Primrose Road

A Ministry of Education-approved trade college for astrologers has opened in the Ukraine. But before you dismiss this as residual Eastern Bloc wackiness, note that we have a fully functional, non diploma mill college of astrology right here in the United States. Though unaccredited, Kepler seems to offer its A.A. and B.A. students a relatively rigorous liberal arts curriculum, requiring courses in classical languages (Latin and Ancient Greek), literature, history, and psychology comparable to those offered at the country's better community colleges. Students are required to do two years of coursework for the associate's and four years for the bachelor's. Since 2001, when the school was approved to issue degrees (but still not accredited), there have been debates as to whether the school should be accredited.

I'd like to go with the "well, at least it's not a diploma mill" argument, but it's difficult to get past the fact that the school is offering degrees in a pseudoscience. The majority of students in my 200-level poetry class this term are earning bachelors' degrees in biology, mechanical engineering, or architecture; what does it mean for them that in two years, the "B.A." or "B.S." on their resumes could be, accreditation-wise, the same "B.A." or "B.S." on a Kepler graduate's resume?

Employers and passers-by aren't always going to be able to recognize the difference. I have in the last year spoken to a number of people who, perhaps or perhaps not surprisingly, believed that unaccredited online institutions were a godsend for people lacking the time and money to invest in an advanced degree. They claimed that there was no fundamental distinction between my Ph.D. (which, when I earn it in 2009, will have four-and-a-half years of coursework, a master's thesis, six months of studying for comprehensive exams, articles, conference presentations, and a dissertation behind it) and a Ph.D. obtained from an unaccredited institution with $5000, 6 months of classes, and a fifty-page research paper.

In fact, there seem to be two levels to the diploma mill problem: (1) government workers and educators who have knowingly used diploma mill degrees to "earn" promotions, and pop-psychology authors who knowingly pad their credentials with false doctorates; and (2) those learners who honestly don't know that six months of classes and a fifty-page research paper does not a dissertation make.

So I wonder, in light of the diploma-mill issues that don't quite apply to the US's very own astrology college but nonetheless affect decisions regarding accreditation, is it reasonable or ethical to confer accreditation on a liberal arts college of pseudoscience?