University of San Jose in Costa Rica

I was about to register in the PHD program at the University of San Jose in Costa Rica. I was dealing with a person by the name of Dr. William Stack. The website went down two months ago and I think the program has folded. www.usj.edu
Does anyone know what happened here?

Adrienne

 

Same as Empresarial?

 

I think this is the link:

http://www.usj.ac.cr/

Where have you found information regarding their PhD programs?

I couldn´t even find their distance learning offering.

 

Yes, Empresarial University was an apparent distance learning branch of the Universidad de San Jose in Costa Rica and, yes they did offer PhD's. If memory serves me, Empresarial was actually being run by a rogue administrator of USJ who had no authorization from USJ to be doing so, which is why Empresarial collapsed.

 

Ted, it was my suspicion for years that Empresarial was a mirage. I didn't know if it was because they "rented" their name (like MIGS/CEU), or because it was a rouge outfit (like Villareal). But I could never nail it down. How do you know this is the case?

Empresarial seems to be in business here: http://www.unem.edu/

From what I could gather some years ago, they weren't authorized by the Costa Rican government to award the doctorate, but some guy in Georgia was doing just that on their behalf.

What indicates that they collapsed? They look very much alive to me, whatever their true makeup and legal status might be.

(BTW, their website lists a phone number in Canada, if you can believe that.)

 

Unfortunately, as so often happens, I can't seem to nail down exactly where I seem to think I'm remembering something from. And, while I'm usually subsequently proven correct, I do acknowledge that I might be wrong from time to time; hence, the part about "if memory serves me." At any rate, Rich, thanks for setting the record straight.

 

By the way, to register a domain in Costa Rica for universities ("ac.cr"), the school has to be authorized by the agency that approves private universities, CONESUP. Empresarial doesn't use that kind of domain.

I'm having trouble finding a site for CONESUP.

 

That universidad de san jose claims to be approved by CONESUP in Sept 1992 but, I insist, they don´t seem to have distance learning offering whatsoever, nor PhD programs. They don´t mention either anything about the Empresarial University as far as I could see.

 

Empresarial (www.unem.edu), on the other hand, claims to have had an affiliation with the Universidad de San Jose from 1992 to 1997, though Empresarial now has quite an independent existence from USJ. Empresarial also claims to have been approved by CONESUP since November 1997. And Empresarial does offer docs.

 

Nevertheless, they are included in the webpage of the Ministry of Education of Costa Rica.


http://www.mep.go.cr/CarrerasAprobadas.html

And here the degrees they can legally offer

http://www.mep.go.cr/CarrerasAprobadas.html#_Toc63563908

(No PhD´s BTW)

 

This about Empresarial from www.degree.net's updates to the 14th edition of BG:

"At one time, Empresarial University was authorized by the Costa Rican agency CONESUP (Consejo Nacional de Ensenanza Superior Universitaria Privada ) to grant Bachelor's degrees in business and accounting, and a Master's in administrative science. While a wide range of other degrees have been offered, including doctorates, they apparently are not authorized by CONESUP to do so."

Looks like they're permitted to do some things, but actually do a lot more.

 

Re: Question

Sheila Danzig, once connected with American Coastline University, when shopping for a Latin American school that would allow her to run a program from the U.S. offering its degrees. After a failed attempt in Belize, she hooked up with the Centro de Estudios Universitarios (CEU--Center of University Studies) in Monterrey. A properly recognized Mexican university, the CEU was also a high school. CEU was approved to award degrees up through a master's in business, but did not offer doctoral degrees. But as an autonomous university, it appeared they had the authority to add such programs at any time.

Danzig went about recruiting some staff in the U.S. She got a psychologist (with a traditional Ph.D.) to run things, and got an administrator from a California State University--conveniently a Mexican-American--to be the titular president. The program was called MIGS--Monterrey Institute for Graduate Study, and would offer master's and doctoral degrees by guided independent study. Degree areas were identified (business, psychology, education), competency areas listed, and procedures for doing one's dissertation were created. The Secretary of Education of Nuevo Leon (whose function it was to approve each degree awared by universities in his state) was brought in and signed a letter approving of the whole thing.

It all looked like a TUI/Touro College arrangement, where the branch campus was doing things (like Ph.D. degrees) that the home campus wasn't, making the branch campus semi-autonomous. Also, the International Handbook of Universities decided to list the CEU with specific language regarding the distance (MIGS) programs.

Now here's where it got sticky. It became clear over time (thanks, Gus Sainz) that the home campus didn't really care about what MIGS was doing. It also became clear that Sheila and her minions didn't have a clue about starting a school. They seemed to want to do it on the fly, growing it as revenues grew. But that meant they didn't really build a school, and there was precious little staffing to support what the school was promising students it would do. Also, and this is what made me walk away, MIGS was failing to get a Florida license (it operated from Ft. Lauderdale), a straight-forward procedure. Their application was turned away as insufficient and they never reapplied. When I discussed this with state officials, they turned around and told MIGS to stop acting like a Florida school. That's when MIGS changed its mailing address and phone to Mexico. But it never moved from Ft Lauderdale.

The kicker was the Levicoff lawsuit. Steve Levicoff had for months been calling MIGS a degree mill. (A misnomer, since MIGS never awarded any degrees.) Danzig decided to sue. Still thinking MIGS was a sincere effort, I was in favor of it. Anyway, the lawsuit was a joke. It was filed in Texas (where Sheila's lawyer lived), claiming that 3 students had presented themselves to the attorney, Enrique Serna, claiming they decided not to enroll because of Levicoff's statements. (This was a stupid attempt to show damages. Enrique was on the MIGS board of directors, but MIGS didn't operate from Texas. And the complaint claimed the students presented themselves on September 31st! Steve fought back, telling them he was going to put them through a full discovery. Well, both sides settled pretty quickly. And while Steve agreed, IIRC, not to call them a "degree mill" anymore, the damage was done. MIGS was exposed as a sham--not a degree seller, but not a sincere effort to start a robust school either. Oh, and as a result of the lawsuit's claim about Serna, Texas went after MIGS for operating an unapproved school in that state! They fined MIGS about a quarter-million. (Not sure if they ever collected, but since Serna was licensed to practice law in Texas, I suspect he ponied up.)

That was the last straw. MIGS shut its doors soon afterwards. I suspect they'd enrolled fewer than two dozen students, and I don't know what happened to their tuition paid.

I ended up on both sides of all of this. At first, I had volunteered my services as a research assistant in return for a tuition-free ride. They agreed, so I applied. Accepted and granted credit for my Union work, I was to proceed with my dissertation. But the admissions process was shaky, and I wasn't getting good answers from the "administration." After a long talk with the VP who was really running things, I wasn't confident the CEU really knew what was going on. And I was losing confidence that the result would be a real CEU degree--that graduates would get a Ft Lauderdale version that would have no meaning. I never actually enrolled and worked on my degree. When I saw the poorly executed lawsuit I knew they were in the wrong and I (publicly) bailed. I then went on a campaign to expose MIGS completely, much of it waged right on this board.

I'm sorry I ever got involved. It is clear now that the whole thing was an attempt to gain federal funding for enrolling Hispanic students. Also, it was their intent to credentialize some of CEU's faculty, many of whom were teaching in the high school division with bachelor's degrees. But I'm also proud of the fact that much of what has been exposed about MIGS came from me. And Levicoff, Sainz, and others--many of whom, while not investigating, asked very hard questions and kept the flame alive until MIGS could be exposed. The taking down of MIGS is a huge victory for this board and its community.

 

The original post on this thread asked about the University of San Jose. From what I can tell, that school is alive and well. I brought up Empresarial since it, not USJ, is the one talked about here. But my question for Adrienne still stands: are you talking about USJ or Empresarial?

 

University of San Jose

Hi Rich,
I am talking about the University of San Jose. I know all about Empresarial.

Six months ago the University of San Jose had a 'mirror' english website that looked for all intent and purposes identical to the spanish site.

The english site was only accessible at: www.usj.edu

That site has since 'gone down.' The contact there was Dr. Bill Stack in the U.S.

Yes the spanish site is operational usj.ac.cr but you will not see any reference to studies beyond Maestros (M.A).

I telephoned there six months ago and actually spoke to Stack who was there for a meeting. He reassured me that everything was legit and presto..........the site was down within days. I would suspect the meeting may have been his last.

In any case, it is too bad because the University of San Jose truly is accredited.

Adrienne

 

Re: University of San Jose

Thanks, Adrienne. I suspected it wasn't Empresarial, but I thought I'd ask, then we got off on that tangent.

I wonder, though, if this situation isn't similar to the "rental" we seem to see with Empresarial, and saw with MIGS (possibly) and Villareal (definitely). If USJ isn't authorized to award the Ph.D. ("doctorado"), then where did this all come from? Of course, that doesn't address your question of, "Where did it go?"

 

Costa Rica distance online education

I contacted a friend of mine in Costa Rica.

NUMBER ONE:

No Univeristy is authorized to offer Distance Online Education. CONESUP does not recognize this type of education. The only school authorized to offer semi-off campus education (BUT NOT ONLINE) is the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia) which is a government University.
A foreign University may offer Online programs in Costa Rica, but no Costa Rican Universities are authorized to offer this type of education.

NUMBER TWO

At one time Aldo Herazo (owner of Empresarial University- he is still the owner) was allegedly associated with Dr. Winston Cannon, that operated a company called "THE RESEARCH CENTER" out of Georgia.
Allegedly Dr. Cannons' credentials are in question.

NUMBER THREE

Allegedly sometime last year, Mr. Herazo was arrested between the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and was deported to the United States were he allegeldy faces multiple counts of Fraud in relation to allegedly selling degrees and/or allegedly creating paper universtities with similiar sounding names of real ones and then allegedly advertising these to northamericans.

If the Empresarial University is authorized to issue degrees, they would not be of the ONLINE, no residence type, since this type of education is not yet authorized by CONESUP.

 

Conesup contact info to verify info

Contáctenos:

MSc. Sergio E. Calvo Vargas, Director Ejecutivo, CONESUP. [email protected]

Consultas y Comentarios: [email protected]

Teléfonos: 233-61-18, 221-44-65

Fax: 258-31-01

 

calling costo rica

if you like call Costa Rica from the USA

011 - 506 - ADD TELEPHONE NUMBER HERE.



011 - 506 - 233 - 61 - 18

 

Winston Cannon

for those who need to be reminded about Winston see this

http://www.amcostarica.com/111202.htm