Friday 11 June 2010

NOT: Award for top medical ethics blog 2010

Together with a number of other sites, Philosophical Comment has been contacted with information that it has been awarded the title of "Top Ethics Blogs - Medical Category, 2010", by the web resource portal Online Colleges and Universities. Being aware that the field of online higher education is a bit of a jungle, I did my best to check out the quality of this site and come to the conclusion that, since they clearly advice students to check the accreditation of the institutions, and provide links to sources for such checking – as well as giving a number of other sensible words of caution – the site is OK. Thus, I exposed a banner about this award on this site for a few hours. However, some more digging then revealed that several of the "top" institutions marketed at the portal have a dodgy reputation and has been sued for defrauding the federal government, mismanaging the offered education, as well as for not living up to their obligations re. students. See this, this and this. So, after all: no award worth paying attention to and another lesson learned.