Marquess College is officially online

Marquess College is now officially online. Their former webpages, which were reportedly in unofficial draft form, were discussed at length in a previous thread. Some of the issues raised in the previous thread are worth revisiting.

(1) As suggested in the previous thread, Marquess College does not actually offer “degrees”. Instead, they offer “professional diplomas”, including the Graduate Diploma with Honours (Grad.Dip.Hons.), Postgraduate Diploma (P.G.Dip.), Postgraduate Advanced Diploma (Adv.P.G.Dip.), and Fellowship of the College (F.M.C.L.). It sounds like “diplomas,” in this sense, are the equivalent of “certificates” in the US sense; they can be awarded by anyone, with or without formal degree-granting authority. The Marquess FAQs indicate that their awards are not validated by any university and cannot be used towards degrees.

(2) The Marquess “diplomas” appear to be granted based on prior work experience, supplemented by further projects if deemed necessary. A skeptic might suggest that anyone with work experience and cash to burn could qualify for an impressive-sounding Marquess diploma (and get to wear their cool academical dress).

(3) Sheila Danzig, who was previously listed as a faculty member, has been dropped from the current faculty list.

(4) The plagiarism policy has changed.

(5) There is a link to "institutional partners", but none are specified.

 

Marquess College highlights its listing on the UK Department for Education and Skills "Register of Learning Providers." The following text is included on both their home page and their "registration and memberships" page:

An online search of the DfES Register yielded no results for "Marquess". In fairness, however, the copyright date suggests that the Register may not have been updated recently (since 2005).

On the other hand, the Marquess website does appear to be in direct violation of DfES policy regarding advertisement of Register listings:

I am posting this at ~11:15 am Pacific Standard Time on 02/05/06 (that's 1915 GMT, Feb. 5, 2006). It may be interesting to see if Marquess reviews this and alters their website. They seemed to respond rapidly to previous comments on Degreeinfo.