Professional Affiliations 

As an institution, Marco Polo International University, is committed to its unique world vision and to bringing its students careful application of the highest classic principles in traditional education. 
 

Marco Polo International University, of its own independent volition, selects its professional affiliation partners and its accreditation compliant e-learning program partners with great care and utterly without regard to the politics or funding offers of any government.

Marco Polo International University is proud to associate with other top universities from around the world through its professional affiliation memberships, its offering of some of the same key accreditation compliant learning programs, and its use of the same educational delivery platform. MPIU is pleased to be listed with other respected Universities and Professors on Academia.edu

Agency Accreditation: A Rational Perspective 

Accreditation by recognized corporate agencies is really only a regional phenomenon with its focal point being the United States, in spite of a rather shocking quiet attempt to expand their hegemony way beyond the original intent of their quasi authority. Moreover, their perceived authority comes from those schools that volunteer their subjection to the agency's quasi authority.

Marco Polo International University is licensed and registered in a jurisdiction that is not part of the regional accreditation scheme described above, and therefore, does not participate.

Marco Polo University has studied the accreditation issue and determined that it is in the best interest of our students to pursue independent accreditation like so many other great universities, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, did during the first several hundred years of their existence. However, since this issue is of genuine interest to some, we have researched the following for their benefit.

Due to the luxury of their combined staggering budgets, these agencies take on a sort of surreal, 'bigger than life', presence in the realm of education. It is a result of this phenomenon that questions occasionally arise. Hence, this brief expose which will not only show the true purpose of these agencies, and of those institutions who subscribe to their services, but the dismal results of their so-called watchdog status on the quality of education in America.

Accreditation

For those that are interested, it is helpful to understand the meaning of accreditation and the two general kinds of accreditation. "To accredit" is a verb that means to accept, approve or recognize a person or organization for a particular purpose. A person or organization that has been accredited for a particular purpose is said to have accreditation for that purpose.

For purposes of this article there are essentially four different types of educational accreditation.

• There is self accreditation which is the accreditation granted by a recognized accrediting association of which the accreditation recipient is a member. This type is most prominent in the U.S. and its primary purpose is to determine the fitness of its members to receive federal funds.
  
  
• There is independent accreditation which is the type of accreditation that is most prevalent. This type of accreditation is derived by an institution through its faculty, best practices, and student results.
  
  
• There is accreditation by unrecognized accrediting associations often claimed as having no value by recognized accrediting associations who see them as a potential threat to their cartel like monopoly.
  
  
• The fourth one is accredited educational courses, programs, and software that may be actually accredited or "meet or exceed" association accreditation compliance requirements.
   

Worldwide, most centers of higher learning are not accredited by any kind of accreditation agency but often have independent accreditation. On the other hand, those that begin with independent accreditation often become self-accredited as part of a group of institutions by joining their regional accreditation agency or association. Usually self-accreditation occurs long after the institution has been educating and graduating students. 
 

As you are beginning to see, there are two general types of accreditation in the world of education, self-accreditation and independent accreditation. Their comparative meanings are as different as their results.
 

Take for example, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, premiere universities in the U.S. These excellent universities weren't accredited by regional accreditation agencies until the early 1960's when, as you will see, they joined their respective accrediting associations for reasons other than improving their quality of education! Before becoming self-accredited, they relied on their own means of independent accreditation while they established their success and reputation as academic leaders.

Self-Accreditation
 

Universities that are self-accredited are members of an appropriate accrediting association or agency that regulates their members by setting standards that each member must meet in terms of faculty qualifications, actual physical buildings, volumes of books in the library and many other factors in a complex scheme of time consuming and often artificial documentation. Through the process of peer review, professors from three member schools visit a fourth member school to adjudge whether or not it meets the association’s standards. A school retains its accreditation by the association when it continues to meet the associations standards as judged in this peer review setting.

The cost of membership in an accrediting association, together with the attendant cost of self-accreditation, places a heavy financial burden on students and their parents. Experts have observed instances where obtaining accreditation was instrumental in driving up tuition rates over 400% in a four year period. Although clear data is obscured, it is likely that 85% or more of students who enter post secondary institutions, never obtain their accredited degree, most of whom end up with nothing to show for their effort but a huge student loan to pay back. As a result, the college diploma mills that prey on the establishment's widely recognized failures, seem to proliferate.

These U.S. recognized regional accrediting associations all claim that their stamp of approval, granted through their resource intensive peer review system, guarantees students, parents, and employers that they will receive a quality educational product. 
 

The same regional accrediting associations that administer their bankrupt educational quality assurance program through the accreditation process for K-12 schools, administer it for the universities as well.
 

In spite of continuous intense public relations spin and a bigger than life academic persona in some countries like the U.S., the hard, cold facts are undeniable: the performance of self-accredited or regionally accredited schools operating under the indirect auspices and approval of the cartel of recognized regional accrediting association is beyond appalling. In the United States, for example, 70% of inner city fourth graders cannot read at even a basic level. These self-accredited K-12 schools, carrying the regional accrediting associations' stamps of approval, are turning out millions of graduates each year who cannot think, read, write, or even calculate enough to make proper change in a simple retail transaction. In sum, they are culturally semi-literate at best.

Students continue to be defrauded by the millions! The evidence for this is overwhelming. A simple internet search on Google or Yahoo with such key phrases as "failure of American education", “high school literacy rate” , and “failure education accreditation systems”, yields hundreds of articles about the failure of K-12, higher education in the United States such as:

• Fox News, in an April, 2008, report, states that in some cities, high school graduation rates plummet below 50%.
  
  
• The Chronicle of Higher Education headlines: “The Federal Government System for Accreditation is a misguided failure."
  
  
• In a November, 2008, article, Dallas Business Journal reported that 28% of adults in a survey indicated the need for literacy classes.
  
  
• In a March, 2008, article, the New York Times claims that states' data obscures true high school completion rates by, in essence, “keeping two sets of books.”
  
  
• The November, 2008, Dallas Business Journal tells the tragic story of John Corcoran who graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years with a tested reading ability at second grade level.
  
  

Remember, these same recognized regional accrediting associations, with the same quasi authority and arrogance, impose their educational quality assurance system in a cartel-like exclusionary fashion on the universities and colleges as well, protecting the status quo at all costs.

The United States Federal Government spends over $120 billion dollars per year on grants, scholarships and other programs administered by 39 government bureaucratic agencies to these self-accredited colleges and universities. Huge state and local budgets and regulatory agencies complete this Byzantine regulatory scheme. This, and not their quality assurance track record, is the fundamental reason for the survival of the self-accreditation associations. Through this combination of regulatory schemes, new universities that would challenge the establishment to produce better educational products are prevented from starting.

A Brief Summary of
Regional Accreditation Association History 

It's all about money and monopoly. These accrediting agencies began their existence circa 1905 for the sole purpose of aiding members in obtaining pensions for their teachers from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. To qualify for pension money, member schools had to adhere to the educational standards required by the Carnegie Foundation.

Along came the GI Bill of Rights, soon after World War II, providing millions of veterans the money needed to attend colleges that were members of these regional associations. Most of the colleges and universities that were not members of the regional accreditation associations at that time, soon became members so that they could attract money from the military veterans as students.

Then in 1958, the Federal College Loan Program presented more substantial money, motivating many of the remaining independently accredited schools to join the growing clamor for self-accreditation through the recognized regional accrediting agencies. The Federal College Loan Program began small but, over time, has provided additional billions of dollars of revenue to colleges and universities. True to form, Federal laws promoted the disastrous process of self-accreditation. 

Independent Accreditation

Our independent accreditation is earned by performance and measured by the the quality of our faculty, the value of some of the best online learning software we bring to our students, from the value that we deliver to our students and the business community worldwide through our classic philosophy of education, low tuition rates, and ultimately flexible/efficient coursework organization. By choosing a better solution to the issue of accreditation, Marco Polo can keep its tuition rates very low, honoring its promise of no economic or social barriers, while maintaining the highest level of internal motivation for excellence. 

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Marco Polo International University
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