International Univ. of Graduate Studies

Hi, The latest NEA mag has an advertisement for the above. If the website it so be believed??????there are many graduates who hold degrees from this institution and are working in education. Thoughts? Hille

 

links

www.lugrad.edu.kn lugrad.com

 

Excerpt from The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 25, 2004, reprinted with permission

Headline: Psst. Wanna Buy a Ph.D.
by Thomas Bartlett and Scott Smallwood

On the Web site of Mercy College, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., Benjamin B. Weisman, a professor of business, lists an honorary doctorate from the International University for Graduate Studies. The degree is there alongside his master's and Ph.D. from New York University.

Founded in 1979, International University is located in the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. The university has four administrators and no faculty members, according to its Web site. It awards 11 graduate degrees, including doctorates in psychology, nursing science, and education. Students must complete a five-day residency on the island before receiving their diplomas.

When first questioned about his honorary degree from International University, Mr. Weisman says he can't remember much about the institution, other than that he is pretty sure it is accredited. "I think it's in Saint Kitts," he says. What Mr. Weisman, 68, fails to mention is that he, in fact, owns International University. In a later conversation, after acknowledging that he started and runs the university, he offers a spirited defense of the institution, which he says has been unfairly maligned by some state regulators.

Mr. Weisman says he and a partner started International to help graduate students who have trouble transferring credits from one university to another. International will accept those credits and allow students to complete their degrees. "We act as an umbrella," he says.

No one is admitted to the Ph.D. program who has not completed at least 70 graduate credit hours, according to Mr. Weisman. Nor does the university offer credit for so-called life experience, he says. "There is no way I would prostitute the degree that I give under any circumstances," says Mr. Weisman. "We give no credit for life experience. Zero."

An admissions counselor at International, however, tells a different story. Life experience does count toward a degree, she says. When a caller explains that he has done no doctoral-level work, she assures him that that doesn't have to be a problem. "You'd be surprised what would constitute credit," she says, adding that the caller could receive his Ph.D. in a few months.

When asked about those statements, Mr. Weisman says his employee was new and made a mistake. However, Edward Jackowski, who received a Ph.D. in behavioral management from International University, says his credits were based entirely on life experience. Mr. Jackowski, owner of a fitness company in Manhattan, took no courses and wrote a dissertation on "what motivates people to exercise." He liked the program, he says, because "it didn't take up much time."

Michael Hannigan saw an advertisement for International University in a magazine. An associate professor of social work at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, he had never finished the Ph.D. program in family therapy at Florida State University and was looking for a way to get his degree.

The professor calls International "lightweight" and says he is "used to a bit more rigor in academic things." Still, he believes that his degree from the university is legitimate. "They have the same accreditation as Oxford has," says Mr. Hannigan.

Not quite. According to Dale Gough, director of International Education Services at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the University of Oxford is recognized by the government of Britain, as are several colleges in the Caribbean. International University is not among them. Mr. Weisman says his institution is accredited by the government of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a recognition that experts like Mr. Gough and Alan Contreras, director of the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, a state agency, consider meaningless. After all, the Caribbean nation once accredited a university that doled out degrees for watching I Love Lucy and other sitcoms.