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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

I think you could make a pretty inexpensive Computer Science non-profit that is unaccredited but issued its own degree. No one cares about accreditation anyway. It would take a wealthy person to put their name on it, and be a struggle to get the first cohort off the ground, but once you get solid lecturers and a good reputation it would be self-fulfilling. You only need cheap laptops and a single room for the whole cohort. Otherwise it's knowledge transfer. If you paid the lecturers above-average salary and outsourced everything else, you could probably do it for under $5 million a year, which for a rich tech person is peanuts.

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> "No one cares about accreditation anyway."

"... U.S. jurisdictions where the use of higher education credentials from diploma mills and unaccredited schools is explicitly illegal or legally restricted include Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Many other states are also considering restrictions on unaccredited degree use in order to help prevent fraud. ..." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mills_in_the_United_St...

This sounds like moat-building. But what does "the use of higher education credentials from diploma mills and unaccredited schools" actually amount to? Listing them on a CV?

It can amount to financial fraud (or at least incompetence), shoddy engineering, adverse and inefficient selection for graduate and post-graduate studies, and so forth.

You know, you could've just Googled a bit to find the relevant laws. For example, for Washington state: https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.60.070

"... (2) A person is guilty of knowingly using a false academic credential if the person knowingly uses a false academic credential or falsely claims to have a credential issued by an institution of higher education that is accredited by an accrediting association recognized as such by rule of the student achievement council:

(a) In a written or oral advertisement or other promotion of a business; or

(b) With the intent to:

(i) Obtain employment;

(ii) Obtain a license or certificate to practice a trade, profession, or occupation;

(iii) Obtain a promotion, compensation or other benefit, or an increase in compensation or other benefit, in employment or in the practice of a trade, profession, or occupation;

(iv) Obtain admission to an educational program in this state; or

(v) Gain a position in government with authority over another person, regardless of whether the person receives compensation for the position.

...

(4) Issuing a false academic credential is a class C felony.

(5) Knowingly using a false academic credential is a gross misdemeanor."

Seems doubtful that it gets prosecuted much though.

I don't think this defines what a false credential is, though.

It defines how one might illegally use one, or issue one, or falsely claim to have a real qualification, but I don't see a definition of a false credential.

It sounds like a false credential falsely claims to be accredited (ie. if I were to issue degrees from Harvard), which is not what the OP institution is doing, so this discussion is possibly moot.

> No one cares about accreditation anyway.

Outside of HN and the SV bubble, accreditation really matters.

Back when I was a manual laborer, if you could pick up a hammer and hit the nail every time - or mixup a good batch of mud - or drive a skidder of logs to the landing - that was the interview and accreditation.

College enabled me to talk fancier during that time.

You don't need trade school for hitting nail with hammer nor for digging holes. You don't need previous experience either.

For those kind of jobs this is complete waste of money.

Not in trades. These students will graduate with years of experience, taking the website explanation at face value. There isn't something akin to ABET, or even FE/PE exams for these skills, but if they can count their work experience while in school here, they can become licensed tradesmen in states with work and apprenticeship requirements.

Accreditation might matter for student loans, immigration, etc.

It becomes a massive issue in trades if you want to migrate to another country.

Some countries are very stringent about accredited qualifications for certain trades.

I’m hiring for a Flutter and BLE job right now. Couldn’t possibly care less about accreditation and far from an HN-typical.

We’re out there. Really doesn’t matter on the specific job, all I care is, can you do it, and will you be a distraction?

An accredited CS degree program is actually one of FreeCodeCamp's long-term goals.[0]

[0] https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/free-accredited-bachelors-...

Oh you got your degree from Omnicorp College? Sorry, at Megacorp we only accept degrees from Megacorp University (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney-Unilever School). No one cares about accreditation.

How does writing a one-sentence cyberpunk story say anything about who cares about accreditation?

Costco degrees have pretty broad acceptance though.

What is a Costco degree?

Our CS department just spent an entire year on our reaccreditation. It’s a huge pain in the ass and takes a ton of effort. But it’s one of the main thing parents ask about. People definitely care.

Parents ask... do employers? I would guess not.

Parents are the ones who pay.

Yes and no. Unaccredited are a red flag but proven abilities shows it was legitimate enough. Still makes it harder to get through the door with an unaccredited degree. Which is reason to care.

> Still makes it harder to get through the door with an unaccredited degree.

But who is checking? I’ve never asked myself if someone’s degree is accredited. I wouldn’t even know how to check if I cared.

I'm pretty sure I've seen it on government job postings. In fact, many of the federal CS jobs require ABET-accredited degree programs, which is annoying because many of the better programs aren't (Stanford and CMU, for example).

Accreditation may matter for immigration (some places give extra points to people with degrees), possibly student loans, and things like that.

Are you involved in hiring? Because I check the degree of every single resume I review, I have to. The other day I got a resume from a candidate who has a degree from Albany State University which I never heard of. So I pulled up their website and go to the "Accreditation" link and saw that it's accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

> So I pulled up their website and go to the "Accreditation" link

But… why? What do you then do with information? Reject people if their college isn’t accredited? Why?

Yes, because it's company policy.

Even if it wasn't comment policy - when you're reviewing the resumes of Jr engineers who have literary zero work experience who do you interview/hire - the guy with the mail-order "degree" or the guy who has an accredited degree?

> Yes, because it's company policy.

But why? Lol what does it achieve? What’s the point?

> when you're reviewing the resumes of Jr engineers who have literary zero work experience

Maybe look at what they can do not where they learned it? How do you evaluate self-taught and people with no degrees? Does no degree beat non-accredited or not?

And here’s another question - why do you trust the accreditors? What do they know that colleges don’t? How do you evaluate an accreditor?

You're asking me about a company policy I had no part in. But why? Lol what does that achieve? Making you look clever on the internet? Concern trolling?

If there's no point in anything and nothing is ever achieved then why does anyone spend time and money on getting an education and including it in their resume? Maybe there is a point and something is achieved after all.

EDIT: >How do you evaluate self-taught and people with no degrees?

I don't, I literally just told you company policy is Jr candidates must have an accredited degree.

I have no idea what nonsense you're rambling on about. The question was who is checking degree accreditation and that's what I answered.

If my company told me to check accreditation I'd ask these questions to them because it seems discriminatory and nonsensical and I'd be worried about their thinking.

> why does anyone spend time and money on getting an education and including it in their resume?

The point is the education - not the accreditation.

If your recruiting pipeline isn't doing a background check, you need a new recruiting pipeline.

I still don’t get it - why would you check accreditation as part of a background check? Like why do you care? What do you do with the information? Why do you care what an accrediting body thinks about anything?

Are you seriously asking why you should care that a candidate is possibly lying about or misrepresenting their credentials and skills to you?

> It would take a wealthy person to put their name on it, and be a struggle to get the first cohort off the ground, but once you get solid lecturers and a good reputation it would be self-fulfilling.

Any real world examples of this? Besides the Thiel fund of course, which is a ideological vanity project.

There is a new university called UATX that is trying https://www.uaustin.org/

But they seem to be going down the route of trying to get accredited. IMO no one cares about any of that except other academics, businesses only care about talent and intelligence.

Accreditation is meant to protect students (in the new model, customers) from scams. Would you, personally, go to a college that wasn't accredited?

Yes - if a graduate can demonstrate they received a good education, then the reputation of the school will grow. Many rules for accreditation (like libraries with a certain number of books) make zero sense in 2022.

Would you, as a student, rather grow the reputation of your non-accredited institution by demonstrating over time that you don't match the prevailing prejudices against it, or would you rather go to an accredited institution that people can see with a little research, is not a diploma mill?

> Would you, personally, go to a college that wasn't accredited?

If there was solid evidence of a pipeline towards big tech, then maybe? I went to K-State which is accredited and yet no big tech recruits from there. The only way I got into the big tech game was starting a company in the mid-west and having CTO on my resume.

I've never seen solid evidence, that the public would be able to see, of a pipeline to big tech except at Stanford, and maybe Harvard, because that's what people talk about and put in movies. I am not saying there isn't a "pipeline" anywhere else, just that the pipeline has to be very big and obvious before a highschooler or a midwestern parent of a highschooler would know about it.

If it was really true that nothing mattered except for quality, there'd hardly be a need for universities at all, because students could buy books and self-teach or hire tutors. Nonetheless, that is almost never done, because outward signs like accreditation matter a lot.

The University of Waterloo’s co-op program is a major pipeline into big tech. I’ve worked with Waterloo interns and graduates many times and they’ve all been well above average.

But you've picked one of the most prominent schools in Canada as an example. A good example would be somewhere that isn't already extremely prestigious.

Canada isn’t like the US. Canadian universities expand. They don’t have anywhere near the degree of difference in prestige an American thinks normal.

Also, seriously, Waterloo is one one of the most prominent schools? Most Americans don’t know it exists, never mind have an opinion on how prestigious it is. I know it has a fantastic CS programme, with coop every second semester and that is the sum total of my knowledge. That’s a lot more than most people know.

The other reason is that the learn from books alone simply does not work in practice. First, it is super hard to keep motivation without that external structure. And second, choosing books to learn from and choosing curriculum itself requires a lot of know how.

Graduate only, for now.

Immigration agencies tend to care.

Vanderbilt, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Carnegie Mellon.

Rich people have been putting their names on institutions of higher learning for some time.

Stanford had to do all kinds of shit to make its way up the rankings, the Termans in particular, just pulling all the stops on the way to number 1. It got $80,000 in WW2 when in contrast Caltech got $120,000,000. As Steve Blank put it, DoD (then Department of War) had no respect for Stanford engineering. They just plucked Terman put him in charge at Harvard. Harvard Radio Lab. It used to be bombers didn't get through, Terman changed that, after WW2, "the bomber will always get through." Then he plucked 8 guys from the Harvard Radio Lab, made them Stanford professors, and that's when Stanford started getting...a little bit of respect. It helped his best students became strong entrepreneurs like he wanted them to be, AND were generous--David Packard becoming Stanford's greatest benefactor in fact, in particular donating directly to the Stanford Endowment so the University could do whatever it thought was best--and having a long-lasting string of successes. This longevity was based on Stanford engineering graduates.

There's other colleges named after whomever, anybody, and they don't go anywhere. There's a lot of cooperation required, a lot of people refusing to let each and every other one of them down.

Accreditation is not necessary, but it matters. Also the reputation of the college, particularly in professional fields.

For trade school, it probably does not matter at all.

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