Does U. of Phoenix accept St Regis degrees?

At http://www.saintregis.ac/attestation.htm#attestation, it says:

"Click on Page One and Page Two to view an example of an evaluation of a St. Regis University degree evaluated as equivalent to a US regionally accredited degree, conducted by American Evaluation Institute. [...] To submit your St. Regis University degree for evaluation by American Evaluation Institute, contact Dr. Clark".

At http://www.educationevaluations.com/who_we_are.htm and http://www.uscredentials.com/who_we_are.htm, it says:

"American Evaluation Institute [...] The evaluations are performed by qualified professors [...]. Professor Mathew B. Michael Clark, Sc.D. [...] is an Evaluating Professor for the University of Phoenix [...]. The American Evaluation Institute is a direct provider of credit for the University of Phoenix [...]."

What's going on here?

 

Searched for British Royal Chartered Post Graduate Institution and variations - couldn't find anything.

Searched for Matthew B. Michael Clark ScD and couldn't find anything.

Is a ScD a real degree somewhere? They are honourary here.

The evaluation mentions coursework. I didn't think St. Regis provides coursework.

If the U of Phoenix is accepting St. Regis degrees, and I doubt they do, it is not a good situation.

 

Well, I don't know about UoP. I wrote to 3 different University in Europe, one would accept a bachelor degree from St. Regis for their mba programm, one is not sure and would like to see an St. Regis degree diploma to recheck it before accepting and one won't accept it.

 

I think that "credential evaluators" are a weak link in the international academic credibility game, and that we will be seeing a lot more degree-mills trying to exploit them.

Currently the new frontier in 'degree-mill science' is the exploitation of weak foreign jurisdictions with little or no academic standards but with the national soverignty that gets them into the International Handbook of Universities and into "GAAP".

Some universities and employers think that they can be sophisticated and guard against this kind of thing by employing credential evaluators to screen suspect schools. The idea is to use the evaluators as if they were substitute accreditors.

But this isn't a credential evaluator's function. They are being misused. Evaluators compare syllabi, to ensure that a foreign syllabus covers essentially the same material as an American one. And obviously a degree-mill can print up a beautiful American-style syllabus full of courses that nobody really takes.

The problem is that evaluators never make international site visits. They never examine suspect schools in detail to discover what they are really doing out there. They don't investigate the QA standards and procedures used by foreign ministries of education. They simply assume that if the school in question is approved by the locals, then it's cool.

If they do have concerns, they are basically as much in the dark about how to answer them as Degreeinfo is, probably more.

I think that Degreeinfo has to sound a warning about use of weak foreign jurisdictions as degree-mill forwarding addresses. And then it has to shine a spotlight on the credential evaluators who, either through omission or commission, are helping those flag-of-convenience mills to pass.

 

The Sc.D. appears to be able to be earned non-honorary, atleast in the US. I did a search and see people with that degree, can't say what it is though and what makes it different than a Ph.D.

 

Doctor of Science

The impression I got in England was the "Doctor of Science" degree was the original doctorate in scientific subjects, awarded on the basis of a record over several years of being published in scholarly journals.

My headmaster told us that when the "Ph.D." was imported to England from the U.S., it was derisively nicknamed "Phoney Doctorate" because English people thought that a doctorate earned on the basis of a dissertation was less legitimate.

But I can't vouch for this. Maybe it was incorrect folklore.

One interesting reference I did find on the Web: At the University of Edinburgh, "the new Degrees of Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Science were first offered in the academic year 1864-65. [...] In Physical Science, the Degree of Bachelor of Science was a two-year course, and a student could proceed to a third year for the Degree of Doctor of Science. [...] In today's terms, the Bachelor of Science is analogous to the present Ordinary Degree and the Doctor of Science is equivalent to the Honours B.Sc. in a single subject."
-- http://www.chem.ed.ac.uk/welcome/history_playfair.html

 

Dennis Ruhl wrote:

> Searched for Matthew B. Michael Clark ScD and couldn't find
> anything.

Google has no other references to "Mathew B. Michael Clark" (1 t), but 3 references to "Matthew B. Michael Clark" (2 t's). It must be the same person, because he is also an ScD. But apparently he is an MD as well, and was at the Pacific Health Institute, in Lakewood, CA, in October 1997. No other Web page places the Pacific Health Institute in Lakewood.

> Searched for British Royal Chartered Post Graduate
> Institution and variations - couldn't find anything.

I presume the Lister Postgraduate Institute at the University of Edinburgh, and the Postgraduate Institute for Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, are both under British royal charters.

 

The University of Massachusetts-Lowell offers the Sc.D. in Computer Science.


Bruce

 

The American Evaluation Institute and Dr Clark are gone from SRU's Web page.

 

Doctorates

The DSc is awarded in the UK as a post PhD qualification on the basis of sustained publication in refereed journals in a subject discipline for which the awardee is well established as a leading academic specialist and recognised as such by his or her peers.

The PhD is now a minimim requirement to be appointed at lecturer level (the starting grade) in any UK university. Most UK PhDs remain by thesis, defined as an original contribution to the knowledge base, though the PhD by partly taught and partly thesis on the US model, is coming into fashion.

Doctorates have been awarded by British universities since the 18th century and were never US 'imports'.

Dr Adam Smith was awarded his doctorate (Doctor of Laws) by Glasgow University in 1763, while "America" was still a colony and sometime before the USA was founded.

 

Re: Doctorates

Professor Kennedy wrote:

> Doctorates have been awarded by British universities since
> the 18th century and were never US 'imports'.

What my headmaster told us was specifically about Ph.D.s, not about doctorates in general, which are of course ancient.

 

Re: Doctorates

I saw a DSc awarded about a month ago to a retired professor who graduated with a PhD from Stanford in the 1930s.

He was a geologist, had long teaching career, and contributed greatly to the petroleum industry.

He certainly earned his DSc unlike the other illiterates who received their doctorates on different days.

 

Re: Doctorates

I reckon what MarkIsrael meant with the "import" of the Ph.D. to England was the pure TITLE ("Ph.D."), not the Doctoral degree itself (which of course existed in England long before).

Greets,
Trigger

 

Re: Re: Doctorates

> I reckon what MarkIsrael meant with the "import" of the
> Ph.D. to England was the pure TITLE ("Ph.D."),

The title, along with the basis on which it was awarded (a dissertation, as opposed to the "sustained publication in ... journals" that Prof. Kennedy mentioned for the other doctorates).

But again, this is just something that one person once told me, and it may be incorrect folklore.

 

> The American Evaluation Institute and Dr Clark are gone
> from SRU's Web page.

And now they're back!

New stuff:

"SRU graduates with degrees in education can be certified as teachers in the state of Idaho. See: http://uscredentials.com/teachers.htm AEI will certify SRU graduates in business to sit for the CPA exam in 49 of the 50 states (California has their own rules)."
-- http://www.saintregis.ac/attestation.htm#attestation

"The internationally renowned expert on distance learning degree programs, Dr. Richard J. Hoyer, has included St. Regis University in his best selling book A College Degree in Your Spare Time Through Distance Learning as one of the Top 20 colleges and universities."
-- http://www.saintregis.ac/main.htm

 

http://www.addall.com (a book search engine which searches Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) cannot find Dr Hoyer's "best selling book", nor does the Library of Congress have a copy.

 

Maybe the book was accredited in Liberia and doesn't really exist.

 

MarkIsrael: Dr Clark?
Mklark3333: Yes
MarkIsrael: Excuse me; your Web page says you have an Sc.D. Could you tell me what institution that's from?
Mklark3333: From The Saint John University
Mklark3333: can you hold on sorry
MarkIsrael: Sure, thanks.
Mklark3333: I am registering a website
MarkIsrael: Is that Saint John University of St. Vincent & The Grenadines?
Mklark3333: No its the Catholic school system
MarkIsrael: Where is it located?
Mklark3333: In Africa
Mklark3333: I am an African Ethnic
MarkIsrael: OK, thanks.
Mklark3333: and You Sir are Whom?
Mklark3333: Please intro yourself
MarkIsrael: Mark Israel is my real name.
MarkIsrael: I was born in Canada but now live in the Boston area.
Mklark3333: What credentials do you hold?
MarkIsrael: My degrees are in Computer Science. Bachelor's from University of Alberta; Master's from University of Ottawa.
Mklark3333: Well Glad to meet with you. Good luck!
Mklark3333: Cheers
Mklark3333: as "we" say
MarkIsrael: Do you also have a medical degree? One Web page mentions "Matthew B. Michael Clark, MD, ScD". Is that a different person?
Mklark3333: I am not sure, but I am very Busy Many people named Mathew Clark
Mklark3333: Good to meet you Sir sorry

 

Dennis Ruhl wrote:

> Searched for Matthew B. Michael Clark ScD and couldn't find anything.

If you search for "mklark3333" you'll find his involved with a church as well.

 

Dennis Ruhl wrote:

> Maybe the book was accredited in Liberia and doesn't really exist.

In Liberia? Oh, no. "Dr. Hoyer [...] is [...] Chief Educational Accreditation Commissioner for the Accreditation Governing Commission of the United States http://www.agc-usa.org He is an international known author with his best selling book titled: A College Degree in Your Spare Time Through Distance Learning http://www.4acollegedegree.com now in its tenth edition." See all Dr Hoyer's incredible achievements at http://www.globalcap.org/aboutus.htm.

You can also search this forum for "Richard Hoyer". Dr Hoyer's "Principal Scientist" at Global Capital LLC, "the internationally renowned scientist, Professor Dr. Hans J. Kempe", is on the Saint Regis University faculty.