Distance Learning Graduate School

       This page describes our Graduate School. Once you decide you wish to obtain a Graduate

degree from AIU, return here so you may design your degree plan and submit the plan for approval. 

      At the AIU Personal-Centered Graduate School, self-directed, goal-oriented individuals, who require

little supervision or external motivation, are invited to employ the Socratic and/or Confucian learning

model and to work with qualified experts who mentor their studies and research. Resulting Master’s,

PhD or post-graduate degrees are granted once approved studies have been completed and

recommended by a properly constituted graduate school degree committee.  

Individualized Study

Each degree student works with a university consultant, i.e., an adjunct professor. This consultant

may provide initial direction while each doctoral student designs her/his individualized degree plan

based on the student's personal and professional goals, interests, and needs. Since these attributes

represent one individual, the degree plan and requirements for each degree program will differ. No degree

candidate may escape the compelling requirement for work to be done at the highest of intellectual

standards and each must honor academic integrity. AIUUIAAC requires rigorous scholarly work before

any master’s, PhD or post-graduate degree is awarded.

Learning Methods

Individualized degree plans are person-centered rather than institution or curriculum focused.

Individualized plans build on each scholar's formal and informal academic background.

Traditional and nontraditional learning methods are employed by the university population. The learning

environment is comprised mainly of mid-career professionals. This unique environment fosters the

fulfillment of requirements of approved degree plans. AIU learning methods include, but are not limited to

independent studies evaluated by approved faculty, mentored coursework experienced in diverse settings,

computer enhanced studies, courses via audio and video cassette, and/or residential professional

and academic seminars.

AIU learners use diverse methods that contribute to quality study and research in their graduate studies.

These learning modalities enable candidates to complete studies at their own pace, from their own place,

with no required on-campus residency as traditionally defined.

Roy Fairfield, education change-agent and co-founder of a pioneer international university, presents a

compelling study about this learning model in Person-Centered Graduate Education, his once-in-a-

generation book that describes the birth, adolescence, and maturing of a unique idea in higher education.

 Dr. Fairfield's work was published by Prometheons Books in 1977.

Who Sits On Your Committee

Individualized degree plans require qualified faculty who serve on masters, PhD or Post graduate degree

committees. You recommend and participate in the selection of the faculty most appropriate for the degree

you have designed considering professionals you know as well as AIU adjunct professors. One of AIU’s

adjuncts will supervise the addition(s) and deletion(s) to component parts of your degree plan, including

curricula; routinely two persons provide expertise as mentors; the mentor(s) review and evaluate the

degree plan, including the research and dissertation. Rigorous controls are used to assure qualified faculty

members are assigned. This process supports and assures the academic integrity of your individually

developed graduate or post-graduate degree plan.

Faculty

Competent faculty guarantees the accreditation of AIU's offerings. The faculty members you select are

key to a respect and credibility that your degree receives once it is granted. Faculty should be selected

because of their formal and informal recognition in your field, expertise in their fields, the appreciation

they have of the needs and goals that nontraditional adult learners possess, and their understanding of

the distance learning process. Faculty are geographically dispersed and engaged in the professional

practice that most closely bears on the field(s) of study for which they provide direction, evaluation,

mentoring and supervision. AIU's faculty characteristically must have demonstrated practical skills and

theoretical understanding of your field of study. They are scholars who hold the Ph.D. degree, value

distance learning, and honor the Socratic and/or Confucian learning model(s). Professionals who wish

to serve as a faculty member are invited to identify that interests in being an adjunct professor or in other

posts that help the university serve an international community of learners. But, it is the learner who must 
push to select caliber professionals who the learner can work with best.

Residency

While AIU degrees plans are fulfilled off-campus that does not mean learners do not observe residency

requirements. Residency, by AIU definition, means any geographical location and environment where

graduate study may be completed and research that contributes to the learner's area of expertise and

adds information to the field of study may be conducted.

The university defines residency as a geographical location where a degree candidate studies and

seeks information that contributes to her/his chosen field of study. All degree requirements fulfilled in

such diverse settings must be supervised with documentation validated by an approved Socratic- or

Confucian- model supervisor.

In addition, university faculty conduct residency seminars at various locations where degree candidates

form cluster groups. Such sessions provide valuable opportunities for further development of each

degree candidate's scholarly pursuits and enhance interdisciplinary and intercultural understanding.

Background Assessment

We recognize some individuals have acquired professional levels of expertise on their own and advance

 to levels of learning equal to and beyond that of persons who study in conventional learning and degree

programs. Therefore, AIU offers a graduate level assessment of abilities and skills program to provide

the potential for graduate study and doctoral research for especially qualified individuals who do not hold

traditional credentials. Through such an assessment an individual has an opportunity to demonstrate that

non-traditionally acquired knowledge is equivalent to or exceeds that generally accepted as requisite for

their field. This background assessment may be used to pursue a faculty-supervised individualized

plan of study leading to a masters or Ph.D. degree and the degree may be awarded if it is based

on the presentation of original research.

Time to Degree

The median time spent in completing a Ph.D. has risen over the past two to three decades to slightly

more than 10 years. Yet scholars have stated that the complete course of study to earn a PhD should

take no more than two or, at most, three years of graduate study. Since the university accepts mid-

career, seasoned, highly skilled, self-directed professionals, most have formal academic and/or

experiential learning beyond peers in their professions. Persons accepted into doctoral studies are

encouraged to complete the Ph.D. degree plan within two years, unless the constraints of personal or

professional responsibilities prohibit fulfilling degree requirements in that period.

Time to degree may be extended for up to no more than three years after following the second anniversary

of admission to a Ph.D. program and for a total of five years of enrollment. Theodore Ziolskowki, dean of

the graduate school at an Ivy League university, offers an informed discussion about time-to-degree in

his article “The Ph.D. Squid,” published in The American Scholar, Volume 59, Number 2, 1990.

Admissions

The university observes an open admissions policy. It accepts previously degreed applicants as able to

discern their ability to assume the challenge of faculty-supervised, individualized graduate degree plans

starting at the time of application. Individuals may apply for and be accepted into a doctoral plan by the

first of any month. Admission is granted to qualified candidates without regard to ethnic background,

gender, physical disability, age or other discriminatory considerations. Applicants without academic

credentials are invited to enroll in the university’s “Background Assessment of abilities and skills

program”; therein an evaluation is made of their potential for admittance into a doctoral program.

Degree Candidate Population

The university invites and encourages applications from minorities and native people, the physically

challenged, women, political and philosophical leaders of Third World countries and developing nations,

educators, counselors, economists, management professionals, advocates of home school and other

nontraditional educational opportunities at elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels.

Those who come aboard, join other creative thinkers having skills to contribute original scholarly work

to the world of ideas.

For more information please contact a university consultant at: barbee@aiuuiaac.edu;

infocite@apk.net, or info@aiuuiaac.edu.

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