Thread: Clayton College of Natural Health Shutting Down

Read all about it!

Birmingham-based Internet college to close, blames economy | al.com

Sounds like it is deserved. This statement says it all: "They've done a tremendous amount of harm by graduating people with questionable credentials who then represent themselves as qualified medical professionals"

Originally Posted by MichaelOliver

Sounds like it is deserved. This statement says it all: "They've done a tremendous amount of harm by graduating people with questionable credentials who then represent themselves as qualified medical professionals"

There have been a ton of threads on Clayton both here and elsewhere, and none of them that I can recall had a net positive depiction of them, and most were resoundingly negative. My recollection of the threads is that the biggest problem was the fact that they offered degrees in the health/medical field yet didn't qualify anyone to actually work in medicine.

They applied for initial DETC accreditation, looks like it will be kind of too late for them :)

Could this be the line of the week

She also was ordered by British medical regulators to stop selling herbal sex pills and was lampooned by the British press for her habit of studying bowel movements.

All I can say is good riddance.

Originally Posted by Randell1234

Could this be the line of the week

She also was ordered by British medical regulators to stop selling herbal sex pills and was lampooned by the British press for her habit of studying bowel movements.

If it quacks like a duck...

Fascinating.

The article says they have 3000 students and are laying off 30 of their 50 employees in preparation for closure. That means until now they had one employee for every sixty students. And they say that under those circumstances that they weren't making money? I don't know which of those facts I doubt, but I find the total package pretty hard to believe.

-=Steve=-

This is absolutely fantastic news!

This school was one of the worst of the worst, graduating completely unqualified people who called themselves naturopathic physicians when they had none of the training, experience, qualifications, or clinical practice to do any sort of medical care.

The school was not only responsible for a bunch of people practicing medicine who weren't qualified, in its heyday, it was responsible for screwing up licensure laws in a number of states by arguing that its unqualified graduates should be allowed to practice and defeating licensure for qualified naturopathic physicians who actually went to competent, accredited programs.

This is really amazing and wonderful news.

Actually, upon reading the article, one thing jumped out at me:

A closure would be a result of the recession, not a new state law requiring institutions that grant degrees to have approval by an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, he said.

Now why would he have said that, I wonder?

The timing seems awfully coincidental. Perhaps they got word from DETC that they would not, in fact, be granted accreditation, and are trying to save face. If they say they are closing for financial reasons, then everyone's like "oh, the economy is tough." If they say they're closing because they didn't get DETC accreditation and would have been kicked out of Alabama... that doesn't look good, and might have opened them up to lawsuits.

It also makes no sense. Other (legitimate) schools are reporting record levels of applications, and schools that have historically been known as easy to get into have had very competitive acceptance this year. So I'm voting for the idea that they saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to get out and avoid the embarrassment of being turned down by DETC.

This also makes Clayton 1 for 3; AICS got accredited by DETC, but Chadwick, Clayton's other school (name escapes me) and now (if I'm right) Clayton College have all been rejected by DETC. Perhaps this also indicates that DETC is finally starting to actually look at their own policies when considering what schools they are going to accredit.

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Originally Posted by Chip

Actually, upon reading the article, one thing jumped out at me:



Now why would he have said that, I wonder?

The timing seems awfully coincidental. Perhaps they got word from DETC that they would not, in fact, be granted accreditation, and are trying to save face. If they say they are closing for financial reasons, then everyone's like "oh, the economy is tough." If they say they're closing because they didn't get DETC accreditation and would have been kicked out of Alabama... that doesn't look good, and might have opened them up to lawsuits.

It also makes no sense. Other (legitimate) schools are reporting record levels of applications, and schools that have historically been known as easy to get into have had very competitive acceptance this year. So I'm voting for the idea that they saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to get out and avoid the embarrassment of being turned down by DETC.

This also makes Clayton 1 for 3; AICS got accredited by DETC, but Chadwick, Clayton's other school (name escapes me) and now (if I'm right) Clayton College have all been rejected by DETC. Perhaps this also indicates that DETC is finally starting to actually look at their own policies when considering what schools they are going to accredit.

The inability to gain accreditation and the schools financial success are interwoven. If the school does not gain accreditation, the students are unable to gain student loans. Hence, closing for "financial reasons".

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There's always a move to California where they can split the rent with BSU.

I agree with Chip. Wonderful news. In a backhanded way, I bear some responsibility for this operation. During the two years I lived in Tennessee (1986-88], I used to get regular phone calls from Lloyd Clayton, asking for advice on how to start a school. It became clear to me that his interest was far more in the direction of profitability than academics, and our discussions ended. And then there were all those full-page color ads in health and nutrition and new age publications touting Clayton as one of the pioneers of distance and online education . For many years, Clayton's schools had a private deal with Alabama authorities: they would leave him alone as long as he did not accept any students living in Alabama. [Very much like what Kennedy-Western had in California. Wonder if there are other examples?]

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Originally Posted by John Bear

For many years, Clayton's schools had a private deal with Alabama authorities: they would leave him alone as long as he did not accept any students living in Alabama. [Very much like what Kennedy-Western had in California. Wonder if there are other examples?]

How can people get away with this sort of thing? It's hard to believe that a state would allow something like with their only criteria being that the school didn't admit any of the states constituents. That seems immoral on the part of Alabama as well as the school. Wasupwidat?

Originally Posted by MichaelOliver

How can people get away with this sort of thing? It's hard to believe that a state would allow something like with their only criteria being that the school didn't admit any of the states constituents. That seems immoral on the part of Alabama as well as the school. Wasupwidat?

It's not the only state to show this "funny" kind of acceptance.

I believe the less-than stellar Canyon College in Idaho has long been prohibited from offering its uh...degrees to residents of its home State.

I guess you could call it "do unto others." :)

Johann

Originally Posted by MichaelOliver

How can people get away with this sort of thing? It's hard to believe that a state would allow something like with their only criteria being that the school didn't admit any of the states constituents. That seems immoral on the part of Alabama as well as the school. Wasupwidat?

It's the result of how state laws are worded. Many state laws were written without any consideration of DL. Distance-learning institutions with bad intentions and sharp lawyers quickly found ways to fall through the cracks.

Suppose a state writes legislation that regulates all institutions offering instruction to students inside the state's borders. An out-of-state DL school can dodge that by pointing out that it's located in a different state and that it's classes are originating somewhere else.

And an in-state DL school can try to dodge the exact same legislation by insisting that it doesn't offer any kind of instruction to anyone inside the state boundaries. If the school has no students inside the state, then it can argue that it doesn't satisfy the definition of an in-state educational institution and hence that state regulators have no jurisdiction.

A number of states still need to amend or re-write their state laws to take DL more fully into account.