University of Dorchester - a new MILL

http://www.uoduk.co.uk

"Our assessment criteria are currently approved by the European Council for Home and Online Education "

The most interesting thing is I got a call from a call center in “Florida”

 

Could have been worse.....the call could have originated from Liberia!

 

Mill, yes; new, no. University of Dorchester has been linked to Strassford University, Shaftesbury University, Stafford University, and others. The name was uncovered last year but was not "activated" until recently (it is now also using a new url). It appears to be one of the many British-sounding names used by the Romanian group.

 

I like the name of this degree mill. It sounds like University of Rochester.

Ike

 

From the Memphis Business Journal

 

conjoined sites: shared IP addresses

Hi again,

Ah, this warms my heart. The IP address for the revived Dorchester site is

66.132.45.177

which is the same as the IP for sites of
Strassford and Shepperton. (Same IP means it lives inside the same computer, basically.)

Further, the new Shepperton University is a revival of the University Degree Program's Westhampton University site. (Same graphics, same president, etc.)

It's like eating my father's version of "stew": really really awful, but somehow comforting in its familiarity.

More info (but not about stew!) is here:

http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/nonCHEA/

regards,
George

 

Dorchester et al

Strassford, Stafford (not the genuine Staffordshire U) ECHOE and the others were all giving an address in East London, which was a doublefronted Victorian house operating as offices and virtual offices including a fictional suite 50 which was a mail-forwarding service. This address is still used although the building has been converted to housing and the post is (presumably) diverted.

Strassford now uses an address in London WC1 (Camden Borough, I think).

None of these offer recognised UK degrees as you will well know, but their overseas base makes legal action more difficult.

A point to note, one of them used .ac in their URL which is the Acenson Islands national digraph. Genuine UK academic institutions will usually use .ac.uk, which is fairly well controlled.

 

Well, I used to live in UK for quite a few years. And their online addresses are quite different from the ones used in the US.

By that URL, this degree mill is selling itself out as a fraud already, as UK colleges and universities use URL that ends with www.WHATEVER-NAME.ac.uk, as that "ac" means "academic", same as the "edu" status.

Just some info to spot degree mills....

Mike.