Saying you've seen everything is just asking the universe to do you one better. So I won't. Still, this story nearly required grubbing around the floor on my hands and knees to find the location to which my jaw had dropped:
Bogus university scam uncovered
Investigation
By Nigel Morris
BBC London Investigations ProducerAn international education scam that targets foreign students who come to study in the capital has been exposed by a BBC London investigation.
The bogus Irish International University (IIU), which offers sub-standard and worthless degrees, has been allowed to flourish in the UK - virtually unchecked by the government - for the last seven years.
Let me pause here to note that these are not "sub-standard and worthless degrees" by the lights of your parents (who warned you not to major in philosophy or English or whatever discipline it was they deemed suitably flaky or disreputable) -- they are actual fake degrees.
Although the organisation is unaccredited, hundreds of students have been given educational visas to enter Britain and take its exams at private colleges in London.
I wonder if the visa issue, rather than the mere fact of parting suckers with their money, is what got the BBC investigating.
The IIU, which has 5,000 students worldwide and thousands of graduates, maintains the illusion of a valid education through its elaborate but highly misleading website.
I'm usually in the vicinity of the conversation about how perspective students won't take your department or institution seriously if the website isn't information rich, easy to navigate, and visually pleasing. From this, it seems that with a good enough website, you don't actually need the department or institution to attract the students! It seems to have helped that IIU used space (I assume they rented it, but maybe they snuck in) at Oxford and Cambridge for "university" functions, photographed them, and slapped those pictures up on the website. If your "university" "professors" and "administrators" are doing official stuff at Oxford and Cambridge, there must be some affiliation, right?
Of course, by this logic, showing you my picture taken at the Brooklyn Bridge should reassure you that it's really mine to sell (and, might I add, at a very reasonable price).
In Oxford, our journalist and actor secretly filmed the award ceremony and recorded meetings with university boss and Executive President Professor Hardeep Singh Sandhu, a Malaysian businessman and faculty member Dr Edwin Varo.
Dr Varo, told us that the IIU was not bogus and was registered in Ireland and that it had applied to the government and had been given approval to use the word university.
In Dublin, Sean O'Foghlu, Chief Executive of the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, told BBC London: "To use the word university in a title it needs approval from our Department of Education and Science - no such approval has been given by our department."
The university website clearly stated that the university had a campus in Dublin. We visited the address given by the IIU on its website - there was no campus, just a mailbox.
Hmm ... maybe the Irish government just lost the paperwork? Because that spiffy website claimed that the IIU was accredited.
The website also claimed that the IIU's educational programmes were accredited and quality controlled by the impressive sounding QAC-UK Ltd - the Quality Assurance Commission, based in North London.
During secretly filmed meetings, Professor Sandhu told our undercover team that the QAC was an "independent body" that maintained the quality of education in the UK and elsewhere.
Faculty member, Dr Varo explained that the QAC staff: "Focus more on your curriculum - on your teaching; focus on your evaluation - they focus on your faculty - who are your faculty - what amount of real teaching takes place."
The QAC website listed an impressive roll-call of staff including the QAC Commissioner General and an Acting Commissioner General.
Our reporter visited the QAC and instead of finding a commissioner general we found four telephonists fielding calls for countless companies at yet another virtual office.
A further check at Companies House revealed that far from the being "independent" the QAC is in fact owned by university boss Professor Dr Sandhu.
Pop quiz! Can anyone give an example of a conflict of interest? I'm betting Dr. Sandhu learned about conflict of interest in some of his coursework on the way to becoming a Ph.D. and a university president.
University boss Professor Sandhu, who sits on the governing council is a Doctor of Letters, a doctorate awarded by another unaccredited university based in the Caribbean.
Or maybe not.
His professorship is "honorary", awarded by a European association set up to give out professorships.
On the website he also called himself "Sir H Sandhu" but his knighthood was not bestowed on him by the Queen.
From now on, it would please me if you would refer to me as Dame Free-Ride.
A surprising bit of candor is provided by IIU's Honorary Chancellor, His Excellency Baron Knowth (aka Professor Jeffrey Wooller):
Professor Wooller, a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, owns a £1.2m townhouse in Kensington but spends most of his time living as a tax exile in Monte Carlo.
Our actor, again posing as a fake academic, arranged to meet Professor Wooller, at a hotel in Monaco. We secretly filmed this meeting.
He told our fake academic that the IIU was not "recognised anywhere".
He admitted to our actor that the website was an illusion: "When you look at the website, it's a figment of someone's imagination. Someone's dreamt up what a university should look like, and that's what's on the website."
Professor Wooller told us that students paid a lot of money to attend the award ceremonies, adding: "If you can mention Oxford, Cambridge then the whole world thinks that it must be a good university."
He then said of the university's operation: "The whole thing's dodgy." He even said that the IIU's governing council, of which he and Professor Sandhu are both members, did not exist.
And yet:
Professor Wooller refused to quit as honorary chancellor stating that most IIU students were happy and that the university was good value for money.
Good value for the money? I suppose web design isn't cheap.
Not surprisingly, a professor from a real university in the UK disagreed about Wooller's assessment:
Professor John Arnold of Loughborough University has seen coursework from an IIU graduate.
He said: "Students are paying for this, what I would regard as worthless and bogus qualifications. I would say buyer beware from the point of view of students.
"You know I really think that they'll probably be getting qualifications which are unlikely to be taken seriously at least in Western Europe."
In light of the BBC investigation, the British government is cracking down and promising measures to ensure that all British universities that enroll international students will be real universities with proper accreditation and quality control.
For the record, I have no idea how many such scam universities are currently operating in the U.S., nor how many international students they might attract. I would be happy ruthlessly to mock any that are brought to my attention.
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Liberty University comes immediatly to mind for bogus dgreees, and I believe Kent Hovind has a "degree" from a one-room shell called Patriot University.
I don't understand this at all: these students that apply for a fake university like this, do they take fake classes? Just exams? What do they need the visa for? They enter the country for a certain period of time to do...what? Are they aware that it's a bogus university or do they actually believe that they're getting a proper education? If they know it's fake, why do they bother at all to go to England for it, why not get one of those online fake degrees?
(You can tell that I attended real universities because I ask way too many questions. On the other hand, I don't understand 90% of a news article...)
Of course, by this logic, showing you my picture taken at the Brooklyn Bridge should reassure you that it's really mine to sell (and, might I add, at a very reasonable price).
Duke says: "You make a father proud!"
The problem of diploma mills has been much studied by Prof. George Gollins, a Physics Professor at the University of Illinois.
The story of his research into this can be read at his web site,
http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/higher_education.html
which makes for exciting reading.
He also has a handy "Information resources concerning unaccredited degree-granting institutions" Web site at
http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/pigeons/
We should all commend him for this work.--
As a physicist, I learned about the diploma-mill problem at a colloquium by him at SLAC ~4 years ago. His research is on elementary-particles, and he organized efforts to get university groups involved in studies for the International Linear Collider ( http://www.linearcollider.org/cms/ ); unfortunately, this year, it seems that the 2008 budget cut all ILC work.--
Fake diplomas do harm, you certainly don't want to have surgery done on you by some 'doctor' with a fake degree.
The Rip-off Report athttp://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/278/RipOff0278658.htm
has another story:
" It was early 2003, and the newly created Department of Homeland Security was looking for someone to help oversee its vast computer network. The department soon found a candidate who appeared to be a perfect match: Laura Callahan. Not only had Callahan been working with federal IT systems since the mid-'80s, but she came with outstanding academic credentials: bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, topped by a Ph.D. in computer information systems. In April 2003, Callahan was brought on as the department's senior director in the office of the chief information officer, pulling down a six-figure salary.
But Callahan didn't last long. A few weeks after her hiring, the Office of Personnel Management opened an investigation into her resumé following the publication of articles questioning her degrees' provenance. It turned out that Callahan's vaunted academic achievements were anything but--all three degrees had come from Hamilton University, a now-defunct degree mill operating out of a former Motel 6 in Evanston, Wyoming, that claimed religious affiliation. In June 2003, she was placed on administrative leave. By the time she resigned, in March 2004, a new picture of Callahan had emerged: not a skilled IT executive, but an unqualified hack."
(So did she pull a year at a six-figure salary for a fake degree?
Hired April 2003, resigned March 2004.)
So, aren't we lucky that 'Homeland Security' was anyway mainly 'Security Theatre?' And probably she was hired for having worked on a political campaign, no matter what her academic background.
-- But now what should one do about the Monica Goodlings in the Dept of Justice and similar, who graduated from real but so-called 'Christian' colleges, which apparently teach their students that their ideology should override the constitution, justify torture,.....
So the IIU was 'accredited' by the QAC-UK? Am I the only one who saw that as an anagram for 'QUACK'?
On another point, when I entered law school, a lawyer friend of mine told me to think of the following questions in tandem:
1. How much of my upcoming law education would actually relate to the practice of law?
2. What would the world be like if medical schools operated that way?
Finally, I'm pretty sure that a fake university is a step down from a diploma mill (if there is a difference at all); I imagine it is a scam that would tend to produce scam artists as graduates, rather than the merely ignorant.
Fake schools are the improved version of diploma mills. They serve an important purpose.
In the real world, virtually no one checks out resumes or job histories. Everything is taken at face value, and one of the reasons is that many of the people who process these things have phonied up at least some of their own resumes/histories. Once the cheaters get in, they make it easy for other cheaters to get in for all cheaters to climb up the promotion ladder -- while honest people are crippled by playing fair.
A particularly egregious example of this is the US federal government, and notably the Department of Homeland Security.
James, you weren't the only one. The first time I looked at it, I actually read it as Quack, laughed, and wondered how anyone could actually take seriously something that was accredited by an organization called Quack. Then I realized that it was not actually Quack, and got all disappointed.
I'm not sure whether a fake university is a step up from a diploma mill, or a step down. My dad and sister are in the process of getting degrees from an online university. They do a minimal amount of work, or rather, my dad has to do a minimal amount of work since he started first, and complain about have to do it. I go back and forth on whether this is better or worse than a place that requires nothing more than a credit card to get a degree. My dad thinks he is really doing the same thing he would be doing at a really college or university, and has what I feel is a false belief that he's earning a degree rather than buying it. No matter he says to try to convince me though that it isn't fake, I'm still not really convinced. I don't think making slight changes to the information listed in the course book constitutes the same work as a student earning the same degree at the college I am a student at is doing, though I can't say for sure since I'm not in that program. There's just some reason that leads me to believe there's a difference.
James and Jen, me too. And I thought the name surprisingly honest.
Dame Free-Ride, I came across ads for IIU in the webpages of European newspapers quite a lot, right next to the ads for "academic ghost-writing services.". The name distinctly rang a bell. Switzerland also has a few like that.
"For the record, I have no idea how many such scam universities are currently operating in the U.S., nor how many international students they might attract. I would be happy ruthlessly to mock any that are brought to my attention."
Isn't there a "State University" somewhere near Cupertino that falls into this category?
:P
Gah. [spits to remove taste from mouth]
I'm doing my MSc in Bioinformatics online, as a distance learning effort run jointly between two universities, oddly enough. I cannot stress how much work I've been doing for it though; the instructors, bless them, seem to take seriously the idea that we are in fact in this course to learn and to take away a good understanding of the material, and on top of my full-time day job I've been doing about 16 hours a week minimum for the course, reading, submitting exercises using the standard online bioinformatics tools, and participating in group analyses of how it works and how well (or badly) it works. To have something like these "buy your degree" things conceal the lack of qualification they result in and poison the pool disgusts and disturbs me.
Speaking of which -- Janet, I don't know if you've covered this in the past, so apologies if you have (and could someone point me to it?) -- but if you haven't ever covered it, could you do a piece at some point on the whole "buy your essays" thing which guarantee students "original, plagiarism-free, undetectable" essays which they can buy on any subject and turn in? I would love to hear your thoughts. My supervisor at work, disturbingly, thinks there is no problem with these, they are just an "efficiency measure" for busy and overworked students.
Liberty University comes immediatly to mind for bogus dgreees...
Liberty is a real university. It's not on a par with my alma mater, but yours probably isn't either. Basically, you're a clueless bigot.
JSinger: Liberty University is a "real" university in that it physically exists, owns real estate and is an accredited institution by SACS, at least. However, it ranks right down there low in the bottom 25% in terms of quality overall, it is not a particularly selective institution (actually, they'll take pretty much anyone as long as he/she isn't known to be gay), and their programme in law seems disturbingly successful. However, given their dedication to ideology and the pathetic and ridiculous farce which passes for science there, and the disgraceful mangling of real information which they use to support it, there is an argument for it not actually being a "real" university in the sense of not being a venue truly dedicated to higher education.
The British visa system is definately a key reason this article is getting so much press. (post911 and all that)A new student visa system is on it's way in the UK
Whilst degree mills devalue the education that people achieve from accredited universities. The question left unexplored is "do unaccredited universities provide a less rigorous course" There are plenty of accredited uni's where you can coast through "golf management, surfing or medievil feminism" Being accredited is not a guarantee of quality or worth, so conversely being unaccredited does not necessarily discount the academic rigour of the course, although it would be a reason to question. Many unaccredited colleges are based on belief systems. Chruch v State as it were.
Perhaps a discussion on what makes a good university is worthwhile. I am sure that accreditation would not be in the top ten things that makes a university great.