Please comment to DETC - unwonderful schools applying for accreditation

It's not that easy to prove fraudulent misrepresentation. There are also a variety of defenses and counterarguments that can be made like:

The defendant made no statement of past or present fact

The defendant concealed no past or present fact

The defendant had no duty to disclose the fact

The statement was not false, incomplete, ambigious or misleading

The defendant did not know or believe the statement was false or inaccurate

The defendant did not act in reckless disregard of the truth or falsify his statement.

The defendant did not intend the plaintiff to rely on the defendant's statement.

The plaintiff did not in fact rely on the defendant's statement.

The defendant's statement was not a substantial factor in the plaintiff's action or inaction.

A cursory investigation by the plaintiff would have revealed the truth or falsity of the defendant's statement

The plaintiff failed to take reasonable steps to mitigate the harm caused when defendant committed misrepresentaion, thus, damages should not cover the aggravation of the harm caused by the plaintiff on the basis of avoidable consequences.

The plaintiff suffered no actual damages....et cetera

I worked on one case where a transnational company comitted fraud involving a substantial amount of money; yet, in spite of the written evidence that was gathered setting out that fraud, it would have been difficult to prove in court.

 

Whether it passes the legal definition of fraud is irrelevant here. DETC's own documents require that a school honestly and non-deceptively represent itself in all its marketing materials. AICS clearly did not do that. So whether legal fraud happened and could be proven, it is clear that AICS did not meet DETC requirements, yet DETC ignored its own rules and accredited them anyway.

Clayton College is in exactly the same situation.

Likewise I am deeply concerned, even if Clayton no longer offers ND degrees, at the prospect of their being awarded accreditation by DETC. What will happen is, all the people with nearly worthless ND degrees from Clayton that they've earned over the previous 15+ years will suddenly have a degree from a school with DETC accreditation.

How many patients, employers, legislators, etc. are going to do the granular research necessary to figure out that Clayton was accredited only *after* they dropped these degrees? I can absolutely guarantee that most, if not all, of the Clayton NDs (and that's what most of the Clayton grads have) will proudly be telling everyone who asks that they graduated from a DETC-accredited school, neglecting to mention that neither the degree nor the school at the time they attended was accredited.

The more I think about it, the more I think this will be the absolute worst smelling turd the DETC has ever accredited if accreditation is granted.

This is true in states that restrict the use of "Dr." which is not the case in the majority of states. So in places like California, where there are tons of fraudulent naturopaths, and a watered-down (thanks to Clayton's bought-and-paid-for influence) licensure law that allows unlicensable naturopaths to still call themselves "doctors", if Clayton gets DETC accreditation, these people will be able to say they graduated from an accredited school. Deceptive, terrible, unsafe idea. And states like Florida, where the title is regulated, will lose the ability to go after fraudulent naturopaths, since they will have an "accredited" degree and therefore legally able to refer to themselves as doctors.

 

I agree that while most employers or legislators probably won't conduct the necessary research on the point of accreditation, the responsibilty lies with the fraudulant degree holders. My guess is that Clayton dropped the ND degree program, since it is now recognized as an official title in a number of states that is associated with licensed naturopathic physicians.

One of the central issues here is the unscrupulous people that are using these bogus credentials. Secondarily, the employers and legislators have a duty to use due care when screening potential applicants. If they fail to do so, then they are negligent.

In any event, it looks like Clayton is out of the ND degree granting business, which is a good thing.

 

Before we march on DETC's offices and burn them down, let's take a breath and consider something. DETC does not have a candidacy process. Schools--no matter how bad--are applicants until they are either accredited or rejected. Because of this, good and awful schools get exactly the same treatment. They're all listed by DETC as applicants until they get sorted out.

Clayton and Trinity might be shoo-ins for accreditation. They might also be dead in the water. There is no way to tell.

If either (or both) are successful, you'll see it all over their websites long before DETC acknowledges it. And if they're not, you'll see their websites re-populated with a bunch of crappy "doctoral" degrees that are not worthy of recognition, but fit their business models quite well.

I don't think those schools will be successful. But I thought the same thing about AICS, AJU, CCU, Southwest, SCUPS.....

 

No, it has nothing to do with that... nearly all of the states that have licensure laws have had them for 5 or 10 years or more. Clayton's lobbyists have come out of the woodwork in every state, buying off anyone they could find to try and stop licensure laws simply *because* they want their fake naturopaths to be able to practice unlicensed.

I would lay money that Clayton dropped the ND degree program for one reason only: so that they could qualify for DETC. Perhaps even DETC wasn't stupid enough to agree to consider accrediting a mail order medical degree.

But the EdD or whatever bullshit program they're offering now isn't going to be anywhere near as popular with their prospective students as an ND; the public who is interested in holistic medicine recognizes that an ND is a valid, licensed medical professional in a number of states, but thanks to Clayton, they don't realize that there are far more fake NDs than real ones. I can't imagine that this strategy will work in the long run for Clayton -- and I suspect they know that -- so my assumption is they'll pull some scam. My guess is something akin to what the old California-approved schools used to do, where one program is licensed in California, and the rest are run out of a mailbox in Hawaii or some other state with lax licensing. In this case, something like getting DETC accreditation for CCNH, then starting up Clayton Naturopathic College or some crap to offer ND degrees, and (correctly) assuming that people will confuse the two and assume that the ND degree is also accredited.

Perhaps I'm cynical, but these people have singlehandedly done more to damage the legitimate naturopathic field, purely out of greed, than anybody, and I just hope and pray that DETC will see through it and not grant them accreditation.

 

Rich makes a good point, and I am heartened by the fact that Chadwick, the awful Clayton-owned "college" offering unwonderful programs in various topics did indeed apply to DETC about 10 years ago, and got soundly rejected. (It closed soon after.)

Maybe with luck, if CCNH gets rejected, it too will go away.