Accredited by whom?

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Accredited by whom?

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This is an excellent article. I highly recommend you click through the "read more" link, and read this whole article.



How the Liberals Control Private Education: Four Words

Written by Gary North on August 18, 2014

This was posted on a GaryNorth.com forum.
Our local Christian school proudly boasted that the junior high received a Blue Ribbon.I always wondered, what is all this hoopla about Blue Ribbon as it seemed to me almost every govt school got some kind of award (like Calif Distinguished School) and many more. So, what a hoax???

I was suspicious (to myself) and said, what is this thing? Blue Ribbon School?

I found out it is sponsored by the United States Dept of Education.

Why would a Christian school need this thing?

When I worked in govt school, our school was trying to get one of these things or something like it. The whole staff went crazy and had to work overtime to please the masters of this organization. This took a ton of time and energy wasted on this. Tons of angst and planning and going nuts.

Why would a Christian school, in an upscale area, even worry about this? And how are the parents so taken in?

Why is the staff taken in? Parents are paying $11,000 per year to go to junior high here. The athletes win everything, it is a calm campus with no problems, what more does anyone want?

What is the appeal?
http://www.garynorth.com/members/forum/ ... adID=39053

There is a very simple answer to this question. The parents are desperate for prestige through their children. Understand, they are Christians. This means they are fundamentalist Christians. They suffer from a debilitating intellectual inferiority complex. They have been told, decade after decade, that they are Neanderthals. Who tells them this? The media and the academic establishment. This is what liberal elites must do in a country in which Christians are in the majority. The elites are very much like lion tamers. Their whip is academic certification. “Through the hoop!” Snap! “Through the hoop!” Snap! But they know what can happen to them at any time, without warning. They are locked in a cage, and they are edible. In the back of their minds, they keep thinking this: “Siegfried and Roy.”

Christian humiliation begins early. It begins with four words: “Is this school accredited?”

These are the words of parents. These are the words by which everything else in a school is judged. It does not matter the slightest how good the academic program is, once a parent has uttered these four words.

ACCREDITED BY WHOM?

Here is my response, which I wrote as a FAQ for the Ron Paul Curriculum.

Accreditation: Should We Seek It from the State?

This was sent by a reader.
Hello. I just visited your site and read through the info. but did not see an answer to this important question: Is your curriculum accredited so that students will receive a valid high school diploma upon completion of required classes in all US states?
The question of accreditation has come up, especially in Christian circles, for about seventy years.

One of the most important marks of the complete surrender of Christians and libertarians to the state is the desire for academic accreditation.

Ask these questions:

1. Accredited by whom?
2. By whose authority?
3. By what standard?
4. Enforced by what sanctions?
5. Gaining what advantage?

Let us consider the assumptions and implications of accreditation.

First, the state has both the moral authority and the legal right to determine what constitutes a valid education. In other words, the moment that somebody accepts the idea of accreditation, he has accepted the legitimacy of the power of the state to determine the truth. He has also accepted the legitimacy of the state to determine the correct methodology of teaching.

(For the rest of my article, click the link.)

Continue Reading on www.garynorth.com

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12796.cfm
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Re: Accredited by whom?

Post by notmartha »

Thanks for posting the article. It was interesting.

This...
First, the state has both the moral authority and the legal right to determine what constitutes a valid education. In other words, the moment that somebody accepts the idea of accreditation, he has accepted the legitimacy of the power of the state to determine the truth. He has also accepted the legitimacy of the state to determine the correct methodology of teaching.
....is so true. I was recently told that my children are not receiving an education unless it is approved by the state. And that the diploma my children will receive is not "real" because it won't come from an accredited school. (They were making the assumption that they would receive a diploma at all! Ha!) Such silliness. I printed out the article and will hand it to the next gal/guy that thinks he knows what my children need better than I.
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Re: Accredited by whom?

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My favorite quote from the article is this:
When people are desperate for formal recognition from their enemies, they have in principle surrendered.
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Creating an Accredited Libertarian College

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How Billionaire Peter Thiel Could Create an Accredited Libertarian College in 24 Months

Written by Gary North on February 4, 2017
How do you set up an accredited university? You buy one. Then you convert it into a 100% online school.

The secret to all this is the fact that small colleges are going out of business all the time. They have one asset worth retraining: regional accreditation. Everything else can be sold off.

Let’s assume that Peter Thiel, who is a libertarian, wanted to set up a libertarian University. He would wait until one of these struggling colleges goes belly up, and he would buy the assets. The real estate is irrelevant. It can be sold off for commercial development. They could be rented out to businesses that wanted to have seminars. It really doesn’t matter. The school would retain ownership of the library, but only for accreditation purposes.

The regional accreditation board will want to see that the college has a comprehensive curriculum that is suitable for accreditation. This is easy to achieve.

There are about a dozen majors that accredited colleges normally offer: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, English, history, political science, sociology, psychology, education, philosophy, business, and economics. Lots of small colleges don’t offer an economics major. They just offer a business major.

Each of these majors offers a one lower division course that is required for entry into upper division. the upper division courses can be limited to 60 semester hours, divided by three, or 20 one-semester courses. There might be one or two elective courses.

Each one-year course requires 90 50-minute lectures. A typical college course has three lectures per week for 15 weeks in a semester. Then there will be at least one textbook or equivalent, or possibly three or four monographs. There will be a workbook. There will be some computer graded examinations.

So, we’re talking about 20 courses times approximately a dozen majors. That is 240 one-semester courses. Then there have to be the lower-division courses, so add another dozen one-year courses. Certainly, it will take no more than 300 one-semester courses to fulfill the requirements of accreditation. Put differently, it would be 150 one-year courses.

The college can hire the services of a libertarian scholar who knows the key intellectual players in a number of fields. The best one I can think of would be the Mises Institute’s David Gordon. The president of the college would then contact approximately four dozen scholars. He would make this offer: produce 90 50-minute lectures, a workbook, and a reading list. This would take care of a one-year course. For this, each scholar will be paid an advance on royalties of $10,000.

This would be an up-front cost of about $1.5 million. Chump change.

The courses would sell for $100 per semester. That would be $200 for a one-year course, times five courses per year per student. That is a grand total of $1,000. Add another thousand dollars for marketing and administration, and the student gets a bachelor’s degree for about $10,000.

Instructors would get the $100 per semester fee. They would have to grade a midterm and a final. But remember: half of these would be true/false and multiple-choice. This is what AP exams use. They are standard operating procedure. College professors use them all the time. A computer can grade these. Any instructor with a Ph.D. can grade the essay part of a midterm in 10 minutes or less. A final might take 15 minutes.

Let’s assume that the instructor enrolls 200 students. That is $20,000 per semester. But let’s assume that Thiel actively markets this. The professor enrolls 500 students. Now he pulls in $50,000 per semester. Do you think there are libertarian professors of English who would like a shot at an extra $100,000 a year, plus summer vacation student income? I think so.

These people work maybe 20 hours a week at their existing campuses. So, they double their hours. So what?

Unlike classroom-based education, online students go at their own pace. So, midterms and finals would not have to be graded in two or three days. They would dribble in all semester. There would be no jam-up.

If there are large classes and lots of money rolling in, the instructors can quit their existing jobs. Some of them may not be in academia. They may be doing low-paid work. They would jump at this opportunity to get into college teaching.

There are thousands of part-time professors with Ph.D. degrees who get paid $20 an hour at community colleges. They are called adjunct professors. Would they jump at this?

They would not get tenure. The competition would be fierce. Thiel could get the cream of the crop.

This program could easily be set up within 24 months after the purchase of the defunct accredited college. If the instructors all have a doctorate, there will be no question about their qualifications for teaching in any university. There are lots of libertarian instructors out there who have Ph.D. degrees, and who are teaching in poverty-stricken colleges for $50,000 a year.

This strategy has been pioneered by profit-seeking universities that have bought up struggling colleges, and which then charge astronomical prices for the courses. They get these young people into debt to get a degree from an obscure college in a liberal arts field.

If whoever puts up the initial money is willing to hire people with a Ph.D., and he is willing to price the courses where they ought to be, there is no question in my mind that a college like this would have 5,000 students within five years. The money would roll in. For positioning purposes, it would be wise to keep it as a nonprofit institution. That would raise no yellow flags to the accreditation committee.

The lectures can all be put online, either as screencasts behind a tuition wall, or just put online on YouTube. The value is the degree, not the lectures.

The core books in the upper division courses in the social sciences and humanities could be selected from the publications of the Liberty Fund and the Mises Institute. Students would get a first-rate liberal arts education.

I know this college project could be done. I have already done it with the Ron Paul Curriculum. I would be happy to show Thiel or an associate how to reproduce what I did with the RPC. It has taken me about 3 1/2 years. If I had had $10,000 of advance royalty money per course, it would have taken me 24 months. I could do this as the president of the college, but I have other fish to fry in my remaining years. I have to finish my multi-tiered books on Christian economics. It’s a task for some young hotshot with a Ph.D. in anything and a burning desire to create a first-rate undergraduate college.

It would not take a multibillionaire to launch this project. A good old-fashioned multimillionaire could do it. The main expense would be to buy the defunct college. The professors would all be fired at the time of the bankruptcy. If the rich man agreed to pay off the debts, then this purchase would be duck soup. The creditors would be ecstatic. As for the fired faculty, who cares? Like drones that are cast out of the hive after they have performed their service, the unemployed professors will have to fend for themselves.
Read the rest of the article here
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