Hawaii Sues Anglo American University

The State of Hawaii has filed suit against Anglo American University and one of its officers, Alberto Noriega of Los Angeles. The suit seeks to enjoin the defendants from further violations of Hawaii's laws relating to unaccredited degree granting institutions, to award restitution to any victims, and to assess civil penalties.

Anyone with information or documents relating to Anglo American University, please contact

Jeffrey E. Brunton
Staff Attorney
Office of Consumer Protection
State of Hawaii
235 South Beretania, Suite 801
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
tel. (808) 586-2636
fax. (808) 586-2640
email: [email protected]

 

Jeffrey,

Interesting posts and it is good to see Hawaii pursuing unaccredited institutions.

John

 

Quite a few posts, but not many nibbles from the group... unless Our Gang has created a back channel to keep the unwashed masses out of the loop. Consulting in addition to censoring, conspiring & c!rcle j@rking, perhaps? The 4Cs of B.T.C.?



Pete

 

AAU & Noriega - it sounds like the Panama connection !!!


About time Hawaii !!!

CFr

 

Jeffrey,

Can you tell us if this is some major new moves by the state of Hawaii to close down schools? Seems to be a lot going on all at once.

Tom Nixon

 

All Board Members

As you know our office is the state agency in Hawaii responsible for enforcing our Unaccredited Degree Granting Institution law(Hawaii Rev. Stat. Chap. 446E). You may not believe this, but we are well aware of the reputation Hawaii has obtained both with respect to the relative strength of our law and the degree to which it has been enforced.

Cases against UDGIs have in the past been hampered by the lack of consumer complaints, lack of staffing and the priorities of our office. Our office is the functional equivalent of the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General in your state. We have broad jurisdiction over all unfair and deceptive business practices involving any retail business in the state and we have a staff of 2-3 attorneys to cover all of that ground. Nonetheless we managed to file suits against American State, Cambridge State, Pacific Western, St. Mary's, Washington International, Northern Washington and the ever-popular Monticello.

In July 1999 the Hawaii legislature significantly strengthened the law which, up to that point, required little but disclosure. Recently we began to open a series of staff-initiated complaints to determine whether various Hawaii UDGIs are in compliance with the new requirements. Beginning in February of this year, we began sending letters to UDGIs known or thought to be operating either from Hawaii or under the authority of Hawaii law. The UDGIs are sent a list of questions designed to voluntarily elicit information pertinent to determining whether they are in compliance. UDGIs operating under our jurisdiction are required to provide information at our request. Institutions that fail or refuse to respond voluntarily have been subpoenaed to provide the information. Of course, the act of opening a staff-initiated complaint does not constitute any type of determination as to the "legitimacy" of the respondent or as to whether any violations of law have occurred.

Some UDGIs have demonstrated compliance, some have failed to do so, and others are in the mill.

As a result of these recent efforts, Prescott College of Business and Leadership Studies and Anglo-American University have been sued. Both refused to respond voluntarily or under subpoena. A dozen or so others are under investigation. If the first group is any indication, we expect more suits to be filed.

The object of all of this is not to close down schools (although that can and has been a side-effect in some cases). The intent is simply to ensure that all UDGIs in our jurisdiction operate in compliance with the law so that consumers are protected and so that the various competitors in this industry may enjoy a level playing field. I hope this has been of some benefit for you. I am also working on a short compilation of our office's enforcement efforts in this field and hope to have it available in a few weeks.

Jeffrey E. Brunton

 

Jeffrey,

Thanks very much for the update! Some of us are aware of your earlier efforts in getting Monticello shut down, and I personally applaud the efforts that you and the office are making toward "compliance." (Of course, my suspicion is that nearly all of the schools who are still domiciled in HI are probably not in full compliance with the statue, and most would probably go to the state-of-the-month (currently Wyoming, I think) rather than come into compliance in Hawaii... but we'll see.

Please let us know whenever we can be of assistance.

 

There's been an informal email communications "backchannel", if you want to call it that, amongst the Gang that started about the time that Snell of Monticello University was around at a.e.d. and nominated the original Gang (Huber, Bear, White, Blahetka, Mohammed, Levicoff, Nixon if I remember right) But the degreeinfo board has largely supplanted it.

I'm sure that if there was any interesting information, it would be posted here. Part of the difference is that several of the folks that used to have lots of spare time to look things up (Huber, Levicoff, McQueary) have all gotten busy with other things, or taken a break from active involvement. Anyone that wishes to step in and start digging, have at it!! I'm sure Mr. Brunton would appreciate the assistance.

 

Does anyone have an online reference to the Hawaii statute(s) governing these institutions?

John

 

You can find the text of Hawaii Rev. Stat. Chap. 446E at http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/docs/docs.asp


Towards the bottom of the page there is a section titled "Browse the HRS". 446E is found in Vol. 10. I hope this works, I'm not very good at posting links.