Pacific Western University

I was just wondering if anyone heard of this now defunct and unaccredited college? It never had any official accreditation, but it did have state-approval which means the degrees are legal and valid, just unaccredited. I know that sounds wacky, but it is quite possible. There are a few schools like this, believe it or not. I can't say how much luck a person would have trying to transfer credits, or getting a job, etc. I have a retired military relative with a degree from this school. He said a number of Colonel's and Generals had degrees from this University. They are the one's that suggested he get a degree from their because of their low-hassle educational policies. Wow!!!

 

Given the emphasis on accredited degrees, the accreditation checking that goes on when getting education records updated on official records and that tuition assistance doesn't cover unaccredited programs for at least the last 19 years, I have some doubts about the bolded part applying to many Colonels and Generals.

 

Colonel Sanders and Genral Delivery.

 

As I understand it, the history of "Pacific Western University" is somewhat complex. There were actually two unaccredited institutions by that name, in Hawaii and California, which were under similar ownership.

In 2004, the US General Accounting Office conducted a study, which found that hundreds of Federal employees (particularly in the Defense Dept.) had qualifications from unaccredited universities (particularly Pacific Western U, Kennedy-Western U, and California Coast U).

The Hawaii PWU was closed in 2006, after the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection filed a lawsuit.

The California PWU was sold in 2005. The new management rebranded it as California Miramar University and successfully obtained national accreditation (from both DETC and ACICS). It continues to operate today as an accredited institution.

 

CalDog has it right. When the PWU in California realized they would never qualify for state approval, they changed their address to an empty office in Hawaii (and kept running it from Los Angeles). Then they established a legally separate PWU that did nothing but business degrees, in a model designed to meet state approval standards, which they got. Based on a lot of mail I got, more than a few PWU graduates didn't realize their degree was from Hawaii, not California. (There was also an unrecognized Pacific Western University in Canada, apparently unrelated.)

Here's a story I'll include in the posthumous edition of my book. PWU founder/owner Phil Forte once took me out for a drink in San Francisco. Looking out over the array of nightclubs on Broadway, he said that he was proud of his school, but what he was most proud of was the fact that when everyone else was opening topless joints in San Francisco, he was the first to have the foresight and courage to open a bottomless joint, the Hotsy Totsy Club (which did not award degrees, however).

 

a real class act

 

This place was a degree mill to its core, in my opinion. They pretended to be a real school though, not as convincingly as a few other examples though like Kennedy Western University. But apparently convincingly enough to fool some of the "graduates". For example, KWU had "teachers". I think PWU didn't have pretend teachers but they did have online tests that you could easily cheat. On one visit to the physical PWU site in LA by an undercover journalist got the owner to brag on video how easy it was to cheat on his PWU online tests. I have bumped into more than one PWU doctorate online that were proud to advertise their PWU credential.

 

loving that one...

 

loving that one