's average post-grad pay is just a smidgen higher than the national average in pay.

[Life Long Learning]

It is a great site. It has facts vs hype of college and university propaganda to spend $60,000 a year with them for a brand name with little ROI.

Cool site! I'll have to use this during my grad school hunt to compare UG to UG success.
My school's average post-grad pay is just a smidgen higher than the national average in pay.

[sanantone]

It is a great site. It has facts vs hype of college and university propaganda to spend $60,000 a year with them for a brand name with little ROI.

Students who tend to have the most debt, in general, are for-profit college students even though for-profits tend to be cheaper than private non-profits. There are a few possible reasons for this. For-profit college students may take out more loans for living expenses because they tend to be poorer. For-profit college students take longer to graduate. For-profit schools tend to give much less in non-loan aid. A lot of private non-profits have high sticker prices, but give so much in grants and scholarships that hardly anyone pays the sticker price.

Keep in mind that profession has a lot to do with salaries. Medical and health science schools will have high salaries because they're graduating physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Schools that graduate a lot of clergy are going to have low salaries.