Kevin Bauder & the Feds Takeover of the Education Syste

He is wise to bring this up and articulate things as he has in the piece. Thanks for linking it.

The great trouble in "education" today is that most forms of college education fail to provide anything resembling actual education.

But that isn't the point of his article. The broader point concerns accreditation and what will result from an unregulated CHEA. He should be concerned, and especially since his school wouldn't necessarily be recognized by the CHEA as possessing legitimate accreditation if the TRACS accreditation falters.

The challenge for many of us involved with higher education in this country is the pox of diploma mills and for-profit institutions that are burning away the rich fiber of rigorous educational traditions to provide a rancorous easy fix for too many students that isn't worth the cost financially or academically. I have little sympathy for the impending doom of for-profit educational mills and no sympathy for noted degree mills. Too many well intentioned students get caught up in these systems and end up spending much money on a degree that will ultimately fail to provide them with their hopes. Many in the educational arena have called for these kinds of institutions be shut down and have made profoundly robust cases for why they should be shut down yet they have proliferated.

Now with the explosion of internet technology these ill-conceived institutions are proliferating at a pace unmatched and threaten to harm our entire educational system. Something has to be done about this. In the last five years a sizable percentage of students loan defaults are traced back to for-profit and diploma mill institutions. Making matters worse, the majority (I believe) of students who are defaulting from these institutions are minority students seeking a better life who end up being lied to and cheated in their quest for the hope of a better tomorrow. As the article properly mentions these institutions have simply created their own stuffed shirt accreditation agencies that run ad hoc processes and are faux accreditation, useful for their own means.

Since the media and educational system can't do anything about it, there is now a necessary task to begin to police and regulate these schools. Having seen first hand (through several close friends) the disgusting results of illegitimate for-profit and diploma mill institutions I have few reservations about shutting them down.

One of my challenges to the article is that I am increasingly bothered by the fundamentalist/evangelical default reply about regulation that it will always make us recognize homosexuality and evolutionary agendas. That is a bad argument and is way overused.

I believe that with appropriate parameters in place CHEA can be a good thing. Congressional oversight is important here and so too are specific boundaries. I'm sad things have gotten to this point but it isn't getting better. If a school is not providing a quality educational process we need to be able to review it and mark it as such. Of course one of the better points was this:

If that happens, we may need to rethink the process of ministry preparation. Future pastors and missionaries do need to be taught, but they do not really need degrees. We might well ask, What will ministry preparation look like in a world in which we are no longer permitted to operate colleges and seminaries? Unless something can be done to reverse the federal juggernaut, that day is almost certain to come.

I'm deeply concerned about the entire US educational system. We've decided that passing the test is more important than educating the person. Thus I'm heavily in favor of a classical education as the basis for a productive life. This for-profit model is the harbinger of our failures as a society.

Link for stats on for-profit student loan failure: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-10-18/student-loans-for-profit-college/50819470/1


Great post, apologies for the long reply...I get passionate about this.

 

I agree largely with PreachinJesus. Though I do not see the for-profit model as troublesome as he does, he is correct about the costs. Too many younger people (and adults) think the degree will enable them to make the big bucks and when it doesn't materialize, they have a $100k student loan bill for a job that pays $35k. Doesn't make sense.

The reality is this: the doom is eminent. People acquiesced to government when the public school system began. People will not react to these things as Dr Bauder said is needed. Most people (stupidly, I might add) think government involvement in education is great. I know there are fine Christians that teach in public schools....and praise God for them, but the truth is public education is a socialistic remedy that was doomed to fail from the beginning....as are most things that the government gets involved in.

The trajectory has been set for a while now. It is by God's marvelous grace things aren't worse!