Bush Says Liberian President Should Go: Impact on Accreditation?

Bush has said that Liberian President/Dictator, Charles Taylor, should go into exile. How will this impact the quality of Liberian accreditation?

 

Do you think that Taylor had anything to do with the whole accreditation business? From what I gather, these Liberian accreditations are coming from a guy at the embassy in D.C.

Besides, Taylor has stated that he is not prepared to leave until January of next year, despite Bush's hard talk.

 

Mr Abdulah K. Dunbar, an official at the Liberian Embassy in Washington, appears to be the NBOE's public face.

I wonder how Adam Smith University's Liberian accreditation is holding up. It was not part of NBOE.

 

Someone's hand is getting greased because of the accreditation business. I'm sure that Pres. Taylor is well aware of the cash that is being made for selling accreditation to anyone who coughs up the cash.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

I strongly agree with Roy on this one. In a land of corruption, nothing of note occurs without a payoff to someone. That money always trickles up the ladder. As to the original question, I tend to think that the answer has more to do with who replaces Taylor rather than whether Taylor stays or goes. Anyone who might conceivable be qualified to replace him may well be equally corrupt (and just hasn't been caught at it yet). Sorry for the glass-half-empty attitude but perhaps I can attribute it to Moliere as I'm currently re-reading The Misanthrope.

Jack

 

I guess the Liberian accreditation is intact until 1-1-04. All prospective students have six months to enroll in the degree program of their dreams--i.e., unless some type of military action dislodges the accreditation system.

 

Update

For those of you who have not been watching the news:


http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=world&cat=liberia

 

I've been wondering about that.

St. Regis has franchisees outside the United States. For example, there's Al Qasim University in Pakistan and Boston College of London.

Presumably people in those countries would verify these schools through their local Liberian embassy. While I doubt if there is a Liberian embassy in Pakistan, I have verified that there is one in London:

Host Country: United Kingdom
Country of Embassy:Liberia
Embassy:Liberia
EmbassyAddress:2 Pembridge Place
Town/City:London
Postal Code:W2 4XB
Telephone:+ 44 (0)20 7221 1036

So apparently this NBOE thing embraces more than Mr. Dunbar, and that suggests that orders have come out of Monrovia.

My suspicion (nothing more than that) is that the St. Regis perps live in the Washington DC area, and they may be dealing through Mr. Dunbar. He might or might not be the conduit though which Liberia was approached. But I think that this operation has been approved by his superiors, and it's probably more than one guy free-lancing out of the Washington embassy.

But given the no-doubt anarchical conditions in Monrovia and within the Liberian government itself, it's very easy to imagine government offices embarking on their own money-making schemes, particularly if officials aren't being paid and fear that they might have to flee very soon.

 

All this talk makes me wonder if SRU and other mills are set up to fund overt and evil acts (ie: terrorism?)

 

Think of all the "students" that must have given some kind of a bio to these pirates. What would happen to all that personal information? If they don't get caught with their "degrees", they may have other problems.

 

While the world goes ape-poo over blood diamonds, why does no-one mention blood degrees?

Taylor is certainly using profits from diploma mills to fund repression in Liberia and fund misery in neighboring countries.

Does anyone have any good connections in the news media. Hell of a story.

 

The latest info that I have is that Taylor accepted a Nigerian asylum offer, but gave no time frame. Is calling for U.S. peace keepers.

What kind of impact will that have on the diploma mill funding and other atrocities etc.?

 

Personally, I’m concerned about a new slant on the Nigerian email scam...

Hello. My name is Charles Taylor I am currently in Nigeria, but I used to be President of Liberia. Your name was given to me in strictest confidence because I require your assistance in extricating several million dollars of diploma mill funds given to me by St. Regis University that I have secreted away in…

 

Negative, but in an indirect way. The instability of the government has been widely reported. This cannot help with the recognition of degrees from their schools, especially the cyber-types like St. Regis.

Do we even know if the "accreditation" they bought was from the official source of such recognition in Liberia? A key factor in this "recognition" is the listing of such schools in authoritative guides of foreign schools (as in the IHU). Will St. Regis be listed (a la Berne)? Or will it be limited to claims on its website?

 

Re: Re: Bush Says Liberian President Should Go: Impact on Accreditation?

More fundamentally, do we know that an official source of such recognition even exists in Liberia? The nation has a miniscule domestic higher education sector, and I doubt if a government accreditation office exists anywhere except on paper. There's just no need for it, and it would have nothing to do most of the time.

But given that verification for these enterprises seems to be coming out of Liberian embassies, somebody official (or as official as anything is in Liberia these days) is probably involved.

I'm just speculating, but I think that St. Regis would probably be listed. Unless it's changed its policy lately, the IHU just defers to national governments in generating its lists. I don't think that it sees its role as second-guessing national education ministries.

But the whole thing is complicated by NBOE reselling Liberian accreditation. Would the IHU list all of St. Regis' many "affiliates"? Maybe, but I doubt it.

And a lot would depend on whether the new Liberian government repudiates these off-shore "accreditations" or decides to continue them. (Off-shore registrations [mostly of shipping] is one of Liberia's largest sources of hard-currency right now.) If Liberia continues to verify them, St. Regis will probably get listed in the IHU.

Anyway, that's how I see it.

BTW, I'm glad to see you back, Rich.