Scot Giles writes on diploma mills and hypnosis unaccredited degrees . . . Want to Buy a Degree? . . . worth a looksee.

I agree in that an accredited degree and an unaccredited one are no way the same thing. However, I would still prefer that organizational policy take a stand on their use. The institutions that are offering unaccredited “doctoral” or other degrees in hypnosis or hypnotherapy or whatever are doing a disservice to their clients (many of whom are actually unaware their degrees are bogus and damaging to the lay hypnosis community at large. Personally, I would rather see a uniform policy within organizations condemning the use of unaccredited degrees. We don’t need to hold an advanced degree to practice hypnosis and so we shouldn’t encourage folks to seek out unaccredited programs. Without a more aggressive organizational policy, one is sometimes placed in the rather odd position of actually defending persons with such degrees who might hold such a degree but otherwise be very good people or of condemning the same sort of person who might be a good person otherwise but who holds such a degree out to the public. Consistent policy and response would be more desirable. If we believe advanced training of an academic sort is important than we should work towards establishing accredited programs as alternatives (to my mind a mistake in terms of the community). Advanced education is important, however, unaccredited education of the sort being promoted by the companies selling the diplomas and by their customers who trade upon the degrees is damaging to the entire community in the long run. As you know, I have an academic bias (I have taught at a world class university for fifteen years and part of that is teaching real doctoral students) but the conundrum comes in that lay hypnosis is not an academic pursuit and as such folks should not be encouraged to believe that a PhD in any field of study somehow makes them better hypnotists or is required for better marketing.