Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exemplary, Exhaustive, Honorable, Refreshingly Candid, May 4, 2006
Arm yourself with this lastest, updated version of Bears Guide before diving into the murky world of earning a degree through distance learning, particularly advanced degrees. It's exemplary and exhaustive in its research and useful database, the authors are honorable and refreshingly straight-talking - their candor will help you read between the lines of legality some questionable institutions engage in. You'll learn who's doing non-residency or semi-resident education, who's offering what degrees or fields of study, and who's reputable.
Bears Guides have been around for years, undergoing frequent revisions, championing distance learning, and exposing the crooks of diploma mills.
I want to counteract comments made in another (2003) review that seemed to disparage the integrity of author John Bear (whose daughter, Mariah, is carrying on his work with Nichols in these books). Bear is a founder of Degree.net, which I'd recommend as an adjunct resource to this book. He, and all the earlier versions of this book, have done a LOT to debunk and expose diploma mills to the general public. Other than the state of Oregon (which has a helpful website), no other entity in the U.S. has done - or is doing - as much.
Here's a quote from Wired Magazine news in March 2000:
"[Diploma mills] are growing, especially on the Internet, at astonishing rates," agrees John Bear, founder of Degree.net. Bear has witnessed the dark side of the distance-education boom up close. A former consultant, informant, and expert witness for the FBI's task force operation DipScam in the 1980s, he helped shut down a number of diploma mills over a 12-year period."
That quote alone should help - and hopefully my review, too. The layout of Bears Guide is reader-friendly and makes a complex subject accessible. And it's frequently updated/revised. So unlike the Peterson guide, there's barely a comparison between the two.
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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the BIBLE of non-traditional/distance learning!, February 13, 1999
By A Customer
Pardon the hyperbole, but no "nontraditional" (i.e. working adult) student should be without this book. John and Mariah succinctly and humorously break down the good, the bad, and the ugly in this guide to the world of nontraditional and distance learning.If you're a working adult considering your options for continuing your post-secondary education, you need this book. There are many ways to earn or complete a degree, and Bears' Guide attempts to show you the myriad paths and how best to select and pursue them. Last, but not least, there are many "institutions" in the US and abroad that would love to have your money. In fact, many of them would be perfectly willing to sell you a degree that would serve you better as toilet paper than as a credential. This book helps you tell the difference between institutions that deserve your money/time and those that deserve to see your backside. There are only a couple of high-quality general treatments of the topic of distance and nontraditional education, and this is one of them. The other is Marcie Thorson's Campus Free College Degrees. Peterson's guides get an honorable mention from me. In closing: I own it; I love it; I highly recommend it. Now go buy a dozen copies!
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
BADLY NEEDED IN THIS ERA OF DUMBED-DOWN UNIVERSITIES, October 12, 2003
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John Bear's guide is valuable even though it isn't perfect. As they say, "It's the only real game in town." It is reasonably well written and is certainly comprehensive. It serves as a pretty good guide for those who can't stop work to attend full-time classes on a campus, or people who are financially strapped. His explanation of how schools are accredited is well worth reading and informative. If I remember correctly Harvard isn't regionally accredited because it was founded before there was such a thing as accreditation and, besides, they feel their name and reputation is enough and they don't need accreditation.Bear's guide is timely, not only because today there is a greater need for distance learning, but also because progressive education theories in the lower schools has produced less educated freshmen students and a resulting lower standard in requirements for a "conventional" degree. The quality of distance learning at the better remote schools has come up, while the quality of learning at traditional universities has gone down. Bottom line, distance learning at a good on-line or correspondence school can be just as good as or better than that at a traditional campus, especially those whose standards have been intentionally lowered. There is no magic in classroom hours. Hard study motivation by and of the student is what is important. The piece of paper that says "DEGREE" at the top is both useless and meaningless if it doesn't represent hard academic study under qualified supervision and guidance. Properly done this can be accomplished through distance learning. It doesn't matter if Bear has founded several schools and is pushing them if the academic requirements are high. I earned my advanced degrees from accredited traditional state universities so I have no ax to grind. I would value a degree from an academically tough distance learning school higher than a degree from a snobbish Ivy League campus school whose academic requirements have been lowered to accommodate a less qualified and less academically motivated student body. Universities have always been about money, regardless of the hoop-la made about lofty educational goals. Just look at the sports scholarship culture and the money ball games brings into the university if you doubt this. A drop in student body size means teacher lay-offs and reduced staff salaries unless tuition is raised, which can exacerbate matters. Bear's guide can be of great assistance in evaluating schools offering distance learning. I left off the fifth star because he wasn't completely open about his personal involvement in several schools he promotes.
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