Ending in .edu does not necessarily mean an institution is accredited
Colloquy: Read the transcript of an online discussion about what, if anything, should be done about the ".edu” Web addresses held by hundreds of diploma mills, a status that some students think means the institutions are fully accredited.By DAN CARNEVALE
Bored with her job as an advertising executive, Suzanne Lee searched the Internet for online colleges that would help her change careers. When she found the Web site for Canyon College, she thought the institution’s criminology program was exactly what she was looking for.
The price was right: about $5,000 for a master’s degree, and she could take all her courses online. She had never heard of the institution, but its Web address ended in ".edu,” which she took as a sign that it was properly accredited. “That made me feel better about it,” she says. “What I’ve read online, the legitimate ones usually have an ‘edu’.”
Although ".edu” Internet addresses are supposed to be reserved for colleges with accreditation from agencies approved by the U.S. Department of Education, hundreds of institutions that do not meet that requirement have the coveted Web addresses.
Canyon is one of them. The only agencies that have granted it accreditation are organizations with no standing with the Department of Education. And the Oregon Student Assistance Commission Office of Degree Authorization, which has been aggressive in warning students about unaccredited institutions, has a Web site that says Canyon College “appears to be a diploma mill” -- the term used for institutions of questionable quality that exchange degrees for money and little work.
The Web address was almost enough to persuade Ms. Lee to sign up, though she eventually found negative student comments about the institution online and changed her mind. “I was, like, two steps from writing a check,” she says. Other students have not been so lucky.
Educause, the higher-education technology consortium, is in charge of administering .edu Web addresses. It, in turn, is overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which has final say over the rules for who should get them.
Educause, which took over the administrative duties from a company called Network Solutions in October 2001, says it gives out the addresses only to institutions accredited by agencies recognized by the Education Department. But many organizations were awarded .edu addresses before Educause stepped in, and they have been allowed to keep them.
Some higher-education officials are calling for Educause to revoke the addresses of colleges that do not qualify. But Educause officials say that because accreditation changes frequently, that would be too costly and difficult to accomplish.
Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who has investigated diploma mills, says that while removing a few .edu addresses will not eradicate such programs, it could prevent some students from getting defrauded by shady institutions.
“It’s just one more disguise they can use to blend in with the legitimate .edu institutions,” he says. “They’re like chameleons. They change colors.”
‘Binary’ Code
Steven L. Worona, director of policy and networking programs at Educause, doesn’t think a .edu address should be construed as a seal of approval.
He says that Educause has been careful in awarding new addresses, and that officials considered the idea of reviewing previously assigned addresses. But he says the situation is complicated, as institutions often win accreditation, then lose it, then get it back.
And some accreditation agencies earn approval by the Education Department, then have it revoked, then win approval again. Mr. Worona says it would not be fair to make an institution change all of its e-mail addresses during such transitions.
“The cost does not make this a reasonable thing to do,” Mr. Worona says. “Accreditation is much too complex an issue to reduce to the binary question of does it or does it not have it.”
Regardless, he says, Educause does not have the authority to take away .edu addresses from institutions that were granted them before Educause took over, even if the institutions lose their accreditation or change their names. The only exception occurs if an institution does something inappropriate with the address, such as selling it to another organization. And Educause does not plan to ask the Commerce Department to change its rules.
What’s more, he says, it would be nearly impossible to make sure all of the grandfathered institutions are legitimate. Educause would have to re-evaluate thousands of institutions, he says, and those that lose their .edu addresses would most likely file lawsuits because they had been promised that they could keep the Web suffix.
“It’s a cost-benefits issue,” says Mr. Worona. “Until you have 100-percent compliance, you really don’t have much benefit.”
But Alan Contreras, an administrator of the Office of Degree Authorization, in Oregon, is not impressed with Educause’s reasoning. “That’s nonsense,” he asserts.
Mr. Contreras says that when unaccredited institutions use .edu addresses, they fool students into thinking they are legitimate. Because students believe the distinction stands for something, he says, Educause should make sure that only reputable institutions have them.
The Office of Degree Authorization has been compiling a list of known and suspected diploma mills. (See “Degrees of Suspicion,” a Chronicle Special Report, June 25.) Although it is not comprehensive, the Oregon list is used as a reference by many education experts and students when trying to find out whether an institution is suspect. Oregon has also been aggressive in trying to stop the spread of phony degrees. The state is one of a few that have made it a crime for people to use degrees from diploma mills to gain employment or a job promotion.
Mr. Contreras would like to see Educause take a similarly hard-line approach. If officials there can decide what institutions can get a new .edu address, he says, then they can review those that already have one.
“What we are suffering from there is a vertebrae shortfall,” Mr. Contreras says.
He is not alone in his criticism. Many higher-education observers who track diploma mills are dissatisfied with Educause for letting unaccredited institutions keep their .edu domain names.
John B. Bear, one of the authors of Bears’ Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning (Ten Speed Press, 2001), says Educause needs to enforce the longtime rules of the .edu domain. “I think Educause has totally abdicated their duty,” he says. “This is one of those things that could be so simple.”
‘Tear-Stained Letters’
Mr. Bear and Mr. Ezell have together compiled a list of more than 200 suspicious colleges and universities that have .edu addresses. They found out about some of the institutions when they received complaints from students who were fooled by them.
“I get this a couple times a week in my usual batch of tear-stained letters,” Mr. Bear says. “There’s a widespread belief that .edu means something.”
But some college administrators say Educause is doing the right thing. Joseph Georges, director of the California Virtual Campus Professional Development Center, says Educause should not take the financial risk of going after unaccredited institutions with the addresses.
“Educause is not getting a dime for administrating the domain,” he says. “Why should they take the risk of being sued?”
So far, Educause has charged no fees and received no compensation for managing the Internet addresses, Mr. Worona confirms, and the organization has spent about $1-million over the past three years handling new registrations. Educause is allowed to start billing to recover some of its expenses, and he says the group plans to do that in the future.
Mr. Georges says Educause did not cause the problem. Its predecessor, Network Solutions, would grant an .edu address to just about anyone who asked for one, even though its rules stated that the addresses were reserved for legitimate educational institutions, he says.
“Educause has done a much better job than Network Solutions,” Mr. Georges says. “Their sloppiness was terminal.”
Susan Wade, public-relations manager for Network Solutions, based in Virginia, says the company’s policy was to only grant .edu addresses to four-year, accredited colleges and universities, but she could not find any records to indicate whether that policy was enforced. In 1997 Network Solutions officials told The Chronicle that anybody who asked for a .edu address received one.
Clyde Ensslin, a spokesman for the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, says .edu has always been reserved for accredited institutions. But, he says, Network Solutions “made exceptions on an ad hoc basis.”
Since so many unaccredited institutions have .edu addresses, college officials say that more should be done to educate the public about how to make sure a college has appropriate accreditation.
To that end, the Department of Education is considering creating a list of reputable institutions and posting it online. And Mr. Bear and Mr. Ezell are working on a new Web site that lists unaccredited institutions that students need to watch out for.
No Guarantees
Students could use the help. When Ms. Lee was searching for online colleges, she says, she had to educate herself about accreditation. Through extensive Web searching, she eventually learned that there are legitimate and less legitimate agencies that accredit institutions, and that there are no guarantees that an education a student pays for is any good.
Ms. Lee says many students stop asking serious questions if they see that a college appears to be -- or claims to be -- accredited. “People don’t know exactly what ‘accredited’ means,” she says. “If that’s all you do, you’re going to pay a lot of money for a degree you can’t use, or in some states a degree that’s illegal to use.”
She says the more she learned about Canyon College, the less she trusted it. Canyon College is an online institution that operates in Idaho under a loophole in the state’s law. Idaho does not allow unapproved institutions to serve its students. So Canyon College serves students in every state except Idaho, leaving it immune to Idaho law and out of the reach of other states’ regulations.
The college claims on its Web site to be accredited by the Central States Consortium of Colleges and Schools, the National Board of Education, and the American Naturopathic Medical Accreditation Board for its doctor of naturopathy program. None of these accreditors are recognized by the Department of Education.
Officials from Canyon College did not return numerous telephone and e-mail messages from The Chronicle.
But administrators at other unaccredited institutions with .edu addresses say accreditation by a select group of private agencies is just one of many evaluation standards. Jay Thomas, general counsel for Novus University, says the absence of accreditation does not mean low quality.
Novus, based in Mississippi, has credentials from the World Association of Universities and Colleges, which is based in Nevada but has no standing with the Department of Education. He says Novus is attempting to get recognition from individual state regulators in America.
“We operate on an international basis, and we’re not interested in being involved in one political process,” Mr. Thomas says.
He would not say whether Novus would sue to keep its .edu address if it was challenged by Educause, but he did not rule out legal action. “I certainly think that would be challengeable in the courts,” he says.
In addition to unaccredited colleges, hundreds of other organizations -- such as primary and secondary schools and noneducational entities -- have Web addresses with the .edu suffix. Even Educause has one.
Mr. Worona, of Educause, says he understands that people who are fighting diploma mills want to take every possible step to alert people to the perils of taking a degree from an unaccredited institution. He would like to talk with diploma-mill experts to see what other methods can be used to help students make the right choices.
“Their goal is to do everything possible to make accreditation visible, and our goal is to run a well-organized domain,” Mr. Worona says. “Those two goals overlap, but we’re coming at them from different directions.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 51, Issue 14, Page A29