Northcentral vs. Greenwich University (Norfolk Island)

Re: Future Goals

Hi Karen,

You mention you do a lot of writing and "publication" work. I have read "Jonnie's Distance Learning Page" and there are Ph.D.'s through published work. I have only passingly reviewed this option because I am not prolifically published. It seems this may be an interest for you. Jonnie mentions several schools from the UK & Australia. It is at least worth a look. I am not sure how it would play toward your goal...but I thought I would chime in.

Good luck...and the advice is good. Stay with accredited universities (foreign equivalence or US regional). It offers the most flexibility. The time you would put into anything else would cost you more in "lost" opportunity to do it right.

Again, Good Luck!

 

Signs of a scam

As I stated somebody now and again tries to slip through. The 'doctor' in a shop operated abroad and anybody trying to become a doctor of medicine via such an obvious phoney route is hardly of the intellectual standing to go to medical school. The BBC report you kindly drew my atttention to is from 2000. The wheels of UK law run slowly but they definitely run their course.

The Irish case you quote is of course in a foreign country not the UK. It too has a 2000 date, though I have noted other similar scams in Ireland more recently.

Of more serious concern than these obvious frauds is the latest trend in 'accreditation' through a 'validation' process run by the highly respectable UK Open University of some suspicious outfits and some non-university run courses.

One last year I dealt with wanted EBS to credit its Finance students. My enquiries led to the OU validation people and claims that the degree courses were from an Australian university (properly accredited). As my enquiries proceeded (not with a view to credit the courses but to explore the implications of backdoor accreditation of potential scamsvia the OU) the outfit went out of business and its web site died.

These UK examples are rare. But not so rare in the much larger country of the USA. The main market for their products is the gullability of their customers (all cons start with a mark). That was my point to Karen: Norfolk Island is an odd place to set up a university. Its remoteness was why it was a penal colony. It will do nothing for her, though her money will do something for it.

To run a distance learning university from 'anywhere' is only (theoretically) plausible if you have never run one. They require good (senior) faculty and administrators, computer systems and IT specialists, and support staff, plus good communications and services.

These are not found in little spaces in shopping malls, huts and post box addresses. Campuses can vary in size but several hundred acres and the full panopoly of a university are required.
These are the minimum physical requirements for a UK Royal Charter, on top of which the human resources in staff and campus students are required. The UK OU - a very large organsiation - was set up to do it differently but it is one of a kind in the UK.

 

Here are a couple of more recent stories:

"The dark, satanic diploma mills"
David Cohen, Guardian, Friday March 15, 2002
"... Australian educators say they are increasingly worried by the potential harm to the reputation of their institutions from other British operations that offer fake degrees in the name of hundreds of authentic institutions from around the world, including many of those in the antipodes, for upwards of £200 apiece. ..."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/columnist/story/0,9826,667983,00.html

"Universities vow to fight fake degrees"
Lee Elliot Major, Guardian, January 8, 2002
"... University chiefs have vowed to clamp down on businesses offering forged degree certificates, as it came to light that a Liverpool based businessman is flouting the law and continuing to sell fake degrees over the internet. ..." (he's been doing this since at least 1999)
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,629143,00.html

There *are* a lot of suspect schools in the US, and I don't mean to deny that or to argue whether the US or the UK has a bigger problem. In both countries, educational fraud has flourished due to lack of attention. Part of the problem is jurisdiction; who should investigate an entity that uses British mailing addresses, claims to operate from Spain, and is incorporated in Delaware?

Operations that are "obvious frauds" to you and to me are anything but that to many people. We need to continually educate potential students -- to point out, as you do, that Norfolk Island is an odd place for a university to set up (as are St. Kitts & Nevis, a PO box in London, Dominica, etc.)