University of London International Programmes

Hello Everyone,

I hope this message finds you well.

My name is Thomas Weeks-Barnitt, and I am the Founder and CEO of Instatute.

We are currently looking for any teachers/instructors/lecturers/professors with experience teaching University of London International Programmes that have academic direction coming from LSE (EMFSS), Royal Holloway or the LLB and LLM programmes.

If you do have experience teaching these programmes and are interested in teaching your courses to students online please contact me for further details.

Or, if you know of a great teacher who teaches the courses in any of these programmes please have them get in touch.

[email protected]

Have a great day!

 

I do not have the time this morning to look into this but if someone else would be so kind as to look into Mr. Weeks-Barnitt and his "Instatute" I will take appropriate action later, (Hint: He has already violated the TOS by advertising)

 

Scam.

 

Ins't Maddison spelled with 1 "d" LOL

About
WPLMS is an online education site which imparts knowledge and skills to million of users worldwide.

Maddision Square Garden, NY
222-345-6789
[email protected]

This must be the school "motto"

"Lorem ipsum convallis nunc elit praesent vivamus tellus scelerisque platea, tristique gravida morbi platea netus porta scelerisque sollicitudin ac, habitasse …"

I thik Mr. Weeks-Barnitt, best get some lesson in WordPress first?

 

Sheesh... the WordPress skills are weak... so is the domain registration of the parent company... sigh, did you not even review the site before going live with it? It's riddled with more errors than most teen fandom GeoCities website in the nineties! I do like the backdated posts that are place holders, to convey a history of the place... although it's confusing when they're dated before its founding. I'm also a fan that instructors receive 70% of all tuition revenue... I'd be rich if that occurred at my job!

 

Which, according to Google, translates to:

"Lorem ipsum dolor now live in soil thermal developer present street, triplet pregnant street soccer Phasellus care and thermal gate, sit …"​

I kid you not.

 

Just checked the UK Government list and "Instatute" is not there as a listed body. That may be because they are still so new and haven't had a chance to go through the process yet, but as it stands they are not a listed body and therefore not authorized to work as an outlet for any UK University? I use the question mark in the previous sentence because I do recall the London College of Professional Studies appearing to be legitimately working with the University of Chichester and the University of Essex even though LCPS was not a listed body at the time (and still isn't as far as I can tell).

I'm still learning the UK system, so someone with more knowledge might be able to chime in and lend some insight on what a school can/can't do while not being a listed body? I thought it was cut and dry that if you weren't listed you couldn't even act as an outlet for a degree-granting school, but the LCPS situation makes me wonder if there is more to it or if some places like LCPS are just breaking the rules and the degree-granting schools are going along with it?

 

maybe his trying make a 'school' that offers tuition for the UoL programs but not get 'registered' with them?

abit like how philosophypathways work?

/shrug

easier to say scam though

 

Thanks for the input. I've only had time to do a quick google search on Weeks-Barnitt. There's more out there than you might guess.

 

Here's his LinkedIn: https://bh.linkedin.com/in/thomas-weeks-barnitt-577949ba

 

. . . on which the entire About section reads, "I am an Education Entrepreneur focused on developing or improving upon products, services, systems and functions across the education continuum."

I didn't even have to go further (although I did, of course), since, as we all know, all "educational entrepreneurs" are automatically the spawn of Satan.

I have to wonder, though, how sleazeballs like this guy feel when they realize that an innocuous post on a DL forum like this one quickly comes back to bite them on the ass. Less than eight hours ago, Thomas Weeks-Barnitt was just another innocent con artist. Now, a whole bunch of folks who had never heard of him knows he's a con artist. Ya gotta love the Internet.

 

I want to know how much these teaching jobs pay. C'mon Thomas, I know you're still out there. What's the money like for this gig?

 

https://instatute.org/
May be the site is still under development. They have a lot of sales crap on home page with no specific UOL programs (those pages are empty).
Oh...and they let teachers take 70% of tuition paid by a student!!

 

Well, a con artist with a doctorate from a highly respected university - University College London.

 

And hardly the first con artist with a doctorate from a highly respected university. So your point is? (Never mind - that was a rhetorical question.)

But seriously, it would make an interesting study to determine how many people who started degree mills or sham so-called universities held their own credentials from other shams or from a "highly respected university." I think you'll find that legit credentials on the part of degree mill founders would be quite common, but that's an anecdotal observation. For me, it would make interesting reading, but not interesting research since I have no desire to do it myself.

 

Hello, everyone.

This is Thomas Weeks-Barnitt.

First, I would like to assure you all I am not a con artist. Nor am I the spawn of the devil.

I am simply looking for really good teachers/instructors/lecturers/professors with experience teaching UOLIP courses (EMFSS, Royal Holloway, and the LLB and LLM programs), because I am launching a platform that will connect them with students directly, and I am now nearly at a point in development to begin on-boarding some instructors onto the platform. And, if my quest to find these instructors by asking students on this forum is against the rules I will take down the post. However, my intention was simple... Who knows best which instructors are good; their current and former students. This is why I thought to post on your forum.

I am not as yet registered with any UK body, my company currently exists as an SPC in Bahrain, because I live and work there (I have been a professional educator for over 20 years) and while I do hope to eventually have the platform become a recognized teaching center with UOLIP, it is currently not.

So here's the story of Instatute...

Like I said, I have been a professional educator for 20 years, and I am working on my doctorate at UCL. My passion and focus over the last 10 years has become Transnational Education (TNE). I believe, if done correctly and with social conscience, it has the potential to build a bigger global middle class and thus a more meritocratic, egalitarian global society. However, its conception is less than pure (a mechanism for Western universities to basically sell off their brands to stave off insolvency) and its current result, by in large, is profiteers in the emerging markets getting a hold of these brands and selling them to local students at exacerbated tuition rates whilst simultaneously hiring mostly part-time instructors and paying them as little as possible (sound familiar)?

I used to work in such an institution, where student tuition for TNE undergraduate programmes with UK university partners was well over 10k USD yet our part-time teachers were only being paid roughly 12,000 USD per year. The profit margin was north of 70%. I found this very troubling.

So I have been devising a way to flip this scenario on its head. I am creating a platform that will hopefully make institutions redundant (hence the name Instatute). By using technology to facilitate the engagement between students and teachers. I will build on this platform all the tools teachers need to teach those courses (first online but later we will figure out a way for teachers to organize regular face-to-face classes). And, I will build a rating system that allows complete transparency for students before they choose their teachers for all their courses (as opposed to going to an institution and having them choose for you).

And, I will give teachers the power to set their own tuition rates, taking back control of their professional autonomy, careers and dignity.

Now I am not going for saint hood and this is not a charity. I want to be clear that the company is for profit. However, I am really and truly trying to be an ethical company and trying to place as high a value possible on what I believe is education's most important resource; the teacher. Now the typical model in private education is to allocate 30% of revenue for teacher pay. I am allocating 70%... Literally flipping the model on its head. So teachers will make 70% of all student tuition.

I believe this will drastically drive down the cost of tuition to students whilst dramatically increasing the income of teachers... Here is my example:

A student finds 4 instructors who charge 1000 USD for their year long UOLIP courses = 4,000 USD tuition for the year (the average tuition for UOLIP globally is just north of 10K and I would love to here what you pay if you care to share)... So, based on that average students are going to pay less than a third of their tuition in this scenario for the same courses, taught (hopefully) by the same teachers.

Meanwhile if said teacher gets 100 students to sign up for their courses (I would say this is a typical load for any given teacher). That teacher earns 70,000 USD for the year. Now if they were part-time teachers earning less than 20,000 USD that is more than 3x what they were earning to essentially do the same job.

And yes, atm the tech is not there... We are building. I have a team of 4 in Armenia working hard to get the first version finished. Right now, like I said we are just trying to on-board our first cohort of teachers. I have a group of 10 or so teachers on hand now, but I want to try and get every single course in the programme suit accounted for with at least one teacher before we launch.

So while I do appreciate the skepticism and the concern, I can assure you I am not trying to scam anyone, nor am I trying to do anything illegal or unethical. I am a startup CEO trying to get some students to suggest good teachers they have had to try out my platform and hopefully find themselves in a better place.

And again, if my post violates any of your rules or policies, I will remove it.

Warm regards,

Thomas

 

so... its udemy, but with UOL modules being taught

 

Close... I am starting with UOLIP, but will eventually also have iGCSE, IB and later Professional certificate programs. But what I want to focus on are programmes and courses that come with qualifications... Because I am really trying to disrupt profiteering private schools and universities.

 

And also, I eventually want to have options for teachers to also teacher their courses in classrooms face-to-face with groups of students

 

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to . . .

Working on your doctorate? Your LinkedIn page implies quite directly that you already have your doctorate. I don't see any indication there that your enrollment is current or that the degree has not yet been awarded.

We call that misrepresentation and fraud.

But worse than that, you appear to be a one-man show. You're like Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms - "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" Except that your version is akin to, "Hey, kids, let's start a university!" And you don't even have a doctorate - you're merely an entrepreneur.

Nothing personal, but we already have one of those guys here at DegreeInfo - a guy who doesn't even have a doctorate yet started a so-called university in the West Indies that is a joke.

You may call yourself an educator, sir, but you are not a credible one. So enjoy your fantasy - our job is to expose you for what you really are.

You cannot remove your post. Once the editing window closes, you cannot even make changes. Whether your posts stays or not is up to a forum moderator.

And frankly, in this case, I hope that your posts remain. Because when you try to recruit for what is not even a fully implemented start-up and purport that this joke is a trend in higher education, misrepresenting your credentials in the process, the public deserves to know the whole story.

So I look forward to your next reply. Because with each new reply, you appear to be inserting your foot further in your mouth.

As you said, warm regards . . .