Abandonment by Charles Sturt University

Hi Salami,

Your story is a nightmare, and my skin crawls as I read each saga you post. You must collate your experiences, document them carefully and send them through to CSU. I am sure they will be shocked and the VC would take immediate action.

Cheers,

George

 

Hi Salami,

Your story is a nightmare, and my skin crawls as I read each saga you post. You must collate your experiences, document them carefully and send them through to CSU. I am sure they will be shocked and the VC would take immediate action.

Cheers,

George

 

I have told CSU about it and the vice chancellor too but they aren't replying and I would be naive to assume that they are going to do something about it.

I heard from my education consultant that with the MBA students, their assignments are sat on when the students pass them up so that they can be made to pay penalty fees.

Is this what CSU is made of?????????

 

Hi Salami:
Agreed. What shabby treatment! I hope you can get this rectified, and wish you all the best.
Janko

 

Got news from my fellow DBA classmate that he saw it coming and he has withdrawn and taken his transcipt elswhere.

IGS called me up today and wanted me to fill up a CSU progress report, ironic isn't it especially when there has been no progress! No supervisor! No examiners! No everything!

Beats me what they are trying to get at. If they had good intentions from the start there would have been progress so what really is there to report.

 

My tax consultant cum "honarary DBA supervisor" told me that his colleague at work also suffered the misfortune of enrolling at an Australian university paying the processing fees and the fees for the first semester, only to be told later that he was not given permission to continue with the program. Hasn't even left the country for Australia, and has kept mum about it. Thus, enabling that Australian university to get away with it. He told me that there were countless other victims who had no other means of recourse.

CSU has wishful thinking coming to them if I were to give any progress on the progress report. I have made absolutely no progress without supervision and to even write one seems ludicrous to me, after all my examiner is going to be my mum, dog and maid, thus they would award me a Doctor Been Absent degree anyway.

 

One thing, Are these guys expecting that you find your own supervisor? Are they willing to pay for this? Do you need to have a free supervisor? I think you can find a suitable supervisor with a PhD in this forum as long as CSU is willing to pay for it. Otherwise, you will have to put from your own money to finish it. In any case, I suggest to contact http://www.dissertationadvisors.com.

They can find you a suitable supervisor provided that you or CSU pays for this service.

 

Stock Market Gains

The number of private colleges starting DBA and Education Doctorate programs are amazing and to think that without the facilities, the supervisors and the examiners, one can transfer knowledge from the UK, US and Australia to our developing country. Very often if there is a mismanagement in at the franchisee side, the student gets the flack and fallout. Everyday the media is bombarded with new colleges offering DBAs. Pretty soon the degree itself will become saturated with accredited and non accredited DBAs. Funny, thing is that small and medium sized entrepreneural industries are taken in by these so called legit and semi legit universities flocking to our shores. Are regulatory bodies asleep?

Yesterday, I had an interview with a principal of a smaller established college. He wanted my advice on whether to take his college public (i.e. IPO and list it on the Stock Exchange). I told him that if he did so, his interest would lie with the shareholders and not with the quality of his education and his students. Many colleges have already gone down that route and bled their lecturing fraternity and made a good pile for future retirement. The college is thus a vehicle to make capital gains on the stock market.

Kind of reminds me of the golden era in the 80s with the film Wall Street and where Gordon Gecko buys and sells companys. Only in this case colleges are being bought and sold and instead of asset stripping, it is hair splitting.

 

Thanks RFValue, I have tried introducing PhD Supervisors to IGS franchisee of CSU, they have repeatedly turned down my choices even though the prospective supervisors have all come from respectable universities. CSU approves anyone as long as IGS gives the greenlight. So I am back to square one. Caught in a quagmire. It is almost as if they don't want me to find a supervisor and once Dr Grant of CSU asked me why was that, as if I knew any better.

My GP told me that a legal recourse will only be deflected by the principal of IGS who is a dignatory here in this country. The case will left blowing in the wind, and dragged through the legal system until I would have to pay tremendous amounts of money putting it through the system, or shall I say mill. It would benefit the lawyers and pay judges fees and still there would be no solution. This has been the state of things since I had left the country to study in the UK.

I must say CSU and IGS are very smart, they have all the corners tied up.

 

Hi,

CSU has a full time DBA on campus, Can you transfer to the full time on-campus program for at least one semester and then once you have sorted things out go back to do it part-time?

I think you have invested so much money and effort that I wouldn't let this go so easily. I agree that going the legal way might be a waiste of time and resources so I would try to skip the IGS guys by going to Australia for one semester.

CSU should not negotiate this kind of deals with local franchises, one thing is to market the program and other thing to actually teach the courses and supervise students. IGS is taking advantage because the little effectiveness of the Malasyan legal system so they are just profiting from the situation by enrolling as many students in the program, taking their money and then telling them that they cannot finish because they don't want to supervise students.

Now, this thing makes sense to me since supervision is one-to-one and it must be expensive for IGS so they would rather loose your business than continuing paying a supervisor, just a rational business decision but not an ethical decision involving hard working stududents like yourself. It is clear to me that they don't have the intention to let you continue because they cannot make money out of the situation, the best thing in my opinion is to try to finish the DBA on-campus so at least time and effort is not waisted.

I'm registered in the DBA with USQ and they seem to be an OK school but I must say that supervision is also a problem. For example, I'm in the Information Systems field and they only have two supervisors in the department with a PhD in IS so getting one was also a pain in the ass but at the end the school found one for me, after that they stopped taking people in IS. At least that shows me an ethical behaviour from this university so I would suggest to take a look at them. They might transfer some credits from CSU.

 

Left to Sink!

I did try the avenue of completing it with CSU but they had implied that they don't have the expertise in my local area of study i.e. branding. Thus, Dr Grant said that it was best to find a supervisor and examiners here in Malaysia, that can offer the local expertise.

CSU Professor Denise Jaratt offered to be a supervisor from CSU but somehow she dropped out of the picture and never did correspond or email me again. Again both CSU and IGS were dropping me in the deep end and I can't help feeling that even if I paid further tuition and accomodation fees in CSU, there is a distinct possibility that I may not be awarded a DBA.

I even proposed to CSU that I email my chapters to them only to be met by some blank response.

It is a case where I am left to sink or swim and it looks like I am going to sink.

 

Re: Left to Sink!

I'm sorry to hear that, now the quesiton is. Is a DBA really worth all that effort? Do you depend on this degree for promotion? Is a CSU DBA respected in Malasya?

CSU has not the best reputation in Australia and some academics accuse them of degree factory.

 

Is CSU DBA Worth the trouble?

In the beginning I did it for career progression but the monthly salary increment from my private college employer was going to be only RM50 i.e. less than US$15, for doing the DBA. People here still do not know the reputation CSU has in Australia are taken in to any thing foreign especially from the West.

I have decided to write a book about my experience as it impacts on my study of the education industry here, which was my DBA topic. It would be a writing exercise and in future as a future employer I would be discerning of ever awarding a job to a CSU graduate. I had met one who was my colleague and she was greatly lacking in principle, ethics and morality. Was because she has emmigrated to Sydney to help her mother in an Indonesian restaurant. From having been a student of CSU as well as meeting their graduates I am not overly impressed, not because I am having sour grapes but because of my perception of what they produce. There are only 3 Australian universities here marketing their DBAs and they are Southern Cross, Newcastle and CSU. All have an air of superiority about them.

They have an oligopoly in terms of doctoral programs such as the DBA. Providence only knows how long before the coin drops amongst the student population.

 

Re: Re: Left to Sink!

Where did you get this information from? I would be interested to know the sources as this thread is important, and is being read by some very concerned entities here in Australia.

Cheers,

George

 

Direct access to Vice Chancellor, CSU

By the way Salami, you can contact the Vice Chancellor of Charles Sturt University directly here:

http://www.csu.edu.au/division/vcoffice/contacts.html

Please keep us updated when you get a reply- the voracity of your claims warrants a swift and constructive response.

Cheers,

George

 

Re: Re: Re: Left to Sink!

I talked to few australian academics teaching at my university when I was considering this School. I also got bad feedback in the newsgroup distance education at the time, here are some of the links:

http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=charles+sturt+reputation&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=8stp75%2496d%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&rnum=2

http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=%22bad+reputation%22+charles+sturt&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=8s9m28%24hin%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&rnum=1

 

Re: Left to Sink!

What about another franchise? There is one in singapore, they might be able to find you a supervisor.

http://www.sic.edu.sg/csu_dba.html

 

Like my classmate RC who was also on the CSU DBA program and saw it coming earlier than I did, I have decided to take a breather and reconsider my career options. If I do continue being an educator I would only do it on a part time capacity, and I will be teaching at the Bachelors level. As a result my Masters will suffice.

The non-accredited universities that are transparent in their claims are mushrooming all over and attract the entreprenuers from small to medium sized industries. I have decided that I may go into corporate training. However, I have left it to my headhunters to search out for the best possible option in whatever industry that is applicable.

I have worked as a salesman for a trading multinational, been a banker, been a product manager for a US building materials supplier and finally the longest as a lecturer. Being in the education industry has opened my eyes to the injustices that start from the core of many corporate problems that occur later on. The lack of accountability sets an example for graduates to pay less attention to issues of accountability, ethics and corporate governance. Finally, the lack of transparency. Society's ill that has started from the education industry.

The examples that so called legitimate institutions set to people like me does make me think whether I want to proceed with academia especially with the many injustices that are committed in the name of higher education. If I do proceed with the corporate world I would probably draw a final curtain to ever pursuing a DBA program again after this sour taste that CSU has imprinted upon me. I thank you for suggesting the southern neighbour but they are having a hard time economically and finding employment for their own people. So, it would be difficult for me to relocate there and find a job and thus find a suitable supervisor. Infact, my last so called supervisor out of the numerous ones that I had was Singaporean and he did not stay long with the CSU program and franchisee.

 

Check for a new private message.

 

From my experience in graduating through CSU, they are tough and they are credible. Admittedly, I was not studying in the business faculty and I was not studying through an overseas centre.

As I have said in other threads,the rot sets in when any institution gets involved in the overseas market and loses control.

I feel very sorry for our friend who has gone through so much with CSU rep. and more disappointed by lack of action by the university.