If 3/4 the way through a bogus ACI TIU MBA, should I even finish it?

Sorry, but can you provide an example of where a diploma mill put a student through a year's worth of schoolwork?

 

And I like this one:

"The International University (TIU) founded in 19th Sep, 1973 by Chancellor ..."

 

Assuming you are being serious please take a look at the case of Laura Callahan:

Laura Callahan

you might also find the following links of some interest:

Diploma Mill Congressional hearing Transcript

Links of Interest

 

rambolincoln: "Sorry, but can you provide an example of where a diploma mill put a student through a year's worth of schoolwork?"

John: Yeah. I've got hundreds of them. It is an extremely common diploma mill strategy for the telemarketers to be trained to detect whether a potential student expects to do some work. Some do, most don't (after they are told that their resume is so splendid that they don't need to). For the ones that do, some work is assigned, ranging from a single book report to the providing of several textbooks of the kind that have questions to answer in each chapter.

LaSalle University, an out-and-out diploma mill (the founder pleaded guilty to fraud and spent four years in federal prison) had at least 15,000 students, according to the documents the FBI filed in order to get their search warrant. Most of these did little or no work. (There was apparently only one faculty member in residence, and she had only a LaSalle Bachelor's degree.) But several hundred of those 15,000 did some real work, not because they had to, but because they wanted to.

Same thing with Columbia State University, which took in $72 million in 4 or 5 years, before the owner fled to Mexico after the Postal Inspectors raided the joint (and later went to prison). The Postal Inspectors' report described the woman on staff who described her job as going to Barnes & Noble and buying books for students, and sending them to students who opted to do some work, along with an instruction to analyze the book and write a 20-page book report. She said no one ever read the reports that were returned, but she kept sending them as long as people asked for them.

I can name dozens of other institutions that followed a comparable policy.

John Bear
co-author, "Diploma Mills: the billion-dollar industry that has sold more than a million fake degrees," Prometheus Books, 2005.

 

I really appreciate all of your comments.

The general consensus seems to be

1) Don't pay anything more

2) Never state it on a resume

3) Legal options are possible but perhaps not - need to seek advice from a lawyer

Lastly, I would like to thank this forum. It truly has saved me about 3300 dollars. There was absolutely nothing else on a google search and I only came across it after I became suspicious when I plugged ACI into wikipedia.

What took me so long? - trust in the so-called Singapore affiliate (a former friend), the fact that there was a schedule of modules, classes and a year program and a misunderstanding of the American private accreditation system which incredibly allows a company to call itself an accreditor, and the Singapore MOE which does not recognise many private accredited Universities (such as Gonzages).

After some time I did unearth articles on the internet. The articles on 73 ways to spot a diploma mill ( particularly its advice about examining a website) and Bear's articles on the ACI were excellent but painful confirmation.

There was a discussion a long ways back at this forum on whether an unaccredited degree might be accepted in another country like South Africa for admission into a PhD (a while back it was suggested UZ. Is this just a pipe dream?

 

Hi, one more thing I should mention.

John is right. THe notion of a year long program is contingent upon the customer and is a lure to make you think it is legitimate.

When I spoke with this fellow running VA consultatns named Anthony Chua, he told me that the amount of lectures was up to me. At first I thought this ws just flexibility becasue it meant that I could pursue things on a self study basis. He provided for the year long structure of courses and becasue I had previously got a diploma in Educational Managment he gave me exemption for many courses. I told him that if he could provide journal articles that I could critique and case studies that would be preferable to following textbooks since I find journal articles more up to date. I said once every 2 weeks would be fine

The first lecturer was a total fraud. He spoke so flowerly and he kept repeating how important it was to think beyond the box but then couldnt even tell me what PEST was in marketing. He assigned me a case study without even giving me any criteria or which format. When I asked to asked to at least give me a schemata of the module and direct me in my way to do self-study he refused saying he was not hired to teach - just engage in discussion and he was being paid peanuts.

I told Chua I wanted a replacement and he took some time before coming up with another. Alhough the next guy is a good fellow it was apparent he used only his own scrambeld togerth notes to teach. THe journal articels were obviously downloaded from the interenet.

Honestly at that point I knew something was amiss but just attributed to it being a Mickey Mouse program like some other accredited private university programs and thought that as long as I could direct it to my own interests there would be nor problem.

THe reason I finally got onto the internet was after he mentioned that there was some negative chatter on the internet about TIU but that it was just the comments of a former disgruntled vice president and that basically I should ignore it. I was suspicious at that point that it had a dark side and he wasn't telling the whole story.

 

TURNITIN - Feeback

Turnitin.com This powerful software compares research papers and theses to a wide variety of sources to assure adequate paraphrasing and detect plagiarism. It also identifies papers which have been previously submitted for a course by someone else and has been uploaded to Turnitin.com for checking. Current students can also click here to upload their research papers to Turnitin.com.

Feeback on them?

 

Turnitin.com works great; your question belongs in a different thread though.