International University for Graduate Studies

Has anyone had any experience with the International University for Graduate Studies in St. Kitts and Nevis, West Indies? They offer doctorates in the behavioral sciences. They seem kind of sketchy, but claim to be accredited.

 

International University of Graduate studies (IUGS)

http://www.stkittsnevis.net/accreditation.html

 

Thanks for the website. IUGS is on their list of accredited institutions. Either the IUGS website stinks and it's reputable or the accreditation process in St Kitts and Kevis is not too rigorous.

 

There have been several previous threads about it, but unfortunately the search function isn't working.

I'd suggest that you be very careful with this and make sure that you know precisely what you are doing before you send these people any money.

There's some question about what St. Kitts and Nevis accreditation actually means in academic terms. Several Caribbean islands (and other foreign jurisdictions such as Liberia) have recently turned into 'flag-of-convenience' accreditors for American and European-run schools that affect foreign addresses in hopes of avoiding domestic higher education regulations and finding a way into the international listings. St. Kitts has had those questions raised before with some other schools.

I did a Google search for 'international university of graduate studies' on .edu domains. It only generated one hit that turned out to be very interesting. It was a controversy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks about the new president of their academic senate who claims a doctorate from IUGS and who has been accused by other faculty of having a degree-mill degree:

Web_Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "international university of graduate studies" site:.edu. (0.26 seconds)_
_____
[RTF] MINUTES UAF FACULTY SENATE MEETING #124 Monday, September 20, 2004 ...

File Format: Rich Text Format - View as HTML
... He charged the committee to find out whether the Ph.D. from the International
University of Graduate Studies in the Caribbean nation of St. ...

www.uaf.edu/uafgov/faculty/fsfy05meetings/fsminutes124.rtf

I did a similar search for 'international university of graduate studies' on .ac.uk domains, and got:

Your search - "international university of graduate studies" site:.ac.uk - did not match any documents.

I find it almost incomprehensible that an academically legitimate university that's been in existence since the 1970's, and which offers multiple doctoral programs, wouldn't have received any notice on an American or British academic website.

 

Re: Re: International University for Graduate Studies

Thanks, Bill. I'm sure you're right. I got a reply from another board with an Oregon website exposing IUGS as unreputable:

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html

(Click on unaccredited colleges)

 

I've been involved in some of the past discussions on this school. My concerns come in three parts. The first is that the school is essentially unaccredited. All this St. Kitts and Nevis nonsense is just that, nonsense. The second concern is that the woman who runs the place states that her doctorate is in Hypnotherapy or something like that and there is not, to the best of my knowledge, any accredited doctoral program in Hypnotherapy offered anywhere (and I mean anywhere ). This means that your degree would come from an unaccredited school and your dissertation advisor would hold an unaccredited doctorate. My third concern is that when I contacted this person (sorry, I can't remember her name) to ask a few questions regarding the above listed concerns, she never responded to my inquiries. Not a good sign. My opinion might be different if I could get some answers but until then I'd advise extreme caution.
Jack

 

Based on the information I've learned (much of it on this board) the government of St. Kitts and Nevis does not actually have any expertise in the area of accrediting Doctoral level universities and they do not have the capacity to do this. No one has ever been able to demonstrate that the St. Kitts "accreditation process" consists of any real examination or review of anything. To me it seems to be a rubber stamp. If I am wrong in this I will gladly admit it but I'll need to see some real evidence first.
Jack

 

Based on the information I've learned (much of it on this board) the government of St. Kitts and Nevis does not actually have any expertise in the area of accrediting Doctoral level universities and they do not have the capacity to do this. No one has ever been able to demonstrate that the St. Kitts "accreditation process" consists of any real examination or review of anything. To me it seems to be a rubber stamp. If I am wrong in this I will gladly admit it but I'll need to see some real evidence first.
Jack

 

Perhaps someone of the stature of Dr. Bear could be asked to advise a government on such matters but I would not presume to do so. I simply offered an opinion that is based on available information. I don't even know much about the formal accreditation process here in the USA. Despite all that, I might start by having an official office with some real people who have some expertise in higher education, someone with a PhD themselves, someone with an email address who answers questions such as "What, exactly, is the full, formal accreditation process that St. Kitts employs in their accreditation of a university such as IUGS?" Then I would expect a very detailed answer that might be subjected to further questions. They might be able to give explicit reports on how this (or some other) university operates in regards to quality control, etc. They might be able to list all their faculty members as well as their credentials. They might be able to describe, in detail, all the requirements for all their programs in a very straight-forward, unhesitating, non-bullshit manner. I think you see where I'm going with this. Any real university or real accreditor could do this easily and instantly. If you ask even the simplest questions and you start getting the run-around then the you've already gotten your answer.
Jack

 

Re: Um, several?

If 1/3 of those accreditation processes are iffy, then that's not a very good percentage.

But I think that the 'flag of convenience' phenomenon is most obvious in the off-shore medical school sector, where the prize is a WHO listing and eligibility to take the USMLE here in the states. Here's just some of them. The word "several" certainly seems to be justified:

All Saints U. of Medicine, Aruba

http://asum.meerc.com/

American International School of Medicine, Guyana

http://www.aism.edu/

American University of the Caribbean, St. Martin

http://www.aucmed.edu/

Central American Health Sciences University, Belize

http://www.cahsu.edu/

Grace University School of Medicine, St. Kitts

http://www.grace-usom.org/

Ross University School of Medicine, Dominica

http://www.rossmed.edu/

Saba University School of Medicine, Saba

http://www.saba.edu/

Saint James School of Medicine, Bonaire

http://www.sjsm.org/

Spartan Health Sciences University, St. Lucia

http://campus.fortunecity.com/college/239/spartanmed13003.htm

St. George's University, Grenada

http://www.sgu.edu/

St. Luke's University School of Medicine, Belize

http://www.stluke.edu.bz/

I don't mean to suggest that all of these schools are mills. I'm confident that some of them (like St. George's) are probably reasonably decent. But my point is that if some of these schools are sound, that's unlikely to be the work of these island governments.

Here's a story about the University of Science, Arts and Technology on Montserrat, which accused the island government of "bungling" its application for a WHO listing. What really happened was that the WHO wanted the island governor to sign the application because Montserrat is a British dependent territory. The governor forwarded the application to London, which proceeded to put all WHO applications on hold until it could create a quality assurance mechanism for medical schools setting up shop in its territories. That certainly implies that the original application that the island government sent to Geneva wasn't the result of a QA process. And that in turn raises questions about how many other islands just forward their WHO applications in the same way.

http://www.themontserratreporter.com/archives/2004/september/24News/local/story1D_02.htm

The bottom line seems to be that few if any of these schools are owned or operated by local island people. They exist in large part to serve students from the United States, Canada and Europe. They choose off-shore island addresses because that allows them to avoid much tougher regulations back home and to acquire WHO listings with little difficulty. The islands seem interested in attracting them because they promise to bring money and jobs.

I don't think that the words 'flag of convenience' is inappropriate.

 

Re: Um, several?

It's a good bet if you see unaccredited and associated with Wyoming or Mississippi then it's a degree mill. I understand your point but disagree with your anaology.

 

Check out the St. Kitts & Nevis accreditation website. It certainly lacks the content of accreditation standards in the US

 

Yes, but more importantly . . .


GO PATS ! ! !

(sorry, Off-Topic, I know)
Jack

 

The Pats are a dynasty in the making, Jack! That is pretty exciting. I'm actually a native of Connecticut, myself.