from Hacker News

Lorenz University: I can has degree?

by tommypalm on 3/21/11, 12:35 PM with 29 comments

• by ilamont on 3/21/11, 2:59 PM

  Diploma mills and for-profit schools take advantage of the fact that many prospective students assume that accreditation conveys legitimacy and quality, as determined by an official and/or independent authority.

  Besides the apparently bogus agencies cited in the article about Lorenz, established for-profits control their own national accreditation body, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). Another tactic is to latch on to national agencies that have traditionally served vocational schools and community colleges, such as the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). This is how the University of Phoenix has accredited its MBA and DBA programs.

  Regional agencies are regarded as the gold standard in the United States, but the for-profits figured out a way to game that system, too: Buy out small, struggling non-profit colleges that have regional accreditation, and then replace the old curriculum and mission with scalable, high-profit online programs. The regional accreditation transfers, although there's no guarantee it will be renewed the next time it is reviewed.

  One well-known example involved an obscure Catholic school in Iowa with 312 students known as Franciscan University of the Prairies. It was bought in 2005 by Bridgepoint Education, renamed "Ashford University", and turned into an online university with 42,000 students. It was nevertheless able to keep its regional accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, although it is apparently trying to transfer accreditation to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges -- the same body that has accredited Stanford, the UC and California State systems, etc.

  For more information about the for-profit higher education phenomenon in the U.S., I recommend the following Frontline special, "College Inc.":

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/

• by raganwald on 3/21/11, 3:08 PM

  I think I am going to start a degree-granting "University." I will give credit for life accomplishments, but my standards will be especially narrow and contrived. I will give credit for:

  - Commits to open source projects

  - Answers on Stack Overflow

  - Karma on Hacker News

  I will also require students to write essays, however I will permit the student to submit blog posts as essays. I will use PageRank or upvotes by Hacker News to determine the letter grade awarded for the "essay."

• by robryan on 3/21/11, 1:56 PM

  I wonder if this type of thing has been successful in landing people jobs that require a degree as a check off before an application is looked at and the employer never bothers to properly check the credentials.

• by bfe on 3/21/11, 4:42 PM

  I'm sure Lorenz University, like any good startup, was just launching their minimum viable product to start gathering valuable user input like this blog post to guide their ongoing iterations... ;->

• by jules on 3/21/11, 2:16 PM

  Did they misspell Lorentz, or did they mean another Lorenz?

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Lorentz

• by pinko on 3/21/11, 1:56 PM

  I'm always curious about which (if any) laws this sort of scam breaks.

  They seem particularly insidious because they target the uneducated and jobless/desperate.

• by CaptainZapp on 3/21/11, 1:37 PM

  I recently got spam from a degree mill, with a (literal) truckload of spelling and other mistakes (no more sure if it's in English or German).

  Spam, usually goes the way of the dodo, but this piece was so hillarious I actually forwarded it to a number of spam hating friends.

  When you pretend to provide "any degree" in "no time" "anywhere" you should at least get the spelling in your spam right.