Dr. James Lowe, the president of Bishop State Community College (a public 2-year institution), earned his degree from San Francisco Technical University, an on-line, never-accredited institution that is no longer in operation. He was hired in 2008 and by some accounts has (paraphrasing Steve Jobs), taken a sinking ship and helped point it in the right direction. As reported in the local paper, under his leadership enrollment has increased from 2,812 in fall 2007 to 3,952 today.
Known as a ‘problem solver’ in the state department of education, he was brought to Bishop State at a time when it was stricken by financial aid scandals.
As interim president, he was tasked with correcting some undisclosed problems the school was having that led the U.S. Department of Education to restrict federal aid to it. He was named president on a permanent basis in May 2008.
As president, he uses the title “doctor,” and states he enrolled in the online university because his job would have made it impossible to attend a more traditional university. He took six quarters of coursework, paid $7,000 to $8,000 in program costs, and completed a book-length dissertation on administrative supervision of higher education and community colleges. He did not have to appear before a panel to defend the dissertation and currently does not recall where he put his copy of the dissertation. According to the interim vice chancellor of Legal and Human Resources for Alabama’s two-year college system, the president position at Bishop State does not require a doctorate and therefore Dr. Lowe still could have been hired for the position without the degree. As an aside, a 2008 Alabama state law now prevents people from using the “Dr.” title unless they graduated from an accredited institution, but Dr. Lowe was grandfathered in.
Last month the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) issued a letter clearing Lowe of any violations that could threaten Bishop State’s accreditation. SACS is one of six regional institutional accreditors in the United States. All public colleges and universities are accredited by one of these groups and having this status is a sign that this institution is legitimate. BTW- UNC is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA).
Is there a problem here? Does it matter if the president holds a degree from a non-accredited institution? Does his job performance factor into this?
If there is a problem, who are we to blame? It seems to me that if there is a problem, blame needs to be directed in at least two areas: the hiring process and the evaluation process. Should we talk to the people who hired Dr. Lowe and ask how they vetted his credentials? Did they spend less time with his application than the institution does with a temporary instructor teaching a single course? Was this a political appointment and therefore traditional academic standards were less important?
If there is a problem with Dr. Lowe’s appointment, should we also talk with the accrediting agency to discover why they didn’t have a problem with an institution’s president having a degree from a non-accredited institution? Is there a board of trustees and if so, do they have a problem with this? Oh, and should students and faculty have a problem with this?
Before answering, there is another piece to the story. Latitia McCane, the college’s dean of instructional services (the equivalent to UNC’s provost), has a Ph. D from Lacrosse University, an on-line institution. When she started in 2001, the school was based in Louisiana, but by the time she graduated in 2003 it had moved to Mississippi because the state refused to renew its license. The institution operated in a strip mall and had no classrooms or facilities. McCane does not recall how much the program cost because it was nearly a decade ago, however, According to a 2004 story in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the school’s website advertised tuition rates of $1,950 for a bachelor’s degree and $2,000 to $3,800 for various postgraduate degrees. Lacrosse shut down after the 2006-07 school year, following a review by the Mississippi Commission on College Accreditation. McCane now earns $103,702 a year and gets a $2,000 bonus for having an “earned doctorate degree.” McCane said that Lacrosse was accredited by the World Association of Universities and Colleges, an agency with long known ties to mail-order diploma mills.
McCane said Lacrosse required 45 hours of online coursework beyond a master’s degree and she wrote a 158-page dissertation: “Past, Present and Future Trends in Alabama’s Two-Year College System as it Related to Education and Administration.” “They were very specific about the dissertation,” she said. “It took me over a year to do that. It’s excellent work, if I do say so. It’s the blueprint for how I do my job.”
Is there a problem now? It is different that the person directly in charge of overseeing the academic mission of an institution has a degree from a non-accredited institution? Should students, faculty, and parents care that senior administrators, who do not actually teach, do not have degrees from accredited institutions?
I wish the story ended there but…a counselor at a close-by community college also has her degree from Lacrosse University. This is a person who advises students, makes referrals, and likely does some basic counseling. She rejected any suggestion that she got her degree from a “diploma mill” that sells academic credentials for little or no work. “Mine is legitimate,” she said in a recent interview.
This is a lot of information but helps create a more detailed picture of what I consider an unfortunate situation. Were these people being dishonest when they say they earned a Ph.D.? I don’t know, but I do believe they probably knew some of the issues that their degrees would create. Were they probably hoping no one every asked them about where they earned their degrees? Probably. Am I being elitist for thinking that degrees from un-accredited institutions are suspect? I will let you decide. At least part of the issue is that because these places are unaccredited, we have no way of knowing how legitimate these degrees are.
On a different level, what message does this send to students attending these institutions?
That's one hot mess in a very concentrated arena. Do people really "misplace" entire dissertations? And just because it didn't require a defense, didn't SOMEONE (an advisor, the instructor of record, anyone, Ferris Bueller) have to review it? And TWO high ranking administrators at the same community college--hot mess.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that the assumption tends to be that college and university presidents (or provosts for that matter) require a Ph.D, whether or not legitimate. In 2008, the University of Colorado System named Bruce Benson as president https://www.cu.edu/content/university-colorado-names-bruce-benson-its-22nd-president.
Benson does not even possess a master's degree. He earned a bachelor's degree from CU Boulder several decades ago, and the academic community threw a fit. Students vandalized his portrait in Benson Hall on campus. In 2004, CU gave him a Doctor of Humane Letters, but his formal education really stopped at the undergraduate level.
The academic community, stunned at the time, didn't know how a leader could lead without having experienced true academia for himself. That's not what the board wanted--that's not really what the CU system may have needed. They needed a business tycoon to make sure that CU stayed floating as the economy took a nose dive. Who cares about his political agenda when he can bring in the big bucks?
I think this addresses your question on job performance. If the president can get the job done, does it really matter if s/he's a Ph.D? Perhaps it only matters when a 2k bonus is legitimately or illegitimately earned.
Yes, absolutely yes it matters that a president has a degree from an accredited institution. The president is both a role model to students in their academic pursuits, and a leader to faculty in their research/teaching. If I were a student at that institution, I would feel like this cheapens my degree - what's the point of paying for an accredited degree if I can buy one online for cheaper?
ReplyDeleteThis is a hiring and evaluating issue. We certainly hire folks at CSU without requiring them to produce a transcript, but we still do our work to follow up with the minimum qualiifcations of the job. While having a PhD isn't a minimum qualification, pursuing and exhibiting academic excellence is. What does this say about academic integrity if the president doesn't even know where his dissertation is! Why does this board of governors/regents allow the president to still be there? It seems like they are more interested in covering their backs than doing the right thing for their learning environment.
I agree that the performance of an administrator should dictate their worth as a leader. What should also dictate this is honesty and integrity. I wonder why growth went up as it did. Is this because Lowe tells students whatever they want to here to get them enrolled, as many of the "diploma mills" do? Working at a Community College, I have students come into my office once or twice a month that have spent as much as $30,000 dollars on a degree that they realized won't transfer anywhere and essentially does them no good. As an administrator at a Community College it is Lowe's responsibility to understand this pervasive problem in higher education and do what he can to assure that accreditation still means something in the higher education arena. My fear is that with administrators in our own colleges landing big time jobs with an unaccredited degree, we are perpetuating the idea that "diploma mills" may be worth it. It is our responsibility as Student Affairs professionals to contest this, ALWAYS, from the top down!!!
ReplyDeleteIn case you didn't catch this - I do not believe there is any place in an accredited institute of higher education for an administrator who earned their degree from an unaccredited institution. If they earned a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution and the college only requires a bachelor's degree (as Jill discussed), this is fine. What is unacceptable is to give legitimacy to unaccredited degrees!
ReplyDelete(My apologies as I got to typing and realized I had a lot to say about this topic!)
ReplyDeleteWow. I think Jill nailed it when she labeled this a "hot mess."
I guess I should start by disclosing that I also take issue with unaccredited institutions. I don’t know if I feel “elitist,” judgmental or what because of this but I can’t help it. I do think though that it comes from the context of my job. As a Transfer Admissions Counselor, it KILLS me when I have to be the bearer of bad news to students who have spent time and money (thousands and thousands of dollars as bjaconson also noted) at unaccredited institutions.
One student specifically comes to mind who I met with in the spring. She went to one of these institutions right after high school to get her associates degree, accrued nearly $35,000 in debt, and had since been working to pay off her debt (for more than 7 years) before moving on to her bachelors degree. Imagine how great our conversation was when I told her she gets to start all over, nearly 10 years later. Oh, and P.S. you could’ve paid tuition for four years plus at UNC with what you paid that unaccredited institution to get that degree. When I get to deal with the tears and anger in this situation, call me crazy for being a little bitter with unaccredited institutions.
With that being said, I’d like to lay the devil’s advocate here. Who are we as accredited institutions to say that this student had no previous education? Do we really think that she learned nothing during the time she spent at that institution? What if she still had syllabi that showed her College Algebra (or insert other class here) class was no different than any other?
One of my biggest struggles with this situation is the knowledge of the general public when it comes to accreditation. Why do we, in this class, know about accreditation and what the implications of it are? I honestly don’t believe I knew anything about the six regional accrediting bodies until I became an admission counselor almost four years ago. I’m a first generation student from a small high school and I was a good student. Do I thank my lucky stars that I chose an accredited institution? What if I had been one of the students who got suckered (ok, so my language still shows which side I’m on :)) into one of these unaccredited institutions? Who is to blame for these students going to unaccredited institutions? The student? The institution? Counselors? Advisors? The government for letting them exist without regional accreditation? I'm not sure...
So back to the issue at hand with Bishop State Community College. I do think there is an issue with the President having a degree from a non-accredited institution, among a handful of other things with the situation. Personally, I believe that there is some ethical question involved in what he believes good education is, perhaps he even seems a bit hypocritical? Sure, job performance can be taken into consideration. Political as it may be, I do not believe credit can be given to Lowe and Lowe alone for the growth the college has seen. I believe the board (if there is one), the hiring process and anyone involved in the hiring are to blame. If I was a faculty member, I would take issue with this if my degree qualifications mattered to my position. Imagine if you were a student trying to transfer credit from an unaccredited institution to BSCC and they weren’t accepting it? How does it look when the president has a degree from a non-accredited institution but they aren’t accepting credits from these institutions?!
There are a lot of things about this situation that just don’t seem ethically sound. If anyone believes that this shouldn’t be an issue, I’d be intrigued to hear the point-of-view.
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ReplyDeleteYou ask, “Does it matter if the president holds a degree from a non-accredited institution?” I’m going to disagree with many of the respondents here and argue that no, it shouldn’t matter. I’ll share my bias here— I worked under a President without a PhD. Like Bruce Benson, he only had a bachelor’s degree. In this case, his bachelor’s degree was from the same institution that he led—but he had earned that degree before the institution was regionally accredited (by the time that I worked there and he was the President, it was indeed regionally accredited). In any case, he was a visionary leader who was effective at relationship-building on behalf of the institution (a primary role of any good College President). He also knew when to defer to the Provost when academic expertise was needed.
ReplyDeleteBeau notes that the President is a “leader to faculty in their research/teaching”. I disagree. The President is a leader, undoubtedly. However, the presidential role isn’t so much about leading the faculty (that’s for the Provost, Academic Deans, and other academic administrators). The presidential role is more about development, strategic planning, and organizational leadership. Consider President Norton. She doesn’t have a PhD. Does her law degree qualify her to lead faculty in the realms of research and teaching? Probably not, but I’d argue that it doesn’t matter- since that’s not her role.
You also question the role of the accrediting body here. I don’t fault them—it isn’t their role to hire, evaluate, or critique hiring practices—at least not yet. Although I am not familiar with SACS standards, I have served in the Peer Review Corps for NCA, and can attest that the credentials of college presidents was of little to no concern when considering the quality of the education provided to students (the primary concern of the accrediting bodies). That said, on 10/1 NCA released their draft of proposed revisions to the Criteria for Accreditation. In this new proposal (anticipated adoption in early 2012), the criterion relating to integrity includes new language about personnel. The newly proposed language includes the following, “The institution establishes and follows policies for fair and ethical practice pertaining to its financial, academic, personnel, and auxiliary functions.” I do wonder—is the inclusion of “personnel” here an addition related to scrutiny of leaders like Dr. Lowe? It will be interesting to see how this shifts the accreditors’ role in the future re. hiring practices in accreditation decisions.
(See http://www.ncahlc.org/ for more information on NCA’s newly proposed criteria)