How Unaccredited Online Degree Programs Advertise

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Jennifer Brady

I recently received an email from Lisa Neal, Editor of eLearn Magazine to add her magazine to our blogroll. This post today is to first alert you to this new link available through this blog as well as welcome Lisa and eLearn to our ‘link list.’ eLearn Magazine is published by ACM, a not-for-profit educational association serving those who work, teach, and learn in the various computing-related fields.

I have long been a fan of her writing, so thought it would be appropriate to share something she recently wrote on her blog that is applicable to this site. Titled ‘Persuade Me I Need a Degree: How Unaccredited Online Degree Programs Advertise‘, her post pokes fun at some SPAM emails ’selling’ degrees. Here are the top 10 (grammatical and spelling errors included):

Expired academic qualification
Is your skills about to expired?
Without books and education process call now
MBA the hottest most sought after degree
Receive PhD that you deserve from an Established Prestigious Institution
Receive MBA very fast
Nominated for a Ph.d
Celebrate your life-long achievements
Start earning the salary you deserve by obtaining the approopriate University Degree
Your Degree shipped by Fed-Ex

All joking aside, she brings up a point I have talked about in previous posts which is that the more ads like these the more likely a student seeking a real education, will get lost in this. She notes, “But I still worry that these ads make it harder for the high quality online programs to move away from the déclassé correspondence schools that used to be so common. The biggest issues to me are how students find the high quality programs while avoiding the ones advertised above, and how employers know which online degrees are legitimate and from reputable institutions.” I couldn’t agree more.

Comments

2 Responses to “How Unaccredited Online Degree Programs Advertise”

Lisa Neal on April 2nd, 2008 12:08 pm

Thank you for the kind words about eLearn Magazine and about my writing. If I may add this, I have a BA in mathematics from U Mass Boston (not online).

Spam and other forms of advertising of “digital diploma mills” must be a huge concern. I am sure you keep yourselves aware of your “competition” but how do you distinguish your program from others for people who don’t know the wide range of programs out there?
Matt Hanson on April 2nd, 2008 12:40 pm

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson

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