Information about La Jolla University

A discussion that ended 3 or 4 years ago about a California Authorized (later, temporarily, Approved after the Authorized category was abolished) needs to be litigated further?

Okay, here's the real scoop: LJU was Authorized to operate in California back when the State had a "3-tier" system:

• Accredited. School accredited by recognized agencies didn't have to go any further with the State. They were listed here.
• Approved. Schools authorized to operate (see below) were allowed to apply for one or more of their programs to be Approved by the State. This was a reasonably rigorous process. Approved programs in the licensed fields (like counseling and psychology) would qualify their graduates to sit for State licensing exams in those professions. Note that each individual program was Approved (nor not), not the institution itself.
• Authorized. Schools could be opened merely by filing affidavits attesting to various things about their operations, as well as claiming at least $50,000 in assets towards the school operation. Obviously, this left a lot of room for some pretty shady outfits--it's pretty amazing what can qualify for the $50K asset rule. That was it. No evaluation on the part of the State. The kinds of schools in operation ran from the serious to the hilarious to the straight-out fraudulent. Let's just say a few schools crossed over from one to the next. (I'm looking at you, CCU.)

La Jolla University was Authorized to operate. They had some nice offices and seemed serious when I visited them once. But not serious enough to get their programs Approval status. When the state got rid of the Authorized category, it required all schools to get institutional approval--getting out of the programmatic approval game. But they really didn't have the resources to evaluate immediately all of the schools that were grandfathered in. So they went after some big fist--like Columbia Pacific University--and just denied permanent approval to a lot more when those temporary approvals came up for renewal. LJU died in this fashion, IIRC.

(BTW, some schools would have programs at each level. For example, International College had a bachelor's that was affiliated, briefly, with an accredited UWW program. Its master's was State-Approved, while the rest of the school (including its PhD) was Authorized. Still, International was a very serious effort and turned out some cool graduates. I recommend reading Polarity Management by Barry Johnson (an International College PhD).

Now, back into my time machine. There's a guy named Rummersfield who is claiming even more post-nominals that I do.

Rich Douglas, AA, AAS, BA, BS, MBA, PhD, DSocSci, SPHR, PCC, CPLP, Capt (Ret), GS-15

(Now, where'd I put my PMP? Oh, yeah, turned that one in....)