Blue Marble University, located in the Commonwealth of Dominica, is not required to be accredited. Our doctoral degrees are routinely approved as being equivalent to US regionally accredited colleges and universities by foreign education evaluators. Such certificates of equivalency allow our graduates to use their degrees for employment purposes in the US.
However, due to the snobbery and education bigotry existing at the top US universities and other institutions, applicants for employment are usually turned away due to not having a degree from a regionally accredited college. This is a discriminatory hiring practice that pervades higher education with the intent to block people of color and in fact all applicants without accredited degrees.
An “accredited” degree is never required for anything except in the minds of the people running these “clubs”. And you cannot be a member of the “club”, that is, this or that university, unless you graduated with a degree from an accredited institution regardless of whether your education may actually be superior. It is just another way to block well educated, but disadvantaged students, who followed an alternative education pathway because they could not afford the ridiculous tuitions charged by accredited higher education.
In its very latest policy statement December 2018, the United States Department of Education said this:
“Postsecondary accreditation is a voluntary process in that a college or university need not be accredited in order to provide instruction or confer academic degrees”.
[“Rethinking Higher Education-Accreditation Reform”, Page 1, US Department of Education, accessed from officlal website, “Accreditation: Postsecondary Education Institutions”, September 17, 2020, https://www.ed.gov/accreditation
Full Report can be accessed online here: https://www2.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/rethinking-higher-education-accreditation-reform.pdf
or downloaded Here: Rethinking Higher Education-Accreditation Reform
The report, still in effect as of September 2020, goes on to state at page 1:
“Because colleges and universities may not participate in Federal Student Aid (Title IV) programs unless they are accredited, however, institutions are rarely able to compete for students without this seal of approval”. [Meaning if you are not accredited, your students cannot qualify for student loans needed to pay your exhorbitant tuitions]
Blue Marble University does not need any “seal of approval” to qualify students for loans, because our tuition is affordable to everyone, including most international students!
Because the US Department of Education does not require higher ed institutions to be accredited, the continued requirement of only an “accredited degree” for employment or teaching positions is discriminatory. This constitutes a discriminatory hiring practice designed to discriminate against people of color and other alternative education graduates.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; we all know that.
But, Title VII prohibits not only intentional discrimination, but also practices that have the effect of discriminating against individuals because of their race, color, national origin, religion, or sex.
This is what indirect discrimination based on education credentials looks like:
Indirect discrimination is usually less obvious than direct discrimination and is normally unintended.
Generally speaking, it occurs when a rule or plan of some sort is put into place which applies to everyone; and is not in itself discriminatory but it could put those with a certain protected characteristic at a disadvantage. [such as requiring degrees only from accredited institutions even though not required by the US Dept of Education]
Typically, it has (or will have) the effect of putting those who share the protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage when compared to others who do not have the characteristic [such as for people of color or alternative education degrees]
It puts, or would put, the person at that disadvantage
The employer is unable to objectively justify it.
It is well known that degree requirements often do have a disparate impact against African American and Latino applicants. In fact, the very first Supreme Court case to recognize disparate impact discrimination cases involved a degree requirement. Before federal law prohibited job discrimination, the Duke Power Company had a segregated workforce; African Americans could be employed only in its low paying labor department. After the law changed, Duke had to drop its overt discrimination. Instead, it imposed the new requirement that all applicants for hire or transfer to any other department had to have a high school diploma or a satisfactory score on two IQ tests. The Court found that these requirements had the effect of continuing the company’s discriminatory practices. Because the requirements did not measure any job-related skill, they were found to be illegal. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-discriminatory-require-applicants-college-degree.html
So, in summary, Blue Marble University is not accredited, not looking to be accredited, nor required by the US Deptartment of Education to be accredited.
Accreditation costs a lot, $1,000,000 in many cases [Rethinking Higher Education-Accreditation Reform, Page 8]. Good thing the Department of Education reported this because it is a BIG secret…just try finding out about accreditation costs.
We prefer to charge a very affordable tuition in lieu of pursuing accreditation.
Blue Marble University 