Anyone know about the (closed) Clayton University (St. Louis)

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Chip, Apr 6, 2007.

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  1. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    I think you miss Verns point...Dr Bear was getting paid on the back end by these schools to get students. Epic on Verns part, no point acting like Dr Bear is a saint, he's also owned a few "schools" in his days. All that said I like him. Vern won this one though. Sh!t I think it's funny after all these years he's (vern) is still around. Got to be dl truth member
     
  2. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Neuhaus, I disagree that Vern won this one.

    I did not represent Bear as a saint. What specifically did Dr. Bear say or write to Vern that misrepresented these schools.

    My statement stands. Each may have had aspects of acceptability that met certain criteria and were affordable but they clearly were NOT accredited. That meant they had more limitations than an accredited school. CPU imploded, approved status went away, Feda changed regs. How is any of that Bear's fault? Did he misrepresent their accreditation status to Vern? Tell him he would never have issues with unaccredited schools? What?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 29, 2016
  3. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Vern, you publicly called Dr. Bear out. Now, you have an obligation to step forward and provide specifics. What did his refund policy state, how did he misrepresent the schools or utility.

    Government change to the 3x3 rule is not his fault. CPU imploded and lost state authorization. Not his fault. At one time CPU even had state approved status (supposed to be equivalent of accreditation). Clayton not only lost 3x3 but apparently made some poor decisions. Was that Dr. Bear's fault? If so, specifically how?

    In other words, how is Bear liable for your educational choice. Did he lie to you? If so, specifically how. Did you not know there are risks with unaccredited programs?

    At one point in their lives, both Clayton and CPU may have made good sense in CERTAIN circumstances. Clayton's listing in the higher ed publication and CPU as a state approved school. Fairly solid situations for UNACCREDITED schools but they remained UNACCREDITED.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 29, 2016
  4. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I have not participated in this conversation at all. I had been admiring it from afar until you invoked my name as if I were a participant. b4cz28 is not Neuhaus and vice versa. Though I haven't ruled out some sort of Tyler Durden situation whereby I am sleep posting in the middle of the night to argue with myself about the minutiae of some unaccredited religious programs.

    FWIW, I think that Dr. Bear's offer to consider refunding Vern was incredibly generous. I would have just told him to pound sand.

    Having read a good number of Dr. Bear's books, my takeaway was never "Oh, these would be great places to get a degree!" Those books helped lay the groundwork for the distinctions between a "legal" degree and a not-so-legal degree.

    Columbia Pacific was a diploma mill. But at varying times in their history they did resemble a school that was trying to function legitimately. And, every so often, you encounter someone with a PhD from there who managed to use it for an entire career without an issue. Slipped through the cracks? A lifelong case of the luckies? Doesn't matter, really. The fact is that it is easy to look back on Columbia Pacific and say "what a train wreck!" but, at the time, I could see how any number of reasonable persons might have looked upon the school with more favorable eyes.

    So, not only did you respond to someone who isn't me but I don't even agree with that person's position.

    Please folks, know thy Neuhaus.
     
  5. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    This would be a point of shame and nothing to brag about.
     
  6. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Neuhaus, you are correct. It was bcz not you. My apologies.
     
  7. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member


    As would have I. But why even offer?
     
  8. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    No bragging at all, my point is vern is a troll. Much like the guys at DL.
     
  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Your post - "I think you miss Verns point...Dr Bear was getting paid on the back end by these schools to get students. Epic on Verns part, no point acting like Dr Bear is a saint, he's also owned a few "schools" in his days. All that said I like him. Vern won this one though. Sh!t I think it's funny after all these years he's (vern) is still around. Got to be dl truth member."

    It's hard for me to read this as criticism of Vern. It certainly doesn't read like "troll."
     
  10. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    It's all good. It was just funny because I popped in to read this thread this morning and saw you reference me and I stopped and thought "Wait, I haven't said anything here!"

    Arguing with Neuhaus can be habit forming.

    You're assuming that the offer to consider was made in bad faith. I'm assuming it was made in good faith but that the end resolution simply didn't favor Vern. We haven't seen what Vern provided as evidence. We still don't know what, exactly, was said by Dr. Bear to entice Vern to buy a degree from CPU.

    As Garp noted, CPU is and has always been unaccredited. They were "legal" and degrees from there are considered "legal" (when issued during the times that they had state approval) in both CA and TX. But "legal" is not the same thing as "accredited." At best, "legal" means that you probably won't get charged with fraud because you used the degree to get a job.

    So did Dr. Bear misrepresent CPU's legal standing? Probably not. Did Vern look at the degree being "legal" as "good enough?" Probably. But we don't know enough of the story to make a judgment either way. And, frankly, I'm more inclined to believe Dr. Bear over an anonymous malcontent. That doesn't mean that Dr. Bear is a "saint" it just means that he has more credibility around these parts than someone who spread his 9 posts over a 7 year period.

    It's also possible that Dr. Bear honestly did consider the request for reimbursement, took it to a lawyer for review and was advised to not touch it with a ten foot pole lest he set the precedent that he is personally liable for paying back everyone with a degree from Columbia Pacific University. That sucks for Vern. But Vern made an adult choice to obtain a degree from an unaccredited school.

    Lots of unaccredited degrees are "legal" either because they operate under state approval or under religious exemption. That doesn't mean that they are "good" and that doesn't mean that the degree is worth the paper it is printed on. Because, again,"legal" is not the same thing as "accredited."
     
  11. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member


    Based off your posting here (di) I'm certain you could crank out a dissertation in about a month and it would be 1000 pages.
     
  12. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    There is a lot of misinformation flying around this thread, offered up by people who weren't there and don't know what they're talking about.

    Clayton University was, for a time, a good attempt at establishing a nontraditional university. The 3x3 thing, while real, has been blown out of proportion. It merely made them eligible to participate in Title IV. As was reported in the media in the early 1980s, there were always troubles with Clayton regarding quality control, and their efforts to get accredited (RA was the only way back then) never really got going. Missouri, where Clayton was located, had extremely lax licensing laws for universities, and it attracted a set of less-than-wonderful operations. At no time--going back to 1980 for me--did Bear's Guides misrepresent Clayton. The guides were more generous early on, then more critical later as more about the school became available and understood.

    The terms "diploma mill" and "degree mill" are highly subjective. But it is hard to apply such a term to Columbia Pacific University. They operated legally under the "Authorized" category (for unaccredited, California schools) and subsequently pushed through a few programs under the "Approved" category. (A program-by-program process back then.) Getting programs Approved was quite rigorous; it was very common for a school to have one or two programs Approved while operating under the Authorized category. IIRC, CCU was the first DL, unaccredited school to get all of its programs through the Approval process. CPU had some quality control issues and awarded some degrees based on shoddy work. But that's not exactly unique. (I'm looking at you, CCU.) When California moved to remove CPU's approval (under the new system first implemented in 1989), it sure looked political. Still does. And when you consider the dreck that was allowed to continue to operate--even today--it looks even more so. But real students did real work at CPU, some of it quite innovative and of high quality. Sure, we've read the stories about their problems (like accepting a dissertation written in Spanish, supervised by a committee with no Spanish-speakers). But a "diploma mill"? No.

    I can't recall what arrangement, if any, John had with Clayton. I do know he was always forthright about his marketing work with CPU, his brief association with Fairfax U., his work with IIAS, and with his ownership/operation of Greenwich. That's an awful lot of disclosure. I'm not defending him-he can opt to respond (or not) in any way he chooses. But I think it helps to stick to the facts and not engage in some of the uninformed hyperbole seen in this thread.
     
  13. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    My post was 329 words. If you don't want to read them then don't.

    But if you think that 329 words is such an absurd amount of text then I'm amazed you were able to make it through so many degrees. Would it help if I broke it up for you with pictures?
     
  14. Tireman 44444

    Tireman 44444 Well-Known Member


    I think, and I could be wrong, he was paying you a compliment...I think...:)
     
  15. LearningAddict

    LearningAddict Well-Known Member

    Funny you say that, because that amount sounds similar to what an undergrad student at Nations University has to write just to make it through one semester, lol.

    I kid, but not by much!
     
  16. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I know this is just a joke, but it raises an important (but off-topic issue): writing a dissertation of length.

    Many people interested in earning a doctorate think all that writing must be hard--how could they write hundreds of pages? Actually, production is the least of one's worries. It's the easy part. Harder is researching the scholarship in one's field, finding a suitable (and researchable) topic, considering and selecting research methods, designing and executing data-collecting methods, analyzing the data, coming to conclusions, ensuring a significant and original contribution, and then trying to edit it all in a way so that it tells a compelling story.

    Writing enough isn't the problem. But writing too much almost always is. And doing it in the form of an acceptable doctoral dissertation is the biggest hurdle of all. To illustrate: Leicester requires a 50,000-word thesis for the Doctor of Social Science. That's not the goal; that's the limit. It's hard to stay under it. In my case, when a really cool idea emerged from my thesis defense, I had to do major edits in order to make room for what I wanted to add in order to stay under the limit. (Thank you, MS Word, for your word count feature.)

    It isn't about the amount of words. It is about which words.
     
  17. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    As shocking as it is I was in fact impressed by the speed and depth of the posts. You were correct.
     
  18. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    Was not meant to be a criticism of him. I was pointing out Vern is more than likely a dl truther. He is in fact trolling Dr. Bear, I think its very funny how he randomly shows up.
     
  19. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Well, thank you for your compliment and I apologize for both misinterpreting its meaning and my snarky reply.
     
  20. b4cz28

    b4cz28 Active Member

    Were all good, no worries.
     

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