Liberian accreditation: some 'breakthrough' information

The Infrastructure section of the Consular Information Sheet for Liberia says:

Neither water nor electricity is commercially available in Monrovia. Most hotels have utilities available, but not on a 24-hour basis. Few facilities and homes have telephones, and disruption of telephone service is common. Public mail delivery is very unreliable...

Other relevant passages:

American citizens should consider carefully the importance of their travel to Liberia and weigh their personal safety...

Due to the potential for violence, U.S. citizens should avoid crowds, political rallies, and street demonstrations and maintain security awareness at all times. In addition, due to recent animosities among security forces, U.S. citizens should avoid any gathering of such forces...

Monrovia's crime rate is high. Theft and assault are major problems, and they occur more frequently after dark. Foreigners, including U.S. citizens, have been targets...

The police are ill equipped and largely incapable of providing effective protection...

Perpetrators of business fraud often target foreigners, including Americans...

Safety of Public Transportation: Unsafe (and very limited)
Urban Road Conditions/Maintenance: Very poor
Rural Road Conditions/Maintenance: Poor to nonexistent
Availability of Roadside Assistance: Poor to nonexistent

Road travel can be hazardous...

There are no operating traffic lights in the country; therefore, intersections should be approached with caution. There are also no public streetlights...

Drivers and pedestrians are cautioned that high-speed car convoys carrying government officials require all other vehicles to pull off the road until they have passed. All drivers should also remain in their vehicles at the roadside with headlights turned off until any such convoy passes. It would be advisable to wait at least ten minutes after the convoy passes...

Most airlines do not meet the standards of punctuality, security, or service found in the global north...

Departing flights from Liberia are typically overbooked. Local carriers do not always follow published routings or schedules. At this time, an armed paramilitary security force provides airport security. Conditions at the airport upon arrival and departure are crowded and chaotic...

http://travel.state.gov/liberia.html

I'm absolutely amazed by the lengths that St. Regis' owners will go to in order to secure "accreditation" for their students. It's truly admirable.

If they think that operating (so they say) in Liberia is preferrable to dealing with an American accreditor... all I can say is that dealing with those American accreditors must be really tough.

 

Mark: Well, you've got one of 'em. The other is a technikon. Neither had the cachet (before the disasters) of CC and UL. How operative they are at present, I do not know, but they are properly accredited as tertiary institutions by the CHE within the MOE.

I'd supply the name of the technikon, but I don't care to help the St Regis folks spiff up their website. Neither it nor the AME or AMEZ college (I have heard it attributed to both denominations and don't know which is correct) does any DL.

The sad point in all of this is that virtually everything in Liberia is in ruins. If Liberian accreditation could once have been (FWIW) a bit like Liberian registry for ships--a flag of convenience, yes, but still a flag--those halcyon days appear to be no more. There are a couple of schools which claim Liberian accreditation totally apart from St Regis and/or NBOE. What that now means, if it is still technically in force, I leave to others to assess.

The Lone Star has set in blood.

The ancestors weep.

 

Saint Regis certificate

Was the certificate issued by Liberia's National Commission for Higher Education specifically designed for the business corporation known as the National Board of Education Inc?

The reference to this business corporation appears to be pre-printed yet trouble has been taken to provide space for filling in the name Saint Regis University as well as the dates.

See:
http://saintregis.edu.lr/images/SRU_cert.jpg


Quite interesting.

Opherus

 

Indeed, Opherus. And what's more: the stamp design does not resemble the real stamp design of Liberian government stamps; the name of the sub-agency is Commission on Higher Education, not National Commission on Higher Education; the multicolored document is not consistent with other Liberian government documents (usually b/w); no reference is made to the Ministry of Education, of which the CHE is a sub-agency. Other than that, it sure inspires confidence as a document image.

Vultures.

 

Several small things do not add up. The stamp refers to 'commission of' the print reads 'commission for' and it should be 'commission on'.

BTW I followed a lead from one site to what was supposed to lead to the website of the Embassy of the Republic of Liberia, Washington D.C., as shown below:


www.liberiaemb.org

Opherus

 

http://allafrica.com/stories/200305200884.html

Beneath belief...

 

This is unbeleivable!!!!!!!!!!
I haven't seen such a long-heated debat over SRU since TCU.

As I look at it, if SRU isn't associated with any of the following, then it isn't worth arguing over if they are accreditated outside the US or not!!!!!!!!!!
Because it is not going to really benifit me, or anyone else...all SRU is, is a time bomb waiting to go off!!!!!

Regional accrediting associations approved by the United States Department of Education:

1. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools,

2. The Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools,

3. The New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools,

4. The North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools,

5. The Northwest Association of Secondary and Higher Schools, and

6. The Western Association of Colleges and Schools.

 

Hi Nobycane:
I really wasn't arguing about SRU. I see your point--junk like that hardly merits much discussion once its substrate of junkness (as Aristotle would say) has been established
for the record here.
What started my own logorrhea was my own belief that Liberian accreditation might have been worth something in the old days;
what continued it was the suspicion that perhaps SRU doesn't really possess all that it claims (the "does Monrovia know?" question, which hasn't yet been answered);
what sustains it is a sense of moral outrage at what has happened to Liberia itself,
along with a specific desire to distinguish accreditation by normal African governments
from anything which might (or might not) emanate from ostensible Liberian officialdom
on either side of the Atlantic.

 

Hi everybody,

I'm pretty new to this site, but I'm glad I found it. I was going to get my St. Regis degree, but reading the discussions here about it made me stop.

I contacted Robert Kennedy College (it's a swiss online College). Here is a copy of the Information they gave me about St. Regis. They say that in Europe St. Regis degrees will NOT be accepted. Hope that helps stopping people from throwing their money away.


--------------

Dear Sir,
St. Regis is not in Liberia. You can see it from the telephone number
which is a voice mail in London +44 (is the English area code).

There is (in my opinion) no serious institution who would grant a
degree, even an honorary one, in exchange for a payment and a light
evaluation. Furthemore, their website does not list any of the professor
with some serious credentails and it is unlikely to be, from a first
review, a serious academic sound institution.

Their website owner (saitregisedu.org) as you can check at
http://www.namesdirect.com/whois/index.php
is Saint Regis Dean
TBD
Roseau Dominica
,
DM

We can't accept their certificates as a valid degree. Perhaps in
Liberia, but not in Europe for sure. I am sure that if you contact your
local Ministry of Education, they will confirm our first review.

 

Well done, Lordikus! If you are considering enrolling at the Robert Kennedy school in Switzerland, be sure in advance that it is legal to use its degrees in Germany. Many of the so-called free universities and free Fachhochschulen are NOT accepted in Germany and Italy--a problem which assuredly does not exist with the public universities and Fachhochschulen. In Switzerland, the legal right to open a "university" is governed strictly by the canton; quality control is not necessarily present. Please search this forum for other references to the question of German legality of foreign degrees in general, and to Robert Kennedy College in particular.

http://home.arcor.de/mirko-gerhardt/dipl-vwa.htm

http://www.squeaker.net/sqn/index.php?index=545

The above links you may also find useful.

 

Out of the frying pan into . . . the next frying pan.

 

Not quite. Out of the frying pan and into the fondue pot.

 

Are you guys telling me that RKC is also fake??

That would mean one fake is calling the other fake a fake? *looking very irritated"

I'm starting to wonder if there are "real" and affordable distance degree programms.

*sniff*

 

Lordikus wrote:

> I'm starting to wonder if there are "real" and affordable
> distance degree programs.

There certainly are. Why don't you start a new thread, telling us what degree you're seeking, and why it has to be distance learning? I'm especially interested since you're in Germany, where I hear tuition is free.

> Are you guys telling me that RKC is also fake??

My illogical brain is reminded of KFC. Not a university, but it has a lot of frying-pans.

 

I understand that KFC uses large pots filled with boiling oil, so it sounds even worse to go from the frying pan to the KFC pot than to the fire.

 

hmmm I'm getting hungry..... anybody something from kfc? *G*

 

So you have KFC in Germany now? If I were in Germany, I wouldn't bother with KFC. I'd go straight for the FKK.

 

"Warning regarding so-called "Liberian" degrees: Any degrees issued by St. Regis, Breyer State, Concordia, Knightsbridge or any other entity claiming to be authorized by the "National Board of Education" in Liberia are illegal for use in Oregon and should be regarded as not meeting the standards expected of a U.S. degree. "

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html