MIGS Lives?

The latest:

Sheila's gang has finally changed the ownership of the domain degree.com from "degree.com, LLC" of Ft. Lauderdale, FL
to.... (drum roll)

Degree (DEGREE2-DOM)
c/o MIGS of the Centro de Estudios
Universitarios Hidalgo 511 NE 3rd Ave.
2nd Floor
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33068


What a surprise. More of the same.

 

How about some cheap irony? I would have been GLAD to see #1 (picture of the diploma). There has been so much back-and-forth about whether or not the CEU can and will issue the doctoral diploma (and whether or not the Secretary of Education in Nuevo Leon has to and/or will issue the "doctorado"). One of the things I was truly concerned about is that I'd work damn hard to get a real doctorate from this little unknown school, only to end up with a piece of paper signed by MIGS people. And a transcript maintained in and issued from Fort Lauderdale, not Monterrey. There has been no development since to alleviate that concern. Quite the contrary. As Gus observed, no one in Monterrey seems to know anything about MIGS. The only connection seemed to be Alvaro Roma, who was listed on the MIGS faculty and cited as the President of Distance Learning for CEU (whatever that was). Maybe he had his name removed? Whatever happened, it is clear that MIGS is renting the CEU's degree-granting authority, at best. At worst, MIGS is doing a bunch of things without oversight or even authority. Florida seems to think so.

Rich Douglas

 

You people amaze me sometimes. You all know Sheila, you all know Armando. First name basis, apparently. You snipe back and forth at each other endlessly, but you all play dumb when asked questions.

OK, Chip.

You know that I have been hammering for months on the question of who (if anyone) has the responsibility to oversee what MIGS is doing. If MIGS is going to present itself as providing instruction leading to 'GAAP' and hence (allegedly) RA-equivalent degrees, somebody will have to have some kind of QA oversight over its activities. I wanted to know who had that responsibility and how it had been exercised.

I asked Rich and was angrily told to find out myself. I asked John Bear and was met by his usual olympian silence. Now it appears that you and Bear had been discussing these things personally with Dr. Arias even *before* the Levicoff lawsuit.

Now I'm asking Chip White:

What did you ask Armando Arias and what did he tell you?

How were CEU's doctoral programs first approved in Mexico at a time when CEU apparently had only minimal experience with graduate level education?

What did it take to induce CEU to hand the responsibility for actually offering those new untried programs to MIGS?

What specific oversight does CEU maintain over MIGS' activites? You have already addressed that one, saying in effect "none". Is that a correct paraphrase of what Dr. Arias told you?

What specific oversight responsibility does the NL education ministry have over the activity of foreign collaborative partners of Mexican schools? How is it exercised?

Does ANUIES or any other Mexican education association have any substantive role to play in this?

 

Bill:
Pardon the intrusion. I know you specifically asked Chip, however, please allow me to suggest some answers. I promise I will be brief.

What did you ask Armando Arias and what did he tell you?
It’s all about $!

How were CEU's doctoral programs first approved in Mexico at a time when CEU apparently had only minimal experience with graduate level education?
$!

What did it take to induce CEU to hand the responsibility for actually offering those new untried programs to MIGS?
$!

What specific oversight does CEU maintain over MIGS' activites? You have already addressed that one, saying in effect "none". Is that a correct paraphrase of what Dr. Arias told you?
$, and, no, he said $!

What specific oversight responsibility does the NL education ministry have over the activity of foreign collaborative partners of Mexican schools? How is it exercised?
$ and $!

Does ANUIES or any other Mexican education association have any substantive role to play in this?
I’m not sure…could it be $?

Hope this helps,

Gus Sainz

 

A brief reaction to these threads . . .



Seriously, it seems to me that by devoting an entire section of the forum to MIGS and continuing to debate whether there is any legitimacy at all to the operation, they have received far more publicity than they could ever have hoped to achieve anywhere.

As for me, I guess I'll have to live with the fact (with all modesty and humility, of course), that I was right all along.

Back to my vacation . . .

 

Rich wrote:
Whatever happened, it is clear that MIGS is renting the CEU's degree-granting authority, at best.

Wow, I'm glad to hear that statement from somebody that was actually connected to the program. It's been my opinion all along, is consistent with what I inferred from the meeting with Arias, and also fits with what Sheila has previously tried to do.

("Please join our school! We can make so much money! Really, lots of money! ... without a word about providing quality education, or anything like that)

 

Since the founder of MIGS apparently knows absolutely nothing about what it means to be a professional (anything) let alone an educator, why did she even start up MIGS?

I suppose because she inherited her buddy's degree mill con-artist view who saw "education" simply as $$$$ and more $$$$'s.

In other words I suspect here's the corporate vision for MIGS Get a piece of the degree mill "money tree" while avoiding the downside, which is risk of jail.

How was/is this vision apparently to be accomplished?
1. Play games with accreditation.
2. Get a shyster lawyer that can help assure that when stepping over the line, the line has been blurred enough that risk of prosecution is nil.

 

It is truly a burden that would have overwhelmed any mere mortal.

 

Best of luck to you Peter. Sounds like a great topic. Hope to be calling you *Doctor* soon.

North

 

I feel we both share the responsibility for that. First, I was put off by the nature of your inquiry. You got anger because you gave it. I really resented the notion that I was somehow responsible for everything MIGS, and that I had to be responsive to anything you could think of to ask.

I also share considerable responsibilty. At the time, I was tired of being the only person who knew something from the "inside" who was talking about it. I was getting pretty sick of MIGS as well. So I blasted you. Sorry.

I couldn't have answered your questions because I didn't know the answers. But I wasn't responsible for those answers/issues, either. I should have been nicer in referring you to MIGS. And you should have been less antagonistic/prosecutorial in your inquiry.

As you've subsequently seen, I've also had serious misgivings about MIGS. Mine weren't so much in the inclusion of MIGS into the CEU's authority to operate. If the Mexican government was okay with that, I didn't care. Very little of the world is the United States; it's futile to apply our standards everywhere we go. AACRAO doesn't do that, for example. They're not going to pick and choose which schools within a country's system they'll recognize. They look at the higher educational system and decide.

I think it's clear that the Mexican authorities are going to let the CEU do pretty much what it wants to do.

My misgivings are in the operation of MIGS itself, as I've made abundantly clear. If they'd run things appropriately, the issues around the approval of MIGS and the CEU would be far less significant, if even noticed at all.

Rich Douglas

 

Dear Peter,

I echo North's words, and I also wish you the best. I also hope that one day you visit Mexico or Mexico City. Believe me, Peter, I have been to many countries in Latin America, and Mexico is definitely not the worst.

My best regards,


Karlos Alberto Lacaye
[email protected]