Randy Oaks’ Bachelor Degree Under Controversy. Snippet: ... Sheriff candidate Randy Oaks has nearly 30-years experience as a cop -- but does he have a real college degree? On his campaign website Oaks claims a Bachelor of Science degree from Bienville University. But Bienville is an Internet correspondence school not accredited by any organization recognized by the U-S Department of Education. "I think I may have made a poor choice in selecting Bienville, as I said, I was searching for an accredited university -- I picked them. Now, based on all the information that's available -- I need to do more research on the accrediting agency. Now that there's criteria and there's information from other states saying "these don't have value and these do"...that's a lot of good information that I could have used two years ago." ...
Maybe the guy has a future in politics. Or running fraudulent schools. This is some pretty snazzy doubletalk, if you ask me.
A matter of degrees. Snippet: The Lousiana Board of Regents was slated to meet late this week to consider revoking the charter of Bienville University. If you're wondering what this has to do with Las Vegas, Bienville is the phony Internet university where sheriff's candidate Randy Oaks obtained his B.A. in criminal justice. Oaks boasts of the degree on his campaign website and said last week that by placing it on his website resume, it is clear he isn't trying to hide anything. Even in the world of Internet education scams, Bienville stands out as a blatant diploma mill. It has no faculty. It has no campus. All Oaks had to do to earn a B.A. was to write a paper about weapons of mass destruction. Presto, months later, he's got a college degree. Metro sources confirm that Oaks used his new degree to apply for a pay increase, but since Bienville isn't accredited, he withdrew his application. He has told reporters he knows of no problems with the school and sees nothing wrong with getting a degree there. But even cursory probing reveals that Bienville is a bogus school, that it doesn't return phone calls or e-mails, that it was ordered in 2000 to quit accepting new students, and that it will likely be put out of business altogether by Louisiana officials, who say they have been receiving fraud complaints about the operation for years. Why didn't Oaks check it out before signing up, and why did he use this worthless degree to try to get a pay raise out of the Metro budget?
