Central University of Nicaragua Degree Scheme

Sometimes? Most times. I'd say a high percentage of schools, given an opportunity - regardless of their perceived standing. More and more, as traditional schools try to survive. Desperation. Even minor financial shellackings at maybe $200-500 per. No limits, low or high.

Education is a business. Sometimes, it is a very nasty business indeed.

 

Education business? I'll take a good, old-fashioned Mob-run casino any time. They mostly set realistic credit limits, depending on ability to repay, - unlike student loans. Their default rate was pretty low. The game was exciting and the showgirls looked great. Sure, the casinos took your money - but the drinks were free and it hurt far less. And if you DID win, you got real dough -- not a piece of paper.

There's gotta be a forum out there, somewhere...

 

I have worked for 3 for profit accredited operations that went bankrupt. One was very nasty, I went to the office and everything was locked and sealed, they sent my stuff to my mail address. Others were more gentle with a dismissal letter and a nice email.

For profits are very difficult businesses, they have low or no ranking and rely on good marketing techniques. Most low online for profit schools go bankrupt. Some exceptions are Devry, UoP and Walden that have managed to stay in the business.

So now you can imagine Breyer State, they have low cost operation as probably just a guy in his basement but still needs to pay thousands of dollars in marketing to sell something. They are at their end of their rope.

Nicaraguan, Mexican and Costa Rican schools also struggle with very difficult economies in their home countries. It is understandable that they get creative to come with propio doctorates, PhDs in Clinical Psychology or whatever makes them to survive. You can imagine that from the 6K you pay for a doctorate, they have to pay marketing, professors, foreign partners, etc so they probably end with thousand or two thousand bucks for themselves. I am sure they don't sell hundreds of these doctorates so it is really not a huge money making scheme as people think, they just probably are also in the survival stage. Someone mentioned one Nicaraguan school already bankrupt so I can bet UCN is also not rolling in the cash based on their modest campus facilities shown in their catalogs.

 

I haven't been nearly as active in this diploma mill stuff the last decade but, IIRC, Breyer State University was an "iffy" joint from like 20 years ago or so. It jumped from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to avoid the law catching up with them. Many folks just called them a diploma mill. I forget if Steve Levicoff called them a diploma mill or a degree mill? It doesn't seem that they have done much in the past decade to earn much respect?

 

It's dangerous to guess what Levicoff would do...about anything. But I think he would have called them a degree mill. His distinction, essentially, was that a degree mill was legal but substandard. This left room for a good unaccredited school, as well as a bad accredited school to be called a degree mill. Diploma mills, on the other hand, were operations that sold fake degrees.

This distinction is hardly commonly held. (I only know of Steve making it.) In common use, the two terms are used interchangeably.

Personally, I'm not interested in applying either moniker to any school. The terms get abused so much that they have very little meaning. To paraphrase John Bear, one person's diploma mill is another person's alternative university.

 

Yes these semi-recognized, propio, and inexpensive foreign doctorate degrees are what I consider icing on the cake degrees. They are life-long learning programs for those who want education and titles without breaking the bank and can be completed much faster with autonomy. There is likely no benefit to straying away from traditional PhD or professional doctorate programs to pursue online 2-to-3-year doctorates for those working in academia unless one has already been working in the field for years. While we don't have the data to really compare rather or not these questionable doctorates increase the likelihood of economic success comparable to online for-profit American doctorates, I wouldn't be surprised if there is little to no difference in enhancing a profile and increasing job prospects between the groups.

 

I appreciate your sentiment.

Going off on a slight tangent, Breyers State University seems to me to be the type place that while likely operating legally, it is unlikely to survive the owner. This seems to be a rather thin operation with little future or any hope for improvement to standing within the academic community.

 

I believe that most of the revenue (If any revenue is being generated) Breyer is generating gets eaten up by the cost of Google ads. I believe that the profit of this institution is very little.

Ucn is more well-known and I've never seen ads from ucn on Google Linkedin or elsewhere so I guess their marketing expenses are not that high. Despite that I believe that their online degrees are targeting a small niche.

Seems to me that 95 percent of the discussions on degreeforum are about schools that are relevant for maybe 1 percent of the people that aspire to study.

 

This is why I asked about the learning process and experience. It's not just the degree; it's the learning and the change.

I have a colleague of a colleague whose work I admire very much and whose book I've had for many, many years. He is a PhD graduate of a never-accredited California school from a very long time ago. (The school is now closed.) I'm sure the PhD has done him some good here and there, but it is his work that people admire and use. That kind of transformation can happen in all kinds of environments, from prison (Dr Douglas Dean) to Harvard. The process is as key as the degree.

 

There seems to be some speculation here that it is in some sort of peril. Is there actual evidence of this? The best indicator that such a thing will be alive tomorrow is that it is alive today.

On the other hand, California Pacific University, largely a one-man show, did not survive its owner's demise, despite the efforts of his daughter and son (and a couple of others) to carry on. (There is a huge and very famous leadership development company about whom I feel the exact same way for the exact same reason.)

 

I think CPU could be considered a couple tiers above Breyers State University. To the point that I think it was really worth trying to save. Not so much for BSU.

 

I agree, Bill - but now we have this International Theism thingy and Breyer State Theology Uni. You also said you couldn't see this thing outliving its owner. Well...

I think I know, but I'm not sure who actually owns Breyer State Theology U. It lists a president, Wafaa Alam, but the original Breyer State U. owner, Dr. Flarey, had a faculty page there. I was unable to bring it up - not responding. Dr. Flarey is shown as Executive Director of four other health care organizations. Again, I'm not sure, but I think he may have been a founder in some cases.

Executive Director, The American Academy of Grief Counseling (present)
Executive Director, The American Academy of Case Management (present)
Executive Director, The American College of Legal Nurse Consulting (present)
Executive Director, The American College of Hypnotherapy (present)

Busy man. He also teaches on Udemy.

Here's his bio. (Strangely, it does not mention his well-known connection with Breyer State U.)
https://aihcp.net/resume-dominick-flarey/

Here's his Udemy page. Draw your own conclusions.
https://www.udemy.com/user/dominick-l-flarey/

 

deleted duplicate. J

 

Music to my ears - if it's so. We'll see... Idaho, Alabama, Panama, Idaho again, California and now Florida.
They always seem to "tie a knot and hang on..."

 

I've been meaning to ask you about something, and if you don't want to discuss it I'll understand. But I know that you used to work as a counselor at one time. When you get into these discussions, you appear to still have a lot of interest in the happenings of this field.

Have you ever considered going back into the field and becoming licensed in some way? If not, why?

 

The trick is to create a fake organization for a health care field that is non regulated like the "American Academy of Quantum Medical Magnet Therapy" and then open a school registered as a religious organization and offer a "PhD in Christian Quantum Magnet Spiritual Healing". Then buy some BS courses from a publisher is Magnet Therapy and ask to write a 20 page dissertations just to say that is a doctorate. You call for faculty willing to work for you with credible credentials and list them in your website but you actually never pay them for teaching (There is no need, most of these courses are 20 page readings with 10 multiple choice questions open book online).

To make yourself credible, you grant yourself a PhD from your own school so you can call your self "Dr" or get a 6 month MD From an Indian School so you can sign your emails and advertisement as an MD, director of the famous Quantum Magnet Therapy University.

Finally, you get some nice youtube ads with people saying how good Quantum Magnet Therapy is and that it is the future of medicine. Maybe some ET experts claiming that ETs gave this knowledge to cure with Magnetic energy.
I have seen this scam many times.

 

It's fine, I'm okay talking about it.

I worked under two of the most brilliant, moral people I've ever known. A husband and wife team. Husband was a Psychiatrist, wife was a Psychologist. The pay was ok, the learning experience was invaluable. Getting both the medical perspective and the psychological perspective on mental health changed the way I looked at everything about those fields.

Having a lot of contact with the Psychologist is where I picked up the understanding of how unnecessarily perilous the journey to licensure is for Psychologists in most states. The stories the good lady would tell me were just maddening. Doesn't seem like things are much better now, they are a little better at least... but, still bad.

Doing some work in the gaming industry was a hobby at the time, but as that began to take off and became much more than a hobby, I began missing more and more time from counseling. Eventually, I felt I had to do the right thing and walk away, then I went into consulting in gaming full time, loved it, and never looked back.

I don't have any intentions to go back into counseling now, not just because getting on a licensure track would consume more time than I have to spare, but also because there are more restrictions now on what I could do while working toward that which I feel would render me mostly ineffective even if I managed to find a position somewhat similar to the one I had before (and those positions are scarce today). I also doubt I would ever find a situation as good as the one I was in. But I did love it when I did it, so the passion still seeps out from time to time in these posts.

 

We know. Most of us, anyway. Nil sub sole novum. Or - you could just start a supposed "school" that did nothing but print and sell diplomas. Axact has made many millions doing just that - and still does. And maybe set up a fake "Board" that, for a fee, will "certify" all your fake "grads" to practice.

Highest Rating by BBB. (Bullshit Baffles Brains.)

 

Yeah, maybe I could get enough for those two watches I covet most - a Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso and a Vacheron Constantin 100th Anniversary Tonneau. $80K should do it, for both. 40 diplomas? I could run those off in a day...

(1) Here:
https://www.1stdibs.com/jewelry/watches/wrist-watches/jaeger-lecoultre-reverso-tribute-rose-gold-watch-2162d3-q3912420-box-papers/id-j_15059112/? &currency=cad&utm_content=condensed&allowUniversalLink=no&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg73Sp4ax_AIVFczICh2K_gMsEAQYBCABEgJyYPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

(2) Here:
https://masterhorologer.com/2012/04/01/vacheron-constantin-malte-100th-anniversary-edition-platinum-case-manual-wound-movement-silvered-sand-blasted-dial/

 

The key here is good marketing. Dr Simon has a Doctor of Science in Planetary Electromagnetics Medicine. He actually does quite well selling this Medicine maybe thanks to his Doctor of Science degree and PhD in these fields.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonatkinsafc/

There is a lot of abuse. I am all for Naturopathic medicine as long it is backed up with scientific evidence and not branded as MDs or PhDs that are meant to deceive people.

Breyer State brands Grief Counselling that is more of a field of pastoral counselling as Psychology and grants Psychology degrees based on this. As this is not regulated, someone can open a practice as Grief Counsellors with a PhD in Psychology from Breyer State (very official name) and charge 200 bucks a consultation for some expert advise.