Search for Consensus in California

Original Article - if you have read Bob's comments see my reply at the end.

Summary goes here!

In general, the Unite State is a place where equality get praised and approved. The difficulty in setting regulations that governing for-profit institutions lies exactly on that.

Accreditation agencies based their accreditation criteria on all things but the direct measure of quality of the graduates. This approach is at the root of the problem. Without objective measures on graduates, no institution can defense the quality of their graduates and this leads to no standard for regulation to based on.

National and regional accredited institutions are based on different set of criteria for accreditation. But because none of them can prove that their graduates are better educated,
there is no convenient base to based the regulation on. Legislatures that trying to set criteria on for-profit institutions will always face the question of fairness - the fairness of judging which institution produces quality graduates. With the lack of direct quality measure of graduates, all they can do is to base their regulation on formalities, which surely didn't address fairness directly.

At this point, traditional and regional accredited institutions are, in general, claiming supority of their graduates. To facilitate the resolution, it is encouraged that if they can demonstrate their high standards of their graduates.

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setting a rule that favor anyone of them is un-fair and problematic. It is true that for-profit could be driven by it's nature to overlook students' interest, the same can be said about traditional institutions - just look the way they defense their practices and their un-willingness in adopting charges.

National accredited institutions can easily challenge the

faces questions from for-profit that their graduates are not well certified even though those graduates from for-profit institutions may very well have the same problem.

I am not sided with for-profit but I am disappointed by the fact that traditional institutions and accreditation agencies' lack of courage in taking steps to resolve the issues facing the nation.

You will think traditional institutions are in the league of education and public service and that they care about the society. But appearantly a lot of them are clugged with self interest. With their elite status, they simply mind their own business and not submerge themselves to help establish a fair accountable system.

If and only if traditional institution can step up and say: 'Hold me on the same standard as those of for-profit', will provide the leveled ground for things to take shape.

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Bob,

Yes. I will treat them the same as long as they all got fined $500 for every instance. Besides, that is not the point. Our common laws apply to everyone equally, even though, it will apply heavier fine on repeated offender. However, strict rules for for-profit, just because they are more likely to have wrong behavior, is like profiling black, just because they are black but not because that particular black. I suppose, to reach mutual equality, traditional institutions should re-accredited by the national accreditation too!