A rabbit hole that took me from one of our threads on Universidad Isabel I to one about IGNOU, to one about DEAC PhDs, to this comment about Rushmore University Imagine my shock when they have a .edu! I assumed that they were a different school with a coincidental name, especially given the reference to "complying with UK National Standards, as defined through Chartered Management Institute." Only to find this Wayback link from Wikipedia, which includes the same logo. Same team. They must have been grandfathered in during the early days of the .edu TLD when anyone could get one. Hopefully they're not still attracting students.
Rushmore was once run from the owner's basement. He did, IIRC, have a doctorate from an accredited school. Concur with Steve; some unaccredited schools got .edu extentions before someone figured out that it might not be a good idea. I haven't looked at them in 30 years. Logging onto their website leads one off with a statement about their following British standards. Their homepage indicates that they are accredited. This is not consistent with what that term means in the U.S. They are recognized by the Chartered Management Institute, which means studying at Rushmore can contribute to earning CMI credentials. CMI's credentials are recognized by the UK's national qualification system. But that's not the same as being accredited as a degree-granting institution. There is only one person listed who seems connected to academics. the Dean of Graduate Studies. But no degrees are listed for him. He seems fully employed elsewhere (according to his LinkedIn profile). No degrees are listed on that profile. Looking at his consultancy does not reveal his education, either. That page does describe him as one of the owners of Rushmore. A search of the Proquest Dissertation Abstracts does not reveal a dissertation published by "Alan Guinn." Nor does a search of Google Scholar. Nor a search on Google. This are my assertions. There may be more to this than I was able to uncover. And I make no assessments about any of it. I'll leave that to others.
Depends on your opinion about certain cosmological theories. In this universe, it ceased operations in 2009. K-WU was a huge operation, run from Southern California. It was permitted to operate under California Code 94310(c), which granted a status known as "Authorized." To "earn" this designation, a school was required to submit affadavits regarding 13 areas of operation, as well as show proof of $50k of assets (loosely defined) dedicated towards the school's operations. Since there was no evaluation or follow-up by the state, many unscrupulous operators ran straight-up diploma mills under this statute, often fooling their customers who didn't understand what "Authorized" meant. This was particularly true of the overseas market, where government approval determined what was a recognized university. California also offered an "Approved" designation under 94310(b). It was programmatic and offered to unaccredited schools. The first DL school to have all of its programs Approved was California Coast University. (Accredited schools were given a pass from this system under 94310(a).) Around 1990, the state abolished this system, requiring all schools to go through institutional approval. While the enforcement of this was spotty--and sometimes purposely targeted at certain schools--it did get rid (mostly) of the diploma mills, which tended to suffer one of several fates: Some became institutionally Approved (and even went on to become accredited) Some left the state for other, more lenient states and even countries Some moved their licences without actually relocating. K-WU did this, becoming Warren National University in Wyoming while still operating from California Some split operations, keeping one or a few programs in California to get Approved, while moving the rest to another state (typically Hawaii) Some closed K-WU ceased operations entirely when Wyoming required all schools to become accredited and K-WU failed in its application for candidacy. In California, the Approval system was later killed, requiring all schools in the state to be accredited by a recognized agency or be on a track to do so. This effectively ended the unaccredited DL industry in California, with most of those schools having to close. (Becoming accredited requires significant financial means--not only for the process but also to show that the school can remain operating, not requiring the next batch of enrollments to meet payroll or something.) It was an interesting time under the old 3-tier system. There were some really good schools that emerged from it (like Fielding, Saybrook, and CIIS). Some truly innovative schools thrived within it (WISR, Royokan, International College), some sketchy-but-trying schools lived within (FTU, PWU, etc.), and some straight-up diploma mills (California American, University of Central California, Southland U.). One of my favorites was the University Without Walls. It wasn't affiliated with the actual UWW, which was an outgrowth of the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities. No, when the founders of the fake UWW discovered that no one had copyrighted the term, they created one out of thin air. IIRC, it later operated as Sierra University for about a minute before getting slammed by the changes described above. Fun times!
It turns out that Guinn has a DBA from Rushmore. This is never, EVER a good thing. Sure, sometimes administrators have their degrees from their employing school, and even some faculty do that. But a DEAN? Very rare, but commonly seen at some unaccredited schools who are thought of as...well...you know.
