A St. Regis Valupack: Buy in Bulk

According to this: Degrees by assessment one can earn a Ph.D. by assessment. No legitimate university in the world does this. (No, the few that will consider awarding a doctorate based upon published work don't count; candidates are required to do a substantial amount of work "tying" them all together.)

St. Regis will "assess" your qualifications and send you a response. Their website even states the candidate may begin using the degree title immediately. No, there are no legitimate academic processes that would permit this.

St. Regis degrees can be bought.

 

I am not Rich but from the SRU website.

"Does everyone qualify for assessment based degrees?

Only 10-15% of applicants have skills or qualifications that meet the expertise of a college graduate. The difference between securing a good life and a great life begins with a full description of your educational background.. Your initial application is the first impression you make on your advisor in consideration to award your St. Regis University degree.
However, if your assessment shows that you do not qualify for a degree your advisor will provide you with options and recommendations on how to proceed toward earning a degree. It may be that testing will be required, additional courses or research or that more documentation of your experience, or additional study in a particular area is needed.

If additional study is required, your advisor will direct you to sources of both traditional and non-traditional education. "

Apparently at least 10-15 % of people can pay and receive a degree. The 10-15% number should be viewed in light of the general tone of St Regis facts which seem to be in constant flux. They can also pay and receive an "honourary" doctorate.

 

An honorary doctorate through SRU is nothing more than an investment in their business operations. There have been hundreds of investors who have purchased preference and common shares in ENRON. What return did they get on their investment? An SRU honorary doctorate degree is precisely that!

If SRU allows only 10-15% of its applicants (with skills) to graduate, then what stops anyone from falsifying their resume? Want a detailed resume? I can put one together that claims I have 15 years experience in nuclear physics. Do I need proof in order to graduate? Sure, I send SRU a phoney letter of verification signed by my next door neighbor that states I work for his research lab. Do I need other documentation? No problem. I'll send them three sets of transcripts (BSc. and MSc.) that I ordered from Customdegrees.com.........and will SRU verify these documents? Heck no! They're too busy depositing my payment and auditing their bottom line.

 

Of course they weren't universities. That's why I called them "bogus". Of course they were marketing entities. Saint Regis itself appears to be a marketing entity. The question still unanswered is whether or not SRU is a university.

But the fact remains that you people created seven phony universities. They all had their own names that contained the word "university" or something similar. They all offered what purported to be their own academic programs. They all pretended to have their own administrations. They all affected American addresses.

This was not something done in the past by a now-repudiated St. Regis/NBOE administration. It was being done last month, in July 2003.

The fact remains that they purported to be universities and presented themselves as such to prospective students. The probability remains that none of them were licensed/approved to operate as universities on US soil and that quite likely they were illegal under American law.

They were operating last month.

That's fascinating. So you guys actually run two "Liberian universities"? Your NBOE is now a degree-granting "university" in its own right, as well as an "accreditor"?

Unfortunately, you seem reluctant to tell us who those people are. It's peculiar that your biggest selling point is that people accept you, but you won't tell us which people for fear that they might learn more about you and then stop accepting you.

That's not a very strong endorsement, you know. If your institution is for real, wouldn't you expect that people would be more likely to embrace you the more they know about you? Wouldn't you want people to know all about your strong points and your accomplishments?

And that's the bottom line of SRU/NBOE's game, isn't it? You guys set out to scour the earth to find a back door into what Degreeinfo calls "GAAP", to find an off-shore accreditation haven.

What you willfully ignore is the fact that "MoE accredited is NOT MoE accredited". The whole point of the exercise is to ensure a credible standard of external quality assurance oversight over a university's activities. "MoE accredited" is only credible when we have reason to believe that such a standard has in fact been enforced.

In this particular case, the "MoE" in question is that of a failed state whose recently resigned president is under international indictment, a state torn apart by anarchy without such basic amenities as electric power and telephones, whose domestic universities are looted barely functioning shells and where civil servants haven't been paid for years. It's also a country whose government is long made a large amount of its income from off-shore registrations of things like shipping.

And in this case SRU/NBOE is an entity whose internet signature shows absolutely no resemblance to that of a university. It produces many dozens of advertising hits all over the web, often with identical wording. It produces questions on webboards about what your institution really is. There are unfavorable articles by sources like Alan Contreras and 'The Australian'. There are all kinds of ties to additional questionable "accreditors", to various Hoyer enterprises and to questionable "universities" that may or may not even exist, with addresses all over the world, claiming this worldwide "Liberian accreditation" mediated through you people. There are the SRU webpages, some still existing today, that simply offer to sell degrees, accreditation and professorships. In fact, it still isn't even clear where SRU/NBOE is located or what country it's really in.

But what we don't see is any kind of evidence that SRU and/or NBOE (let alone all of the additional names) are really universities and not, as the seven "universities" referred to above finally turned out to be, false marketing fronts. There's no reference to them on credible websites belonging to legitimate universities, research institutions or professional organizations. There aren't any SRU/NBOE publications or references to their participation in conference proceedings. There's no sign of research collaborations. There are no grants or awards won. SRU/NBOE seems to have virtually no interaction with the rest of the professional, scholarly and academic communities.

In short, there's nothing that I can see that indicates to me that SRU/NBOE really is a university (or universities, or whatever). But there's quite a bit of evidence available that suggests that it probably isn't. It has the stink of 'degree-mill' all over it.

Really, all you guys have to lean on is that "MoE accreditation" of yours. You seem to be milking it for all that it's worth by reselling it and by extending it to sometimes non-existent (your own admission) "universities" around the world. Unfortunately, you don't (or won't) see that it's exactly those kind of business practices that undercut you and destroy what little value you might have gathered from your Liberian investment.

 

Here's the entire St. Regis degree program:

**************************************

Please fill in all information.
_
Please provide the following contact information: ...

How did you hear about us? ...

If you were referred, please include a name._

PART II

Which_ program are you interested in? Check ALL that apply:

Bachelor Describe which *Major (s)_ you are seeking._ *REQUIRED

Master_Describe which *Major (s)_ you are seeking._ *REQUIRED

Ph D_Describe which *Major (s)_ you are
seeking._ *REQUIRED

Professorship_Describe which *Major (s)_ you are seeking._ *REQUIRED

Certification_Describe which *Major (s)_ you are seeking._ *REQUIRED

Please use the box below for a brief thesis. Your thesis is an explanation of why you believe you are eligible. Describe your life and work experience, and/or qualifications, and/or other education you have acquired, and/or any other justification you feel is important and should be considered by your advisor in your evaluation for a degree.

Please list any schools attended._

If you wish to include a resume, please paste it in below:

PLEASE BE CERTAIN THAT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IS CORRECT._

If you need more space, or wish to include other information, please email your information to...

You will be advised as to the type of_ degree (or degrees) that fit your life experience qualifications.__

You may choose to accept ALL, ANY or NONE of the degrees for which you qualify.

YOU MAY BEGIN USING YOUR DEGREE TITLES IMMEDIATELY UPON ACCEPTANCE.

Payment Method:
_
Please CHECK the information above and select a payment method. When you are happy that it is correct, please hit the "Submit" button. You will then be transferred to pay, using your preferred method of payment.

Submit

****************************

I particularly like their thesis requirement. Somebody at SRU has a sense of humor.

http://saintregis.edu.lr/fasttrack_worldpay.html

 

I agree with this post except for item #4 because it seems a bit general. Most Universities do not have "policies" accepting particular foreign schools. If University of Southern Mississisppi receives a grad school application from a student from University of Eastern Pakistan then the university will require an evaluation on the student's credentials based on their approved Evaluators list and if the evaluation is positive that may or may not atleast satisfy the degree requirement for admissions but certainly that isnt and will not create a "policy" going forward for all University of Eastern Pakistan students either the next student will require the same procedure. I've yet to see any US RA school list particular foreign schools that they have "policies" on accepting-- atleast not published on their website(s).

 

Love the thesis requirement - in a box on the application. Len has a great sense of humour.

 

West American University has been purchased by an accredited university. If you are a graduate, or are attempting to verify records of a graduate, please note that all records have been archived and are available by email request.

Please provide your full name, student's full name, date of student's graduation, student's ID# and a valid email address.

Verification will be provided as well as other options (such as official transcript request instruction) once all information has been confirmed.

 

I would be happy to know of a school that actually did accept an SRU degree. Len, said that there are even schools that would like to accept SRU degrees but decided not to because of the harassment.

Len please tell me the name of some of these schools. You shouldn't care if I harass them to find out why they would want to accept SRU degrees but decided not to. You said that they already decided not to accept SRU degrees so why can't you tell me their names. My belief is that you were probably just making a fallacious statement. I don't believe that there are RA schools that really want to accept degrees from degree mills.

 

BobC writes:

> If University of Southern Mississisppi receives a grad school
> application from a student from University of Eastern Pakistan
> then the university will require an evaluation on the student's
> credentials based on their approved Evaluators list

A large number of universities -- including, strangely enough, the University of Southern Mississippi! -- do not have an "approved Evaluators list", but rather evaluate foreign credentials internally through their "Office of International Admissions". https://www.usm.edu/gradapp/

> but certainly that isnt and will not create a "policy" going
> forward for all University of Eastern Pakistan students

I'm sure they rely on internal precedents. Why evaluate the University of Eastern Pakistan multiple times?

> I've yet to see any US RA school list particular foreign
> schools that they have "policies" on accepting-- at least not
> published on their website(s).

There's not much point putting the info on a Website, since GAAP is so Generally Accepted.

 

If GAAP is so generally accepted why even have evaluators? And so many? (I'm not really asking you this Mark). If a PEER book was good enough then why isn't it really good enough? And why would ANY school even accidently accept an SRU degree then? I think only a true International admissions officer can answer that.

 

question for Len

This is a question for Len.

Why is it that Saint Regis, through its Branford Academy Preparatory High School, will award a high school diploma and Associate of Arts degree to someone presenting a 21% score on a 100-question multiple choice test? Slightly more than 75% of the pigeons pecking on the Branford test form would be expected to score higher than 21%.

The GPA offered for the high school degree was 2.9; for the AA it was 2.8.

I do not think that 75.2% of the pigeons in the world are qualified, by their life experiences, to receive a genuine AA degree.

This makes me think that Saint Regis degrees do not convey meaningful information about the attainments of the degree holder.

If my analysis is wrong, please explain how a lower-than-random score might actually indicate that the test taker knows more than the majority of pigeons who also fill out the test.

I don't think the GPA was meant to include the fact that the test-taker found the right web site, which would be hard for the illiterate pigeons to do on their own.

George Gollin

 

BobC wrote:

> Do you know this for fact?

No, in fact I never heard of the University of Southern Mississippi until I read your message.

> It isn't unusual either for the Admissions dept to handle all
> of the paperwork and coordinate directly with the evaluator
> nonetheless.

Evaluators charge fees. If the university handles all the paperwork, farms out evaluations, but doesn't charge students extra if they present foreign credentials, who pays the evaluator's fees?

> How about the the Business school vs the Engineering Dept
> vs Humanities vs Law vs. English vs Chemistry etc. etc. I
> certainly wouldn't assume because the BA in Humanities
> was "ok" so would the Engineering degree. Is the Engineering
> degree that was equivalent 3 yrs ago still equivalent today?
> how about the one 20yrs ago?

You evaluate both the school and the curriculum. The Engineering department might have an inappropriate curriculum, but either you trust the school's registrar or you don't.

> If GAAP is so generally accepted why even have evaluators?

GAAP tells you which schools to recognize, not how many credits to award.

> And so many?

Why are there so many schools, you might as well ask.

> And why would ANY school even accidently accept an SRU
> degree then?

With Liberian accreditation, SRU technically met the GAAP criteria. There is a limit to what people (even bureaucrats) will accept because of a technicality; but not everyone reaches the limit at the same time.

 

No, it doesn't. St. Regis isn't listed in any of the authoritative guides normally considered documentation for meeting GAAP. The only one that was feared was the IHU, but they've decided not to list the school.

 

From the "Accreditation" chapter in Bears' Guide:

"To offer recognized accreditation under GAAP, an accrediting agency must meet at least one of the following four criteria:
* Recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation in Washington, DC
* Recognized by the U.S. Department of Education
* Recognized by (or more commonly, a part of) their relevant national education agency
* Schools they accredit are routinely listed in one or more of the following publications: the International Handbook of Universities (a UNESCO publication), the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook, the World Education Series, published by PIER, or the Countries Series, published by NOOSR in Australia."

(Also at http://www.degree.net/guides/accreditation_guide.html, except that the last item is missing its bullet, and the first "an" mutated to "and".)

Liberia's Ministry of Education is Liberia's relevant national education agency, satisfying the third criterion. And at the time it "accredited" SRU, weren't the previous universities it had accredited (U of Liberia, Cuttington, African Methodist Episcopal) listed in the IHU? -- satisfying the fourth criterion. So technically, it was empowered to confer "GAAP accreditation" on SRU.

A newly GAAP-accredited university is GAAP-accredited before it finds its way into the authoritative guides you mention, yes?

 

Query from CNN

Len,
I'm a producer with CNN in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm working on a segment on distance learning degrees and would love to talk to you about them, since you're affiliated with St. Regis. Would you please send me an e-mail at [email protected] at your earliest convenience? My segment is due to air this Saturday.
Thank you very much,
Diane Hawkins-Cox

 

The lights come on and the cockroaches scatter.

 

They clearly aren't New Jersey cockroaches, which barely look up from whatever their task-at-hand happens to be when the lights come on.

 

The lights come on and the ST. REGIS LIONS ROAR!!!

Did you watch the Distance Education show on CNN, Saturday, 3 pm US Eastern time? I you didn't, you can catch reruns on Sunday and Monday.

John S. Dovelos

 

Oh please. Within this cyberstate we rear no lion cub.