Lorenz University: I can has degree? | Hacker News Reader

Lorenz University: I can has degree?

snailinaturtleneck.com

61 pointstommypalm29 comments

Diploma mills and for-profit schools take advantage of the fact that many prospective students assume that accreditation conveys legitimacy and quality, as determined by an official and/or independent authority.

Besides the apparently bogus agencies cited in the article about Lorenz, established for-profits control their own national accreditation body, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). Another tactic is to latch on to national agencies that have traditionally served vocational schools and community colleges, such as the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). This is how the University of Phoenix has accredited its MBA and DBA programs.

Regional agencies are regarded as the gold standard in the United States, but the for-profits figured out a way to game that system, too: Buy out small, struggling non-profit colleges that have regional accreditation, and then replace the old curriculum and mission with scalable, high-profit online programs. The regional accreditation transfers, although there's no guarantee it will be renewed the next time it is reviewed.

One well-known example involved an obscure Catholic school in Iowa with 312 students known as Franciscan University of the Prairies. It was bought in 2005 by Bridgepoint Education, renamed "Ashford University", and turned into an online university with 42,000 students. It was nevertheless able to keep its regional accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, although it is apparently trying to transfer accreditation to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges -- the same body that has accredited Stanford, the UC and California State systems, etc.

For more information about the for-profit higher education phenomenon in the U.S., I recommend the following Frontline special, "College Inc.":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/

See also the article "College Dropout Factories".

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/colle...

The problem of low quality schools screwing over students who are not college material (and a few who are) is hardly limited to for-profit colleges. For-profits just got a lot of press because various parties (short sellers, non-profits worried about competition) pushed the story.

I think you're making overly broad statements that conflate legitimate for-profit education with scams. There are many for-profit schools which operate legitimately and get accreditated by independent and respected institutions like AdvancED.

I think I am going to start a degree-granting "University." I will give credit for life accomplishments, but my standards will be especially narrow and contrived. I will give credit for:

- Commits to open source projects

- Answers on Stack Overflow

- Karma on Hacker News

I will also require students to write essays, however I will permit the student to submit blog posts as essays. I will use PageRank or upvotes by Hacker News to determine the letter grade awarded for the "essay."

I wonder how long it will be before someone establishes a market for "aged and authoritative" user accounts on those sites.

Oh, wait...

Can someone fill me in here? Is there a marketplace for selling user accounts that I don't know about?

I do not have first hand knowledge of such a market, but the idea seems like a natural extension of the markets to sell matured player accounts for online games. If there's a benefit to having a well-seasoned reputation associated with a login, then there's a market for selling that login.

I've heard multiple cases of people selling Slashdot accounts with interesting/low user ID's on eBay, so clearly there's some market for that. It's a stupid product, but clearly the market is there.

I think that degree will have more value than a lot of degrees handed out in decent universities. I would definitely enroll!

  >> - Commits to open source projects

This is only adding value if you rate the value of the open source contributions.

  >> - Answers on Stack Overflow
  >> - Karma on Hacker News

These are essentially peer reviewed ratings, so the same comment does not apply.

I wonder if this type of thing has been successful in landing people jobs that require a degree as a check off before an application is looked at and the employer never bothers to properly check the credentials.

I was reading someones comments recently on Reddit who used a fake degree to teach English in Korea and a few other countries quite successfully. There's also been a number of stories in the news of people in high ranking positions being ousted for fake degrees.

I was thinking the same thing. If degree is a meaningless checkbox for most jobs then someone will serve the market for meaningless degrees.

There really should be some kind of free on-line federal school for the underprivileged that would be like these online schools but with a decent curriculum and ethical testing and is accredited.

The whole thing would probably cost annually what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost in a few days. I'd rather talk to someone with a degree from the "US Federal Online" and know that he/she at least learned something than some random on-line diploma mill. Especially, if they put in two years at a community college.

I guess the issue there is that the service could get the stigma of not counting towards a degree requirement. Employers see some random Lorenz university and think that it could possibly be a decent university vs the online school which they know all about.

Given these guys are already enacting a check box degree requirement they probably would be irrational about something like this.

I'm glad that the programming field is in general a lot better about this, recognizing that the degree isn't the be all and end all of an applicants ability to do a job.

What you're talking about essentially exists in the form of Western Governors University. It was a project started by the Governors of the 19 western states to supply accredited online degrees to the under privileged (as a new Governor is elected to one of the member states s/he becomes a member of the board of trustees)

It isn't free but the cost is something like $2,000 for every 6 month period and you can take as many classes as you can handle in that time frame.

Oh wow, thanks for the info!

I suppose that's more plausible in the US, with its large number of schools. In Canada, if it's a school I've never heard of, chances are I'd look it up just out of curiosity.

As opposed to landing jobs, there are many civil service and government jobs where your pay and and how high you can rise in the organization can be tied to your level of education. There have been numerous reports of people using these diploma mill credentials to game these systems. It may be better now...

Yes this is very common and stupid. Heck your age also might be a factor. I worked at a state University and to get anywhere close to what private employers we offering me upon graduation ( I worked at the university full time while studying) it would have required a Ph.D. to reach that bracket (or equivalent work experience with this conversion 1 year uni == 2 years work experience). This is with the benefits (10% directly into my 403b, no contributions needed) and health package.

I'm sure Lorenz University, like any good startup, was just launching their minimum viable product to start gathering valuable user input like this blog post to guide their ongoing iterations... ;->

Did they misspell Lorentz, or did they mean another Lorenz?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Lorentz

I don't know whether this is the Lorenz they are referring to, but there was another Lorenz who worked in optics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Lorenz

In fact, there is a Lorentz-Lorenz equation. Somewhat more confusingly, when you study Maxwell's equations on a Lorentz background, it is often convenient to work in the Lorenz gauge.

The most famous Lorenz probably is the ethologist and Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz. Another famous scientist is Edward Lorenz, who discovered the Lorenz attractor, which is often regarded as a starting point of chaos theory

I'm always curious about which (if any) laws this sort of scam breaks.

They seem particularly insidious because they target the uneducated and jobless/desperate.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't break any laws. You have the right to pay someone to give you a useless piece of paper.

As a side note, I thought it was amusing that you mentioned that a "university" would target the uneducated. (Yes, I'm using the term "university" very loosely).

Degree mills are illegal in some countries and some U.S. states. In some states it's illegal to use a degree from a diploma mill to gain employment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mills_in_the_United_Sta...

If both of the "accreditation organizations" were in fact set up by the scammers behind Lorenz, I'm pretty sure that's clear-cut fraud. Someone just needs to subpoena the domain proxy service.

I recently got spam from a degree mill, with a (literal) truckload of spelling and other mistakes (no more sure if it's in English or German).

Spam, usually goes the way of the dodo, but this piece was so hillarious I actually forwarded it to a number of spam hating friends.

When you pretend to provide "any degree" in "no time" "anywhere" you should at least get the spelling in your spam right.

It's probably a great way of signalling your lack of standards.

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