Bacon's Rebellion

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Web Courses: UNVA’s Cautionary Tale

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by

Peter Galuszka
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UnvaBy Peter Galuszka

On these blog pages, you’ve read plenty about the supposed benefits of for-profit colleges being the wave of the future, especially if they are conduits for online instruction.

Traditional schools, we are told, are out of control with their arrogance, free-spending ways and Luddite attitudes about making their courses available on the Web. As such, they are doomed. No more ivy-covering brick walls while students read Homer on the lawn.

So, there is a cautionary tale about the University of Northern Virginia, a for-profit  school that has finally been shut down after 15 years. It has failed to win accreditation for five years and is suspected of being a visa factory for foreign nationals who are supposedly students.

As UNVA founder Daniel Ho told the Chronicle for Higher Education a couple of years ago, “I can sell degrees. I can sell diplomas. But I won’t. Who’s going to supervise me, control  me? Myself.”

State education regulators have audited UNVA from time to time, according to The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman, and they found such red flags as not reviewing their faculty or maintaining admission requirements for students.

Nothing appeared to involve online education directly, but the transition would be all too easy to make.

Assume you have a for-profit school with no faculty, no admission requirements and no standards. All that’s required is a credit card to buy rights to take a course. Do you really complete it? Did you pass? Did the credit card info include the degree in advance? Who knows?

These accreditation issues are at the heart of what worries reputable scholars such as Teresa Sullivan, who was momentarily forced out as president of the University of Virginia last year. Putsch plotters at the Board of Visitors had decided she was not embracing the online fad in an existential way. She replied, hey, we have online courses but someone has to mind the classroom.

So, remember this when you read all the verbiage on this blog about the Brave New World of online education.  Sure, it sounds great.  But the promoters offer very little in ideas about oversight so for-profit online shops won’t be diplomas mills like UNVA.

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8 responses to “Web Courses: UNVA’s Cautionary Tale”

  1. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Let me get this straight. UNVA, a diploma mill that does not provide online courses, is a cautionary tale for… online education? Really?

    Peter, my boy, You jumped the shark this time!

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    nothing about online but a lot about for-profit schools that ought to be cautionary for those who assert that private schools will be better than public ones through “competition”.

    you got a LOT of “competition” out there right now with for-profit schools but where are the rankings ? And exactly how does a for-profit school get in trouble with the Feds?

    You put a taxpayer-provided voucher in the hands of someone – and the for-profit folks will find a way to get it – and whether or not it’s a good value for taxpayer money is a whole other deal.

  3. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Gee Jim,
    Did I forget to mention that UNVA isn’t an online thing? Oh yes, there it is in the fourth paragraph from the bottom. Maybe you didn’t read that far.
    My point, which you have obviously missed, is that accreditation and standards are incredibly important for the online craze. If you are in a classroom, the professor can notice if you are you and if you are there. He or she can even check your ID. If you are thousands of miles away, who knows if you took your tests and did your homework? Or did someone else do it? His smarter brother, perhaps?
    The problem is something of a no-brainer.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Oh, I read your little disclaimer. But it doesn’t get you off the hook.

      Yes, accreditation and standards are important for online learning… just like they’re important for classroom learning. So, the real story is the hazard of accrediting marginal and/or fly-by-night educational enterprises.

      But that’s not the point you were making. You snidely concluded, “Promoters [of online education] offer very little in ideas about oversight so for-profit online shops won’t be diplomas mills like UNVA.” You’re trying to smear the concept of online education with the diploma-mill brush. Diploma mills are a problem whether they teach on-campus or online. Reputable institutions will provide reputable educations, whether the program is on-campus or online. The problem is the diploma mill, not the online education.

  4. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    “Smear online education?” Moi? Blasphemy!

  5. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    but notice that Bacon still has no real answer for how to keep people from being ripped off by these for-profit schools ….

    he cannot bring himself to say it… “government regulation”…..

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Of course, in a “small govt”, “less regulation” country what would have happened?

    I mean the whole thing sounds like the ugly jack boot thuggery of govt:

    ” Virginia officials have ordered a northern Virginia college that catered to foreign students to shut down.

    The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) on Friday told the University of Northern Virginia in Annandale to cease operations.”

    who knew? the gov can just go in and shut down a business!

    what happened to these folks natural property rights?

    HOLY Libertarian NIGHTMARE!

  7. Lift Avatar
    Lift

    I think that data lately show that it may be the traditional bricks-and-mortar schools that are having trouble proving that they are not “ripping off students.”

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