John Bear and Allen Ezell seek advice on what to do with our degree mill archives

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by John Bear, Jul 21, 2014.

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  1. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    FBI Agent Allen Ezell (retired) and I have both been researching and writing about fake schools for about forty years, and we have accumulated a lot of stuff: school literature and artifacts, videos, press clippings, government reports, books, etc. About 40 banker boxes full. We are both a bit long of tooth (total age: 148), and we are trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff so that it will remain accessible when we personally are not.

    Ideally, the two archives would be combined, and made available, indefinitely, to those who benefit from it now: lawyers, HR people, journalists, registrars, legislators, researchers, and the general public.

    We are just beginning our quest, and we thought it would be a good thing to see if members of this forum had thoughts and suggestions: either general categories, or specific possibilities.

    The obvious (to us) solutions lie in the direction of either universities (library or department of education) or stable and reliable organizations (governmental or private). Our predecessor in these vineyards, Robert Reid (America's 'go to' diploma mill expert in the 1950s and 1960s) deposited his archives in the library at Columbia University. The good news is that they are still there after more than half a century, for anyone to examine. The bad news is that they have never been indexed or catalogued (at least as of 2004 when we examined them), which limits their usefulness.

    We'd be glad to hear thoughts and suggestions here, whether general or specific, either here or privately to [email protected]

    Many thanks.

    John and Allen
     
  2. RAM PhD

    RAM PhD Member

    Any possibility of this data being placed online? What a tremendous tool this would be for those doing research on the subject.

    Thank you, John and Allen, for your very valuable research/writing on the subject of degree mills.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 22, 2014
  3. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Everything is going online and it makes searchability easier, but the bigger question that they are asking is who would host/archive it long-term?
     
  4. Ed Edwards

    Ed Edwards Member

    The best and natural location for this would be something online like wikipedia, say millapedia or wikimill. The challenge with wikipedia proper is that over time people can edit the info. There are free open source frameworks which could easily be installed in a degreeinfo subdirectory. If done correctly this could create more traffic to the site which could be monetized. However how current moderators that work for island based unaccredited schools that do not list their staff or faculty or address on their website would have to be considered and addressed, if only to provide transparency of course.
     
  5. RAM PhD

    RAM PhD Member

    Do you mean the "Professor" from Gilligan's Island posts on DI? :lol:
     
  6. Ed Edwards

    Ed Edwards Member

    Gilligans Island was technically within US territorial waters. If I remember right it is an island only a few hundred yards off the coast of California.
     
  7. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Is there a way to have it added to LexisNexis? I'm clueless on what that process would be like, if any.
     
  8. RAM PhD

    RAM PhD Member

    That may indeed be true, but the Professor still taught at the unaccredited Thurston Howell University.
     
  9. lifelonglearner

    lifelonglearner New Member

    Archives

    Perhaps the Internet Archive https://archive.org would be interested in this. They are located on Funston Avenue in San Francisco.

    -Lifelonglearner
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 23, 2014
  10. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    Thank you for thinking about this. Wikipedia and archive.org are intriguing notions.

    Unfortunately we can't just scan and post 'as is.' We have been in talks with a large state university -- one of the few that actually offers courses in educational fraud. They sent a librarian to look over Ezell's materials, who concluded that our stuff would need to be examined item by item, page by page, to ferret out potential legal problems -- ranging from notes from me saying, "Hey, Mariah, will you deal with this crackpot; I can't face it any more..." to letters we get starting, "For God's sake, don't ever tell anyone I told you this, but . . ." That university seems seriously interested . . . but they have just embarked on cataloging the life papers of a major politician in their state -- something like 50,000 items -- and cannot take on something new and big for at least 5 years. New thought: might there five or ten people here would have interest in the "ferreting" work. I can envision sending a person one or more of our 40-or-so banker boxes, and they would go through it page by page, identifying potentially hazardous stuff. No pay, just out-of-pocket expenses, and everlasting thanks. [email protected]
     
  11. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Wouldn't Chronicle be interested ? or maybe WES / NACES?

    Just wander.
     
  12. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

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