st regis revisited

Discussion in 'Accreditation Discussions (RA, DETC, state approva' started by NancyWillis, Dec 19, 2003.

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  1. NancyWillis

    NancyWillis New Member

    From what I have gathered here and from other message boards is that St Regis is not necessarily a diploma mill, but has a very questionable assessment process for prior college credits, gained knowledge, work experience, etc. In addition, the whole Liberian connection has been mocked on these boards. I believe people have tried to contact certain offices with little success. If one of the claims is the acceptability of its degree into US schools through an evaluation process, who is actually liable? The school or the US evaluation agency that processed the degree? What happens to those people who did manage to transfer degrees towards a US school? Shouldn't the university be able to retract any degree that was earned from the basis of the Regis degree? (ex: legitimate Masters from a phony BA) How do schools generally deal with a decision a registrar made some time ago??

    Perhaps Mr. Bear knows of other cases in which institutions have gone back to deal with degrees that were accepted at one time, before they learn the originating source was less than legit.


    NWillis
     
  2. bgossett

    bgossett New Member

    I would be hard pressed to understand how anyone could arrive at such an erroneous conclusion from the information presented on this forum.
     
  3. galanga

    galanga New Member

    welcome

    Hi Ms. Willis,

    Welcome!

    Have you found the threads describing the high school/AA degree policies of the Branford Academy, described by Saint Regis as a division of SRU?

    Did you look over the posts concerning the matter of SRU claiming that it would be listed in the IAU/UNESCO International Handbook of Universities, in spite of IAU's insistence that it would not be present, and IAU's (unsuccessful) requests that SRU stop claiming to have been accepted for inclusion?

    Did you read about the matter of the creation of a fake Liberian Embassy web site in order to promote SRU as a legitimately accredited Liberian institution?

    Have you read the posts describing how SRU puts doctored photos of faculty onto its web page, with a couple of professor's heads grafted onto the body of Richard J. Hoyer, said by an SRU faculty member to be the founder of Saint Regis and also of its operating body, the National Board of Education?

    Have you read the posts showing email from this same National Board of Education (sent to at least two presidents of unaccredited schools) offering Liberian accreditation for sale, with a guaranty of the award of accreditation upon payment of the $50,000 fee?

    What about the articles in November and December which appeared in the Spokane Spokesman-Review and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle? They're mentioned in some of these threads too.

    Perhaps you've only made a quick pass through some of the posts concerning SRU and haven't had time to digest them. There does seem to be a lot on the boards.

    In any event, greetings and welcome.

    G
     
  4. NancyWillis

    NancyWillis New Member

    >> the articles in November and December which appeared in the Spokane Spokesman-Review and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle? They're mentioned in some of these threads too<<

    Thank you. I will try to hunt for information on these boards, but any short cut links will be helpful.
     
  5. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    SRU is a degree mill. The only posts that I can recall that indicated otherwise were most recently by Len who is a professor at SRU. He said that when Hoyer was in charge that SRU practiced some questionable behaviors. He assured us that those questionable behaviors were all in the past and that SRU was going to be above reproach going into the future. Unfortunately it appears that he was either sadly mistaken or lying.

    Oh yes there was another fun thread where someone claimed that some reputable schools accepted SRU degrees. It turns out that he was either happily mistaken or lying.

    Perhaps there were some other threads that could give the impression that the community here thought that SRU was something more than a slick degree mill and scam? Maybe someone could post a link to such a thread?
     
  6. Saint Regis - new tactics for diploma mills

    It is apparent that SRU has adopted a new, and one could almost say sophisticated, set of tactics as far as diploma mill operations is concerned.

    In the past, and currently, most diploma mill operations attempt to hide behind some veil of either secrecy, lack of information, or sliding "under radar" - take the Romanian mill group (Palmers Green, "instant degrees", etc.) as an example.

    What SRU has done is new. They've gone public. And they are bold about it. They are attempting to legitimize their operation by adopted GAAP standards - hence the Liberian accreditation. The big question is whether the Liberian connection is real or fake, or what? No one really seems to know, despite the announcement by at least one embassy official (who now seems to have disappeared) that Liberia has nothing to do with SRU.

    They've got foreign degree evaluators, some of which appear to be independent, evaluating graduate degrees as equivalent to US RA based on the thin evidence of Liberian accreditation.

    Their whole strategy seems focused on - "we've got a country's ministry of education to say we're legit, so what's the problem?"

    This despite all the evidence of credit card, resume, purchased professorships, the pigeons getting AA degrees, the floating heads on the faculty, etc., etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.

    Does anyone care to add to this?
     
  7. NancyWillis

    NancyWillis New Member

    like you mentioned, this may be indeed a scam that has been taken to a higher level. Apparently they do have Liberian accrediting that is being accepted by evaluators who have transfered the credits to US schools. The question may be is how can they get away with this?? I think the evaluating agencies that do this are either blind or are in on the scam. Who can crack down on those folk?? Who is worse,...the folks that sell phony degrees or the ones who can make them legitimate??

    Maybe these claims are all false in an attempt to get your money. I would guess that if some fool pays by credit card he can always dispute the charge.
    I wonder what has been the success of people who have realize they have fallen for a degree mill and later try to fight the charge ion their VISA card. Maybe AMEX has a better customer satisfaction guarantee. :eek:
     
  8. Jack Tracey

    Jack Tracey New Member

    I think there are some people on this forum, myself included, who would like to know the details of this claim. Can you provide them or are you just repeating something you've been told by SRU?
    Jack
     
  9. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    My dear Mme. Willis:

    Rarely is there a post so full of maybes as yours inst. Please use the search function at the top right of the screen.

    If your maybes are genuine uncertainty about the character and methods of St Regis, a careful review of these threads will put, however negatively, your uncertainty to rest.

    If your maybes are an attempt to glean some righteousness for St Regis by blaming "outside" agencies--which in St Regis' case are far from "outside"--or by seeking some area of important uncertainty in the exposure of St Regis, fuggedabahdit.

    Best wishes to you, and welcome aboard.
     
  10. bgossett

    bgossett New Member

    Story link page

    Dr. George Gollin, a professor at the University of Illinois, has just such a page, which can be found here.

    This thread, incidentally, is beginning to resemble a fishing expedition. :)
     
  11. MichaelR

    MichaelR Member

    I asked Len on several occasions to tell me what evaluators where doing the evaluations. He couldn't or wouldn't tell me any. For fear that I would call them and tell them what a horrible school SRU is. The two different evaluation companies that have been listed want nearly $600 for a course by course evaluation. Most evaluation companies charge $125 for the same evaluation. Go figure.
     
  12. galanga

    galanga New Member

    hard work

    Perhaps the reason they need to charge so much more is that it appears to be very difficult to obtain accurate information from Saint Regis. Various statements from SRU are sometimes in complete contradiction to reality.

    An example is the way SRU has handled IAU/UNESCO's insistence that it has no intention whatsoever of including SRU in the International Handbook of Universities. In spite of this, SRU continues to maintain that it will appear in the Handbook.

    So figuring out what it really means when SRU awards credit for a course might take a lot of digging.

    In addition, could some of SRU's clients be less than helpful? Pigeons tell no tales.

    Of course, it might be the case that the services charge more money just to make more money.

    G
     
  13. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    05/05/92
    CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (415) 723-2558
    Senate votes to rescind student's diploma
    STANFORD -- The Faculty Senate voted Thursday, April 30, to rescind the degree of a former student who apparently was admitted to Stanford on the basis of a fraudulent transcript.
    The senate in June 1990 had routinely granted the student a bachelor of arts degree.
    http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/920505Arc2236.html

    Tom Nixon wrote, "Actually, this is much more of an embarrassment to Stanford than it is to the student. I don't know why they would make this public. It would have made much more sense to try to work out something with the student."

    I'm sure that in many similar cases, universities do nothing, precisely to avoid such embarrassment. But a university's right to rescind a degree has been upheld in several court cases:

    Waliga v. Board of Trustees, 488 N.E.2d 850 (Ohio 1986) Kent State University decided to rescind Waliga's B.A. degree, 17 years after it was awarded, because of 28 discrepancies in the grades on the official transcript and the handwritten reports submitted by the instructors in Waliga's classes.

    Crook v. Baker, 813 F.2d 88 (6thCir. 1987) The University of Michigan rescinded a M.Sc. degree in geology, because of fraud in that thesis.

    Hand v. Matchett, 957 F.2d 791 (10thCir. 1992) Michael Hand "earned" a Ph.D. in counseling psychology at New Mexico State University in 1982. In the Fall of 1987 an anonymous tipster sent to the University a copy two scholarly sources that Hand had plagiarized in his dissertation.
    In April 1988, the University attempted to rescind the Ph.D. it had awarded to Hand. The Court of Appeals cited Waliga and Crook, and concluded that "the ability to revoke degrees obtained through fraudulent means is a necessary corollary to the Regent's power to confer those degrees". Nevertheless, the revocation failed on a technicality because, under New Mexico law, only the Regents of the University could award or rescind a degree.

    Faulkner v. Univ. of Tennessee, 1994 WL 642765 (Tenn.Ct.App. 1994) "The University of Tennessee is not estopped to rescind the doctoral degree of Mr. Faulkner." Mr. Faulkner "does not appear to grasp the self-evident fact that he has not earned his doctorate."

    http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm
    http://www.aut.ac.nz/conferences/innovation/papersthemetwo/schollumpapertwo.pdf
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 22, 2003
  14. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    An informant tells me: "The SRU world is a good deal more complex from the inside than it often seems to those viewing it from outside. I still feel for the small number of people in it who are sincere and trying to make a difference."
     
  15. piratesmac

    piratesmac New Member

    Who's that?

    Mr. P. Culin?
     

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