National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE) identifies itself as an organization specializing in evaluation of people's

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...

al credentials. Some

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

educational authorities identify it as an unrecognizedCredential Watch
/ref>Unrecognized Accreditation Agencies
/ref> accreditation organization or

accreditation mill An accreditation mill is an organization that purports to award educational accreditation to higher education institutions without having government authority or recognition from mainstream academia to operate as an accreditor. Implicit in the term ...

. NAHE charges fees for a service described as an evaluation of the educational credentials of clients who have studied in other countries or attained

degree Degree may refer to: As a unit of measurement * Degree (angle), a unit of angle measurement ** Degree of geographical latitude ** Degree of geographical longitude * Degree symbol (°), a notation used in science, engineering, and mathematics ...

s through alternative methods.

Association of Distance Learning Programs

The NAHE subsidiary Association of Distance Learning Programs (ADLP) offers "

accreditation Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...

" for all types of educational programs world-wide, including

schools A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsor ...

colleges A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...

distance learning Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...

programs, evaluation of

experiential learning Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students ...

, and other non-traditional education programs. ADLP is not, however, recognized by either the

United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

(USDE) or

Council for Higher Education Accreditation The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) is a United States organization of degree-granting colleges and universities. It identifies its purpose as providing national advocacy for academic quality through accreditation in order t ...

(CHEA) as a nationally recognized accrediting agency.

Accreditation of diploma mills

Some organizations, including

Concordia College and University Concordia College and University is an entity with a primary mailing address in Delaware that represents itself as a real life institution that awards associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees based solely on the purchaser's work and l ...

, Lacrosse University, and The

American University of London The American University of London (AUOL) is an online diploma mill. The company disputes the label and instead describes itself as a for-profit unaccredited educational institution offering undergraduate and graduate degrees solely by distance ...

, that have been identified as

diploma mills A diploma mill (also known as a degree mill) is a company or organization that claims to be a higher education institution but provides illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee. The degrees can be fabricated (made-up), falsified (fake ...

claim to be "recognized" by NAHE or "accredited" by ADLP . ''Credential Watch'' lists both NAHE and ADLP as unrecognized educational accreditation agencies. The

California Postsecondary Education Commission The California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) was the higher education planning and coordinating agency of the government of the U.S. state of California. It closed in 2011. History The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Educati ...

lists NAHE as an unrecognized accreditation agency. Accreditation by unrecognized organizations has no known academic value. Organizations that claim accreditation or approval by ADLP and NAHE sometimes acknowledge in their promotional materials that these organizations are unrecognized, but suggest that it is not important for accrediting bodies to have government recognition. For example, the Lacrosse University website states: People who obtain "degrees" from diploma mills that make these types of statements are likely to find that the credentials they bought are not accepted by academic institutions, governments, or employers.

Website

The website of National Academy of Higher Education is www.nahighered.co.cc, a free

URL redirection URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened ...

address; co.cc is an ordinary second-level Cocos (Keeling) Islands domain like any other. The co.cc redirector bills itself as "your free domain for

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

" and the nahighered page itself consists of an archived

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

page from 2005 as nahighered.org, a domain registered using a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

whois WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...

-privacy service and pointing to a

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

server that is not currently functional.

National Academy of Higher Education, Pakistan

There is a legitimate organization with the name "National Academy of Higher Education" in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

.Higher Education Commission
Pakistan The organization in Pakistan was not intended to be an

educational accreditation Educational accreditation is a quality assurance process under which services and operations of educational institutions or programs are evaluated and verified by an external body to determine whether applicable and recognized standards are met. ...

body and is not connected to the "National Academy of Higher Education"

. Its purpose is solely as a resource for professional development of educators at existing educational institutions. According to the Higher Education Commission, "National Academy of Higher Education is a new initiative of Higher Education Commission for faculty development in the

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...

institutions. The objective is to enhance basic competencies in academic practice in higher education."

References

{{reflist Unrecognized accreditation associations

Association of Distance Learning Programs

Accreditation of diploma mills

Website

National Academy of Higher Education, Pakistan

See also

References