Faculty Member Claiming PhD from Mill?

Dr. F.R. Bosch

Is this guy a fraud or am I just mistaken?

Apparently, this fellow F.R. Bosch, the head of the business department of a midwestern college, claims that he received a PhD from Clayton University in Business. It's my understanding that Clayton is a rank mill. The guy also claims to be "ABD" from CSU-DH. Is that possible? I thought there was no PhD coursework in the Cal State system, as they were capped at Masters level across the board.

He also claims to have written "many books" on business, but I can't find a one, just that he was a contributor to one book among dozens of others and has written a handful of review on books listed on Amazion.com (of course, anyone can do that, to my knowledge, including my cat, but writing such a review and throwing in a prestigious-sounding title and brief background of yourself on the review shows up on a Google search and makes for an impressive-looking thing if a hiring committee member is just doing a quick check into your background by typing your name into a search engine). But perhaps I'm too cynical.

He does claim a PhD in Theology from a South African University, Potchefstroom, which may well be legit, but I can't determine whether he had the necessary requisite Bachelors and Masters in Theology required by that program to even submit a dissertation for review, I have no idea. Doing a little amateur research to try and find out.

The guy has taught briefly at at least a couple small colleges, seems top bounce around a bit (not that there's anything wrong with that per se), but the whole thing just has a smell to it.

http://www.sterling.edu/campus/directory/emp.cfm?eid=120

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cacheuEspKB3pzYJ:[url]https://www.vanguard.edu/uploadedFiles/Catalog/catalog_2002-04.pdf+%22f.+r.+bosch%22+vanguard&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=30[/url]


BOTTOM LINE: Is this guy a legit academic who just happens to have an unusual record and a blind spot for mills?

Or is he a John Dovelos fraud?

Or something in-between?

 

Not sure on the fraud, Sam-I-Am. Here is the paragraph from the Sterling bio and I'm not sure he is claiming a Ph.D. from Clayton:

"He has lived, studied, and traveled extensively overseas. As a life-long learner he has earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in business, as well as graduate/postgraduate degrees in comparative religion, ministry and theology culminating in a Ph.D. in theology in the area of integrative apologetics and missiology (California State University; Clayton University; California Coast University; Bethany Theological Seminary; Potchefstroom University)."

He does sport a really cool beard though...

Dave

 

Nope. Not possible at CSUDH.

1) Yes and
2) NO

There are no Phd programs at CSUs. However, they have been recently granted the authority to award the Ed.D, but I do not believe that any CSU has set up a full program yet.

There are also joint programs with UCs and other private doctoral granting universities. For instance, there are a few Ed.D programs between CSUs and UCs. There is a joint Phd Geography program between SDSU and UC Santa Barbara.

 

Thanks for the replies!

Anybody know of a way of checking whether a given person has published a book? Is there some online source for checking these things out?

I'm just doing a little sleuthing. I really don't know if the fellow is an academic grifter or not. This seems to be at least the third accredited and very legit college for which he's taught, so if he's a grifter, he's a very charming and effective one, to get these good positions, along the lines of that fellow who Leonardo DiCaprio played (it could be the very academic-looking beard).

 

He's a bit vague on the Sterling site, but on the Vanguard site, he claims a PhD from Clayton and ABD from CSU-DH. It's on the other link I provided.

 

Correction: he does not claim "ABD" from CSU-DH, I misread his bio on the old Vanguard site. But he does clearly claim a PhD from Clayton on that same site. For some reason, the link is bad that I provided here. It's to a PDF file of an old course catalog from Vanguard.

 

John Bear has addressed this issue on degreediscussion.com, pointing out that Clayton (at least in the late 70s and 80s) was one of the very few unaccredited schools that qualified for VA benefits, listing in the Higher Education Directory, etc. by virtue of meeting the government's "three by three" and "four by four" rules.

 

Do a search at www.amazon.com or www.bookfinder.com .

 

Pochefstroom University for Christian Higher Education www.puk.ac.za was a very venerable South African institution which offered a DL PhD in Theology through their Greenwich School of Theology; they were recently merged into the University of the North West.

 

Let's see if this fixes your link.