I taught undergraduate nursing courses for one term at a for profit, nonaccredited college. My students were bright young people seeking a BSN. One of my purposes in joining allnurses.com is to alert readers to avoid considering this type of college as a place to get a nursing degree. As a faculty member, I saw how the only goal of the college administrators was to make as big a profit as possible, collecting all the cash they could from students' financial aid sources.
I left the college after one term because I became extremely uncomfortable at the dishonesty of college administrators, who deceived students into thinking that soon the college would be accredited and that they would have no problems attending graduate nursing programs. The college was far from ever being ready for accreditation, because accreditation was a minor interest of administrators as long as good profits could be made from students.
I heard college deans and college administrators minimize the difficulties that students would face trying to get into graduate school with a nonacredited degree. Only when students were nearing graduation and making inquiries at graduate schools on their own, did they realize that no graduate program that they were interested in would consider them as a student because of their nonaccredited degree. Much disappointment and anger followed. I think that the students could find jobs as RNs, but those who wanted to go on for masters and doctoral degrees, found that all doors were closed. What I saw them doing was applying to another accredited college for another undergraduate degree, taking on even more student debt, so that they could use that second undergraduate degree from an accredited college, to go to graduate school later.
To put it most bluntly, individuals who run for profit, nonaccredited schools of nursing are unscrupulous people who are making huge amounts of money taking advantage of naive students who are unaware that these college programs are scams. Stay away from them, even if it means a long wait for a place at an accredited college. A diploma from an unaccredited school is worth nothing when it comes time to apply to graduate school.
Great thread. Thank you, GinaR for starting it. More people such as yourself, with "inside experience" need to tell their stories. Many of the graduates or employees of these predatory programs will not speak out against them because they fear "down-grading" their own backgrounds.
I first went to nursing school decades ago. I had no idea there was such a thing as accreditation. This is something I have just been introduced to recently. I wonder if there was even any consideration for accreditation in the 60's, 70's, or even 80's. Just to satisfy my curiosity. Can any other semi dinosaur fill me in? When did accreditation become an issue? For that matter, accreditation was not discussed in the BSN program I attended in the early to mid 90's. I never would have known that I needed to do due diligence on this.
i did a twelve hour shift last night as a part of my final semester preceptorship. there were two young girls who were also there from a private college.
while i was charting, i overheard them quizzing each other on nclex questions. i was amazed at what they didn't know, but i guess i shouldn't be surprised since their school has a dismal nclex pass rate of less than 25%. the school currently has a notice of deficiency because our state requires a passing rate of 80% to maintain accredation. this school also cost more than four times as much as my community college. there were things i'd love to change about my school, but i can't deny that they didn't teach us and train us well, and we have no limits when i comes to advancing our education.
potential nursing students really need to remember: BUYER BEWARE.
Accreditation has been around since I first applied to college in the 1970's. For the most part, in the 60's, 70's and 80's (the decades you're wondering about) it wasn't much of an issue because virtually all institutions of higher learning were accredited. The exceptions were technical institutes where some went to learn trades like auto mechanics, secretarial skills, etc., but there was no pretense that these were anything but trade schools. Now, many of these schools pretend they are colleges and they often have some accreditation (that is usually an organization they, themselves start, they give it an official sounding name, develop a website with an official looking seal, complete with photos of important looking people--all to give prospective students the impression that they are accredited by a recognized body). So, with the recent trend of these for-profit schools trying to deceive students, there has been more emphisis on accreditation.
The following link gives a good history of accrediting agencies and the need to maintain standards for those agencies (who in turn maintain and enforce standards for the schools they accredit.) When schools have sign-in policies, or rules about how many days a student can be late or absent, or seemingly unrealistic, unyielding rules about grades, and policies that seem strict and inflexible, these are often to protect the school's accreditation; if schools graduated students who did not meet such minimum requirements, the school could lose its accreditation--thus harming all the students, not just the one who failed a course by 2 points
llg, PhD, RN
13,469 Posts
Great thread. Thank you, GinaR for starting it. More people such as yourself, with "inside experience" need to tell their stories. Many of the graduates or employees of these predatory programs will not speak out against them because they fear "down-grading" their own backgrounds.