Mr. Contreras -Oregon and MUA

Several months ago I sent this e-mail to MUA (Medical University of the Americas)
Dear Registrar:
Thank you for the newsletter sent to me. I find your university
interesting.
One thing that concerns me is that your degrees are considered illegal in MI. and Oregon. Oregon has designated your distance education programs as a Diploma mill.
http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html
www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accr...ols_78090_7.pdf
Do you have any plans to appeal this? For 250 dollars it appears it
would be worth this small fee to come off this list. Some universities have appealed and have been removed -giving their programs credability. Consider it.
Siincerely,
MIke L.

I received this response.

Dear Mike,

I hope you had a nice Holiday. I find your questions to be intelligent and on track. We, the University are actually in contact with these states. We have started the process of having these states retract their comments about our University. It is ironic that the state of Michigan put us on this list when in fact we have graduates doing residencies in some of their most prestigious hospitals. They obviously have not done their research. We have forwarded to them our pertinent information regarding our University. The states did admit that they have no
tangible information regarding our University and that they have
included us with some less credible programs without doing any research.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. We hope to have our name off of these lists very shortly.

Sincerely,

Dr. Nekic
Dean
Medical University of the Americas

My question is: have they been in contact and made any effort to convince Oregon they shouldn't be on the your list? Will MUA be accepted in the future? Thank you so much for your response.

 

Yes, we have received a lot of material from MUA. Most of it does not relate to the key issues but some does. They are making a serious, straightforward effort to demonstrate what their school does. Their lawyer makes their case in clear, direct terms and also has a sense of humor. An interesting contrast to the turbid waters of Lac Sorbon.

As expected, a bill was introduced in the Oregon legislature this week that would exempt foreign medical schools from ODA oversight, placing complete authority for the recognition of foreign medical degrees in the hands of the Board of Medical Examiners.

We have no objection to this bill. If it passes, we will send the MUA package on to the medical board. If it fails, we will complete the review in ODA with assistance from AACRAO.

 

MUA's non-medical distance programs

Mr. Contreras -thanks for your reply.
Carribean medical schools would be exempt from ODA oversite, but how about the distance prgrams that the medical schools offer not in medicine such as MUA's nursing (BSN and MSN) and PH.d in Health Sciences ? Will they need oversite?

 

The bill in the legislature only deals with foreign-licensed physicians and dentists. Any other degrees would still have to be evaluated and cleared through ODA.

Historically, the Oregon Board of Nursing has worked with ODA to evaluate little-known schools.