Talk:Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

User:Spinboy

What's with External link on Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

What's up this addition? Shows a motor cycle? [1]

See History

Thanks

Scott 14:52:46, 2005-08-27 (UTC)

Differentiation needed

I added some explanatory text on how this differs from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, namely that it doesn't accredit post-secondary schools with degree programs (per the US Dept. of Education), and my edit was undid. I'm going to restore it, since I believe that the information is necessary to distinguish the two organizations, and I referenced my source. A garbage person (talk) 18:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

post-secondary accreditation

A garbage person, please identify where in this source it says that the MSA's accreditation of post-secondary schools is limited to those which do not confer degrees, or which offer technical programs. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 06:11, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

DrFleischman, the phrasing is admittedly vague, and refers to "Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools" instead of "Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools". But it does say that the Department of Education only recognizes their accreditation for those two areas, so one can infer that it would be a waste of resources to offer accreditation that has no value and they would limit it to those areas. I can add the MSA-CESS standards of accreditation page, which includes secondary, elementary, and career/technical accreditations. There's also a page on school system accreditation, but it makes no mention of granting degrees of higher education.A garbage person (talk) 15:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't follow your logic. The Middle States Commission on Secondary Schools is not the same thing as the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Are you saying "close enough?" --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:56, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools has two parts, the Commission on Secondary Schools and the Commission on Elementary Schools, also collectively known as MSA-CESS. If one part of a greater whole does something, I don't think it's reaching to say that the whole is also involved. Since the Middle States Commission on Higher Education is legally and operationally distinct from both the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and MSA-CESS, the fact that MSCHE accredits degree-granting programs has no conflict with saying that MSA doesn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A garbage person (talk • contribs) 20:50, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

There's a logical fallacy in there. If a part of the whole does something, then you can say the whole does it too. But that's not what this is about. If a part of the whole doesn't do something, that doesn't mean the whole doesn't do it either. That's because another part of the whole might do it. So just because MSA-CESS is limited in what types of post-secondary programs it can accredit, doesn't mean MSA is so limited. As I understand it the other part of MSA, namely the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, is specifically permitted to accredit degree-earning post-secondary programs. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 02:13, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

MSCHE is not part of MSA; it's legally separate and has a specific agreement with MSA to continue using the "Middle States" name. I'm a higher ed scholar (who happens to work at a MSCHE-accredited university and is a little bit involved with the organization) so I don't specifically know anything else about MSA but I know that it's not one of the seven recognized regional accreditors of colleges and universities. So while we may not be able to prove a negative ("MSA does not accredit colleges or universities") we can definitely prove the positive that it's not a recognized regional accreditor so I think this situation is quite clear. ElKevbo (talk) 02:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

And the source cited at the very beginning of this section explicitly says this anyway: "Scope of recognition: the accreditation of institutions with postsecondary, non-degree granting career and technology programs in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to include the accreditation of postsecondary, non-degree granting institutions that offer all or part of their educational programs via distance education modalities." So where's the confusion??? ElKevbo (talk) 02:34, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Not confusion, basic verification. The source is talking about the MSA-CESS, not the MSA. I have no doubt that your personal knowledge is correct, but we still need a reliable source that verifies the content. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 03:02, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The MSCHE website details how it was part of the MSA, but isn't any longer: "From its origins in 1919 through February 2013, the Commission was a unit of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. Although now an independent corporation, the Commission maintains an ongoing relationship with the Middle States Association.". So MSCHE is not part of the MSA any longer; it just works with them. --A garbage person (talk) 16:08, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I seem to remember from a MSCHE town hall or conference that the relationship focuses almost strictly on licensing the name "Middle States." The current MSCHE website says: "From 1919 through February 2013, MSCHE functioned as one of the three Commissions of the Middle States Association. However, on March 1, 2013, MSCHE was separately incorporated under Pennsylvania Commonwealth law as the Mid-Atlantic Region Commission on Higher Education, doing business as the Middle States Commission on Higher Education." I think they have retained the name primarily to reduce confusion among institutions and other constituents because they used the name for so long (nearly a century) but otherwise have no substantive relationship with MSA-CESS or what remains of MSA . ElKevbo (talk) 19:17, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, that's helpful. The verifiability problem still stands, however. The MSA is not the same thing as the MSA-CESS, so we can't use a source that says something about the MSA-CESS to say something about the MSA in general. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that there is a substantive MSA organization, not in an operational sense. There seems to have been a unified, functioning organization with that name at some point in the past but right now the only organizations that actually exist are MSCHE and MSA-CESS; the Department of Education's accreditation website supports this understanding. If this article doesn't reflect that - and I don't think it does! - then this article needs to be rewritten. It should probably be a somewhat short article with some history but the majority of the material should be left for the MSCHE and MSA-CESS articles since those are the contemporary accrediting organizations that currently exist and have ties to MSA. ElKevbo (talk) 19:13, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Potential move or refactoring of article

There's no MSA-CESS article. If the MSA now consists solely of MSA-CESS, then we should confirm that and then move the article, yes? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 19:26, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Very much agreed. --A garbage person (talk) 20:20, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

No, I think it's still worth having this article and including (a) historical information and (b) discussion of how the current organizations came about and links to them. But I agree that most or all of the content in the current version of this article should be moved to a new article about MSA-CESS. ElKevbo (talk) 20:53, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Well I'm at a near-complete loss here. There's just a dearth of information about these organizations, their relationships, and whether something called the "Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools" even exists today. This source is good but only covers the organizational history through 2009. After that it gets murky. The MSA's website is just a stub. The MSCHE source ElKevbo found suggests MSCHE split off from the elementary and secondary school commissions and perhaps left the MSA in 2013. However these bylaws seem to suggest it's still part of the MSA. Although the bylaws were adopted in 2011, they include an update from 2014. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:10, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

To add to the confusion, the Standards for Career and Technical Institutions from the MSA-CESS, published 2017, talks about the MSA as an overarching organization that includes the MSCHE! However, the Facebook page for the Middle States Association is explicitly only about the MSA-CESS, and it's regularly updated (last update was yesterday). This is also backed by the latest news post on the MSA-CESS site which explicitly refers to the MSA as another name for the MSA-CESS. (Also, Dr. Fleischman, the MSA site being a stub--and the lack of talk about the MSA anywhere outside of the MSA-CESS--was what prompted my initial edit that kicked off this spiral.) --A garbage person (talk) 17:02, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

The sources you found published on msa-cess.org are as reliable as the one ElKevbo found on msche.org. I cannot interpret these as anything but a conflict among the sources. In light of this, I think we should keep the article where it is but reframe it to explain that at least until 2013 the MSA was comprised of three affiliated commissions, and to explain that there's a conflict among the sources about whether the MSCHE is still part of the MSA. Another approach we could take it treat all of these WP:ABOUTSELF sources as unreliable and simply omit everything about the history of the organization after 2009. However I think that would be doing readers a disservice. Thoughts? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:17, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Isn't there some kind of template for this situation? Maybe some branch of Template:Self-contradictory? --A garbage person (talk) 17:42, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I recommend just sending the organizations an e-mail and asking if there are any publicly available documents that clear this up. ElKevbo (talk) 18:11, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I personally prefer not to do that sort of research, but it's certainly an option. Are you volunteering? --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:16, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A garbage person, this is matter of contradictory sources, not contradictory content. The solution in these cases is dictated by WP:NPV. Namely, if the sources are deemed reliable then we describe the dispute among them. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:13, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Dang it. Too bad there isn't a "these sources make no sense and we don't know why" button. --A garbage person (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW, the MSA's website was stubified at some point between December 2014 and May 2015. Before the stubification the "About" page said all three commissions were part of the MSA. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:30, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• I found two helpful, independent reliable sources, though neither answers all of our questions:

• nj.com: The MSCHE was a unit of the MSA in 2012.
• Inside Higher Ed: At least as of 2010, the MSCHE and the MSA were engaged in a nasty turf war that involved an investigation by the ED and lots of lawyers. Regardless of how we refactor our article, this definitely merits at least a paragraph.

--Dr. Fleischman (talk) 20:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)