Excelsior & Thomas Edison State College…Validation of the Big Three - Printable Version +- Online Degrees and CLEP and DSST Exam Prep Discussion (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb) +-- Forum: Inactive (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Forum-Inactive) +--- Forum: [ARCHIVE] Excelsior, Thomas Edison, and Charter Oak Specific Discussion (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Forum-ARCHIVE-Excelsior-Thomas-Edison-and-Charter-Oak-Specific-Discussion) +--- Thread: Excelsior & Thomas Edison State College…Validation of the Big Three (/Thread-Excelsior-Thomas-Edison-State-College%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%A6Validation-of-the-Big-Three)

Excelsior & Thomas Edison State College…Validation of the Big Three - barcotta - 10-13-2008 Regents College - The Early Years (excerpt).pdf I picked up the “free” book, Regents College…The Early Years after reading about it in the Excelsior “Live and Learn” magazine (and paying $10 shipping) and it really filled in a lot of holes in my understanding of this institution. I’ve been researching alternative degree programs since the early 90’s, and this book provided as much information as almost every other source combined, with regard to the reason the Excelsior and Edison programs exist and how it all came to be. Anyone who is concerned with regard to the validity of degrees awarded by these colleges (and there’s a little about COSC, too) and the credit-by-examination method will be well served by checking out this book. I’ve attached a link to some excerpts from the book (it's about 10MB so make take a minute or two to download) and would encourage everyone to read at least the last two chapters (20 & 21). The book ends just as Regents College is about to become Excelsior College but contains a lot of information regarding the evolution of the school and its name. The link contains most of the chapters in the book, but I skipped the chapters that related to the nursing program exclusively since I was not as interested in the development of that program. The book is written by Donald Nolan, who was a founding director of the college in the 1970’s. While the book is chock full of interesting info, it is written in a style that, for me, was difficult to read. In fact, I cannot recall a book that contained so much interesting information that was such a chore to read. There are two basic reasons for this. First, the book contains MANY LISTS of professors and universities buried in paragraphs. Second, there was a series of programs over time with fairly long names to which they refer by their acronyms—which, for me, were difficult to keep straight. So, I’m just going to bullet a few of the early points I thought were most pertinent to give you a taste of the info contained therein: The University of the State of New York (“USNY”) is not actually a university—it’s a unified system of education comprised of virtually every education-providing entity in New York State—public and private—including museums, libraries, etc. The USNY is headed by the Board of Regents and administered by the State Education Department (“SED”). For those Christians out there, this is a lot like God sending his only Son who works through the Holy Spirit. Both concepts can be a little confusing and it’s tricky to track who does what, and why, throughout the book. The concept of degree-via-examination at USNY began in earnest with a speech by Ewald Nyquist upon his appointment as president of the USNY in 1970. He said, in part, “If attendance at a college is the only road to these credentials (degrees), those who cannot, or have not, availed themselves of this route, but have acquired knowledge and skills through other sources, will be denied the recognition and advancement to which they are entitled (emphasis added). Neither the State nor the Nation can afford such waste, nor should they tolerate such inequity. The costs of traditionalism are too high.” The idea of degree-via-examination was first raised in New York State in 1889 but was dropped due to lack of funding and support from the university system. It all started in 1963 with the College Proficiency Examination Program(“CPEP”), which was developed and administered by the SED through the Board of Regents. Something called the Heald Report was produced in 1961 at the request of Governor Rockefeller. It contained recommendations for education and explicitly included the need for examinations to be produced to assess college-level knowledge. The Committee that produced the Heald Report included representatives from the Carnegie and Ford foundations, and it was their funding over the years, not State funding, that made all this happen. In fact, the production of exams and ultimately the degree programs were nothing but a series of committees formed by USNY which consisted of college professors from all over New York State, and the country, who produced the actual exams and ultimately “sold” the concepts inside their own home universities. There was an ever-present danger of running out of funding and, if not for Ford and Carnegie, all this may never have happened. The CPEP program initially included a proposal for inclusion of a system of proficiency exams for teacher certification! That is how much they believed in the credit-by-exam concept. In objecting to the development of the CPEP program, one educator wrote, “Education is the evocation—or transmission—of character, culture, values, personality, etc. For the vast majority of us this can be accomplished only through another person, a teacher. Proficiency—or technique—I can learn on my own through books alone. But I am not thereby educated. The real objective of the University is education—not the imparting of a technique.” Huh? The program that ultimately became CLEP was started in 1961 as well. It was a national version of CPEP and was also funded by the Carnegie Corporation. The development of a program run by the Board of Regents that would grant degrees based largely or exclusively on testing was discussed for several years before Nyquist became president. It appears that there was more concern about the negative impact it could have on traditional college enrollment than there was about the validity of the concept in general. In fact, similar external programs had already existed for at least a hundred years in other countries and some US states. New Jersey joined in the process of developing external degree programs in 1971, but ultimately would secede and become Thomas Edison State College. Check it out and see if it fills in any holes for you. Like I said, it’s tough reading in parts, but it gives you a very clear idea of just how much time and effort went into producing this program and, even more importantly, the level of belief and support it enjoyed from many members of the highest levels of academia. Excelsior & Thomas Edison State College…Validation of the Big Three - gus - 10-13-2008 Thank you Michael for summarizing all the interesting information! I had looked up similar information online (Wikipedia mostly), triggered by that thread which was discussing how to best represent Excelsior's degree on a resume (the discussion that surfaced on this board not so long ago). Of course the info I found was in much less detail, so thanks again for a great read.