Air India denies boarding to students heading to US "diploma mill"

http://tinyurl.com/ycy5ysf5

It's a curious situation, since the two schools called 'diploma mills' are California-approved, but the US has apparently instantly deported some (but not all) Indians arriving in San Francisco or San Jose to attend them.

 

"Patel, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz"

The article is from December 22, 2015. Tri-Valley U was shut down in January of 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Valley_University

Silicon Valley U, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley_University, and Northwester Polytechnic U, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Polytechnic_University, were ACICS schools until the late ACICS unpleasantness.

 

Tri Valley was shut down after ICE raided it years ago. Its owner was charged with running an immigration scam and eventually sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Silicon Valley University seems to have had its ACICS accreditation revoked for failure to submit financial reports. I was unable to find it listed on the BPPE's listing so there may be some question whether it's operating legally.

http://www.acics.org/uploadedFiles/Actions/00019408_SiliconValleyU_WR.pdf

Northwestern Polytechnic is still ACICS accredited. I've been vaguely aware of it since the early 1990's. It operates out of an industrial park setting and seems (to me anyway) to offer real classes. It's true that its students seem to be overwhelmingly Asian, many of them Chinese (or Taiwanese) but that doesn't in itself make a school a mill.

(In fact back in the 1990's, I noticed that many of their graduate classes seemed to me to have military applications (phased array radars, missile guidance, etc.), so I speculated to myself at the time that it might be an intelligence operation disguised as a university, transferring advanced technology back to Asia somewhere.)

It hasn't been without controversy. See this earlier thread:

https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/northwestern-polytechnic-university.48180/

I should add that several of these exceedingly obscure 'by-Asians for Asians' variety of Silicon Valley engineering and computer schools have managed to become RA in recent years.