Certificates Mills: Are you planning to seek further education in dental laser? Well, if so, take a look at this article on Certificates Mills and some tips on how to select your MSc in dental laser or other fields of study in dentistry that are based on part time or full time structure. If we have a closer look at the dental laser education offered in the world we will find three main categories: 1- Certified and accredited training which provides unbiased knowledge 2- Certifications that claim accreditation but it’s fake 3- Certifications with bias towards certain technology or manufacturer The last two categories can be classified under certificates mills; so what the term certificates mills is all about. Certain education providers are keen to generate revenues out of their training programs and are willing to sacrifice all standards and quality regulations to reach that goal, so they turn to a mill producing certificates on demand. We have even started to see announcements such as: Participate in a diploma and get the other for free!! So if you are seeking a certified education in dental laser you should first look for the following signs in the certificate that you are working on: 1- Certificate mills tend to be very flexible in their acceptance criteria, or they sometimes exclude the criteria from their registration process. this is a first sign that it’s gimmicks 2- Certificate mills are very flexible in their fees to suit your expectations; so once you initiate discussion with them they keep on reducing the fees till they attract you and have you on board. 3- Certificate mills are flexible regarding your attendance, missing an exam and so on. 4- You should check the regulations in the country this university is claiming to be from. For example, in Germany, it is a criminal offense to call an institution a Universität (university) or Fachhochschule, or to issue academic degrees, without authorization through an act of the respective states Ministry of Education. It is also a criminal offense to falsely claim a degree in Germany if it is not accredited. Some corporate training programs in Germany use the English term corporate university. Such use of the term is tolerated since it is widely understood that such programs are not actual universities. Similarly, Fachhochschulen frequently use the English term university of applied science. Neither are permitted to use the German word Universität. 5- Product focused is another sign of certificates mills; so if you are getting trained on dental laser and do not really receive hands-on training on more than one all tissue laser, diode laser and have the program covering several wavelengths, then the knowledge you are receiving is biased. Actually, this is a psychological trick being played by giving you the theoretical knowledge, and then train you only on one brand; you will by default tend to choose this brand to buy. 6- Degree equivalent credit hours; for example, number of ECTS in Europe that are earned by the end of your studies determine if your certificate is a real MSc or not. 7- Worldwide accreditation: we live in a global village and many dentists are not working in their home countries and they may move to a third country at a certain point of time. It’s always recommended to check if the certificate is actually recognized outside the country of issuing. Another important fact is not to get deceived by the country of origin of this certificate as many advanced countries has no legal action or criminal act against certificate mills. 8- Certificate mills tend to issue certificates based on experience. So in order to reduce the time of attendance or amount for a participant they simply exclude two semesters or award you certain credit hours because you are a dentist since certain number of years. 9- Check the university ranking internationally and in the country where it’s located. This can be easily googled and verified. The higher the ranking of the university, the higher your expectations are on the quality of education. 10- Be careful of words such as affiliated and accredited as these are very loose type of wording. If a professor from a certain university teaches at a certain program so it’s easy to say the word “affiliated” but hey, what influence does this have on the accreditation? Nothing. 11- Many universities are now offering their name and logo against certain annual fees for international campuses which are in this case “accredited by this university” but an important question has to be asked then: is that university accredited in the first place? 12- Since how long this program is offered? Educators, just like clinical practitioners, are in need of accumulated experience, and the longer the program has been offered the more the experience has accumulated and this will pour in your learning benefit. 13- Most of the dental faculties do not include dental laser science in their curriculum and this leads to an important fact: you will have to learn this science from scratch. Besides the dental clinical knowledge and basic biology sciences, dental laser requires deeper understanding of physics and biophysics in order to properly utilize a laser device. So you may need to consider programs which offers physics and biophysics in details in their curriculum. 14- With the expansion of diploma mills, accreditation mills also commenced to expand; you need to check the accreditation body of the program and if it has legitimacy These were some tips and hints on selecting your MSc in dental laser; however, other criteria may apply if you are looking for a short term course or training which we will discuss in a coming article. Dr. Alaa Sultan
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 09:54:09 +0000
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