Official’s Degree

On Sept. 29, 1985, The Times published a UPI release headlined “Records Show Ex-Official Billed U.S. for 2 ‘Diploma Mill’ Degrees.” The article stated that a Transportation Department investigative committee “concluded” that Richard Devereaux, a former Federal Aviation Administration official, violated federal law in billing the government for $2,952 in tuition reimbursement for two degrees completed with Golden State University.

The term diploma mill is commonly used to designate a school that sells degrees that are illegal and/or unearnned. By either of these criteria Golden State University is emphatically not a diploma mill. Its degrees have the full legality conferred through authorization by the California Department of Education. The amount of unit credit required for its degrees is comparable to that of traditional on-campus programs.

What the article failed to point out is that external, off-campus study programs, such as Golden State’s, are designed for adult learners in mid-career. Most of these, like Devereaux, enter an external university already possessing a large part of the unit credit that they need to meet degree requirements. This has already been earned in previous colleges, by job-related seminars or through credit given for work-experience learning that the state of California authorizes. As the article points out, Devereaux had risen, over 26 years of career experience, to toe “second-highest rank in FAA’s Western Pacific region.”

To imply, as the article does, that externally earned degrees are invalid because mature professionals earning them are required to spend fewer hours with the college granting them than traditional schools require of adolescents with no career experience is to miss the whole point of the external educational movement.

This alternative approach to higher education has developed over the last quarter-century because mid-career adults, in ever greater numbers, are needing further formal education to meet increasingly stringent job requirements or to retrain for new careers. Most of them cannot go back to traditional on-campus programs because of family and job responsibilities.

What the reporters of this article did not bother to discover is that the 264 hours that Devereaux spent in class study for his degrees were under the supervision of competent faculty advisers who met with him frequently and required written reports and papers as well as a thesis meeting customary scholarly requirements.

By the time Devereaux completed this required resident study, in addition to previously earned college credits and credit given for career training and experience, his total earned units equaled or exceeded requirements set by traditional institutions. Further, much of this credit represents hard-won knowledge and skills acquired in the real world of high-level career activity rather than mere head knowledge gained from books and classroom lectures.

The alumni of Golden State University include other officials in state and federal government besides Mr. Devereaux. They also include faculty and department heads from state and private universities as well as professionals in many other fields, including doctors, dentists, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, ministers and corporate executives.

LEE GLADDEN

Los Angeles

Gladden is academic field adviser at Golden State University.