Sheila Danzig now a foreign credential evaluator?!

Perhaps this is old news, but I just came across an article indicating that Sheila Danzig is now offering her services evaluating the credentials of foreign universities.

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/danzig_Sheila_-388248.aspx

For those who don't know of Sheila's past history, she has been associated with a long string of unwonderful schools, had several "get-rich-quick" schemes to essentially "rent" degree granting permission from legitimate foreign schools and offer degrees to US residents. The most notable one was MIGS, the Monterrey Institute of Graduate Studies, which claimed to be located (depending on what day you asked) in Florida, Texas, or Monterrey, Mexico. It was around for 6 months or so, and at various times, the fine institution offered on its website ads for a term paper writing service, a company selling doorknobs over the web, and a website offering free macarena lessons. Thanks to the hard work of Steve Levicoff, the school's lack of legitimacy was noticed by Florida and Texas authorities, Texas fined it $250,000, and it subsequently disappeared.

Now, it seems, Sheila is offering her professional services in evaluating the college and university-level work done by people attending foreign schools. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but at first glance, this seems a little to me like the fox guarding the henhouse.

Note that in her own abbreviated CV, half of the entire CV is devoted to explaining why she thinks her foreign doctorate is legitimate (which, to me, immediately raises flags... I haven't checked said school in any of the GAAP references)

I just thought this was a blast from the past that some folks might want to comment on.

 

OK, a little quick research on the French institution that granted her doctorate yields this gem:

Now if this is such a good and wonderful institution, why does it go to the trouble of stating in such bold print that it isn't a degree mill? Perhaps this could be the first, but I have yet to see a school protesting that it isn't a degree mill that isn't a degree mill.

 

Here's a thread from a month ago

http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=29690&highlight=robert+sorbon

Then there's this

http://www.degreediscussion.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6265

I didn't know the part about Sheila.

 

Wow....I'm not often speechless, but this one takes the cake.

IIRC, isn't she also a fervent believer in the lost continent of Atlantis?

 

Goody, old gossip.

Someone coined the term for MIGS, but I don't remember who, but wrote that MIGS stand for Making Income for Greedy Sheila or something like that.

You better believe it, I am outrage, but what can we do other than to provide information to others and let them decide.

Thanks for the update.

 

It's a colorful story Chip. One of the "foreign credential evaluators" that were evaluating Saint Regis University's degrees as RA-equivalent was something called Career Consultants International, run out of Florida by a woman supposedly named "Liz Ross". Well, it turned out that 'Liz Ross' was none other than Sheila Danzig.

It isn't news to Degreeinfo:

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=13664

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=13121

 

That's Maxine Asher, mistress of the famous accreditor WAUC, the World Association of Universities and Colleges. (Any similarity to WASC, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges is purely coincidental, I'm sure.) She's also mistress of American World University, which is apparently back doing business in California, now that the BPPVE is floating belly-up. (I find it hard not to like a school named 'American World', but I managed it in this case.)

Maxine Asher doesn't just believe in Atlantis. She actually discovered its location, using the psychic discipline of intuitive archaeology that she pioneered herself.

http://www.crystalinks.com/atlantisasher.html

 

And Maxine also wrote a truly fine (note the sarcasm) fictionalized novel about it, "Waves of Atlantis", which John Bear was kind enough to loan me to read.

 

That's right, thanks.

All these old names; we just need Armando Arias and Enrique Serna to pop up, and it will be old home week.

 

Which, believe it or not, is still up!

Now all we need is an update on Emir Mohammed and old business will be up to date.

 

Here you go!

 

It's good to see that he landed on his feet.

 

Well as long as we're reminiscing . . . anyone else remember David Yamada, who posted often at alt.education.distance, and then in the early years here. Law professor at Suffolk in Boston. I had a meal with him last week in Berkeley, where he came to make a presentation of his work in progress at the Western Institute for Social Research -- he's been at work on his Ph.D. for about five years, with some very interesting research on bullying in the workplace.

 

I still remember the hilarity that ensued when Steve Levicoff caught him trying to start his own school....named after an early US President, if I remember correctly.

Certainly....I actually contacted him about some workplace bullying issues, but he kind of disappeared from the radar screen all of a sudden.

 

If I remember right, Emir was a member of the Gang of Six until he was discovered to be on the teaching faculty of Robert Kennedy University, which had pictures of their "campus" which was actually some castle that could be rented by the hour in Switzerland, if memory serves correctly... but the mailing address for the school was in Italy, and when asked, the school said it was *not* named for the famous Robert Kennedy who was attorney general, but for a totally different Robert Kennedy who was a wealthy individual living in New York (and utterly unlocatable by anyone.)

After the RFK incident, I believe that Emir was decided not to be a member of the Gang of Six.

(Incidently, on another note, I was sorting through my clothes recently and came across the official Gang of Six t-shirt that John Bear distributed at the Gang of Six meeting which was, I think, in Pittsburgh some 10+ years ago.)

 

I remember that, but Emir also tried to start his own school, the name James Monroe sticks in my head for some reason. Steve Levicoff (who else?) found the rather cheesy looking website, and the fireworks began.

 

Taft Research Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, or TRIALS. After nothing seemed to come of that, he became involved with Robert Kennedy.

 

Excellent recall, my good man!

 

I had totally forgotten about that one, but I do remember the acronym.

Speaking of days-gone-by, I'm curious to know if anyone has heard of what Les Snell is doing these days. I remember a Denver-area newspaper ran a picture of him with his car stuck in the snow a few years ago, as an illustration of a blizzard that had hit, but other than that he seems to have been off the radar.

Also, does anyone remember the totally phony school website that Levicoff created solely to stir up excitement? It had all of the Gang of Six members as faculty and administration and all of the hallmarks of a fraudulent school...

 

You can't keep a bad man down, Chip. As you could probably have predicted, Les Snell is running another bogus law school, the American College of Juris Diplomates -- www.jurisdiplomate.org/

Snell was involved as a material witness in a law suit in Florida last year and the year before, involving quite a prominent person who claimed to have earned his law degree from Snell's fake Monticello University, who was suing two people who publicly criticized his (fake) law degree http://www.kwp.org/kwva/price_v_kronenberger.pdf

And here, just for laughs, is a letter I received from Texas last June:

"Mr. Bear, I have been doing a lot of surfing on the web
trying to find out what I can about a person named Leslie Edwin Snell. He is
currently a tenant of mine in an office building I own in Texas. I have had
a little trouble with this guy and am currently in the eviction process to
get him out of my life. I now know about his diploma mills in Hawaii, and
Kansas, and he currently has a web site American College of Juris
Diplomates. What I am trying to find out is if there are any authorities who
are currently looking for this guy. I would love to make his life as
miserable as he is making mine. Any information you might be able to give I
would really appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me via email or at
the phone # listed below."