DETC-accredited Yorktown University is among the sponsors for this year's Western Conservative Political Action Conference (WCPAC) confab being held October 16-17 in Newport Beach, California.

Nice to see Yorktown taking a stand against the oppressive socialist orthodoxy that permeates higher education.  Yorktown bills itself as "'The' place in American higher education for Supply-side Economics."

Although they are not unique.  I also see Hillsboro College joining forces with author and radio commentator Mark Levin on his website.

It's also nice to see a college being upfront with it's political orientation, instead of pretending to be "one size fits all" and then catering to socialists and perverts the way so many do.  

Yorktown became DETC-accredited last year.  I wonder what the outcome of their DETC application would have been if they had sponsored conservative events before it was approved.  Not that DETC is a statist-oriented accreditator at all, but they can't afford to be politically naive and hope to maintain DoE recognition.  Surely they saw what happened to the AALE.

Dr. George Brown's hair: rug, wig, divot, toupe', tarantula?

Say it ain't so. Former online.degree.net icon Johann is now posting at DI. He showed up briefly at degreeboard over the summer but vanished just as quickly. I expected an eventual return but guessed that it would be when it got colder than 14 degrees C in Ottawa.

DI thread

AS POSTED ELSEWHERE.

Quote:Mr Hill today announced the State Government would adopt the recommendations of a parliamentary committee examined therapies being offered by unregistered doctors.

These included offering to cure cancer through the use of "organic coffee enemas" and another practitioner who claimed to be able to cure cancer through "vaginal blowing".

He said the move was aimed at a small group of unregistered doctors who were intentionally exploiting vulnerable people.

Would you want a pedophile-pandering pervert like Chip White running your kid's school?  Dear Leader Barry Soetoro thinks it's a great idea, and appoints a "safe school czar" who promotes man-boy sex!

Promotes homosexuality and has utter contempt for religion?  I hear Gollum wants to "collaborate" with him as soon as possible.  Sounds like the ideal person for a seamless transition to replace Contreras at the Oregon ODA.

Is Chip next in line as "safe DL czar"?  He's a pervert who doesn't know anything about DL, so by Obama's standards that makes him well-qualified.

'Safe school czar' encouraged child sex with an older man

Quote:Monday, September 28, 2009
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man." At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar." It's getting hard to keep track of all of this president's problematic appointments. Clearly, the process for vetting White House employees has broken down.

In this one case in which Mr. Jennings had a real chance to protect a young boy from a sexual predator, he not only failed to do what the law required but actually encouraged the relationship.

According to Mr. Jennings' own description in a new audiotape discovered by Fox News, the 15-year-old boy met the "older man" in a "bus station bathroom" and was taken to the older man's home that night. When some details about the case became public, Mr. Jennings threatened to sue another teacher who called his failure to report the statutory rape "unethical." Mr. Jennings' defenders asserted that there was no evidence that he was aware the student had sex with the older man.

However, the new audiotape contradicts this claim. In 2000, Mr. Jennings gave a talk to the Iowa chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group that promotes homosexuality in schools. On the tape, Mr. Jennings recollected that he told the student to make sure "to use a condom" when he was with the older man. That he actively encouraged the relationship is reinforced by Mr. Jennings' own description in his 1994 book, "One Teacher in 10." In that account, the teacher boasts how he allayed the student's concerns about the relationship to such a degree that the 15-year-old "left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated."

Mr. Jennings' denials about these events reveal a lack of remorse. He has not admitted that he made mistakes in this case, and he now refuses to answer any questions about the scandal. Don't forget, this is a presidential appointee we're talking about. Mr. Obama should make clear what his standards are for public servants serving at the pleasure of the president. Encouraging and covering up man-boy sexual activity are serious offenses. The White House should force Mr. Jennings to come clean.

Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment. His job in the Obama administration is to ensure student safety, and this scandal directly calls into question his ability to perform that job. Mr. Jennings and Obama administration officials refuse to answer any questions about this newly discovered evidence. A lot of Americans want answers about this guy and how he was approved for a job in the White House.

The author is talking about the obsolete print media, but he could just as easily be talking about the obsolete higher education cartel and their brick & mortar classrooms.

Don't Bail Out Newspapers--Let Them Die and Get Out of the Way

Quote:Posted Sunday, September 27, 2009 10:59 AM

Daniel Lyons

Nobody in their right mind believes the future of the news business involves paper and ink rather than pixels on a screen. We all know where the news business is headed, and what's more, we've known it for at least a decade. So why on earth are people talking about a bailout for newspapers? Why is President Obama saying he'd consider it? Why is Congress holding hearings and considering "The Newspaper Revitalization Act" in a bid to save these ailing old rags with tax breaks and other handouts? It's like introducing legislation to save horse-drawn carriages, or steam engines, or black-and-white TV. It's stupid. It's pointless. It won't work.

The fact is, all this hysteria has nothing to do with saving the news, or saving jobs. Nor is it about saving democracy, which is what the red-in-the-face newspaper lovers always get themselves huffed about, as if newspapers and democracy were inextricably linked. Democracy existed long before newspapers did, and it will survive without them. And plenty of countries that don't have democracy do have newspapers. Nor would a bailout help readers. In fact, it would only slow down our shift to the Internet, which is a far better medium for delivering information.

The only beneficiaries of a bailout would be a handful of big newspaper companies that used to be profitable and powerful and now, well, aren't. Those companies saw the Internet charging toward them like a freight train, and they just stood there on the tracks. They didn't adapt. Why? Because for decades these companies enjoyed virtual monopolies, and as often happens to monopolists, they got lazy. They invested their resources in protecting their monopolies, using bully tactics to keep new competitors from entering their markets. They dished up an inferior product and failed to believe that anything or anyone could ever take their little gold mines away from them.

It's hilarious to hear these folks puff themselves up with talk about being the  Fourth Estate, performing some valuable public service for readers—when in fact the real customer has always been the advertiser, not the reader. That truth has been laid bare in recent years. As soon as papers got desperate for cash, they dropped their "sacred principles" as readily as a call girl sheds her clothes. Ads on the front page? Reporters assigned to write sponsored content? No problem.

Now, new companies with names like Politico and Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and Gawker are beating newspapers at their own game. The new guys are faster, and often better. They're leading, with newspapers chasing behind. If the old guys really want to retain their chokehold on the news business, they should consider buying up the new guys. Problem is, the old guys waited too long, and now they're too broke to make acquisitions. Whoops.

Sure, nobody has yet figured out how to make loads of money delivering news over the Internet. But that's partly because there are too many old newspaper companies, stumbling around like zombies: creatures from another century, clinging to their lame old business model, surviving but not thriving—and sucking up money that Internet companies could put to better use.

Instead of giving newspapers bailouts, we should be hastening their demise. The weak papers need to die. The strong newspapers need to go into bankruptcy and restructure their businesses with smaller staffs and lower cost structures. Yes, it will be painful. But journalists will find jobs—and they'll be working in a better, faster medium.

Meanwhile, all of us need to get over this pious notion about the sanctity of the newspaper. I've been a journalist for 27 years, and I love that romantic old notion of the newsroom as much as the next guy. But I recently canceled my two morning papers—The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—because I got tired of carrying them from the front porch to the recycling bin, sometimes without even looking at them. Fact is, I only care about a tiny percentage of what those papers publish, and I can read them on my computer or my iPhone. And I can rely on blogs and Twitter to steer me to articles worth reading.

As for all the hand-wringing about the great "in-depth" information that only a newspaper can provide, let's be honest: the typical daily newspaper does a lousy job. It tries to provide a little bit of everything—politics, sports, business, celebrity stuff—and as a result it doesn't do anything particularly well. Ask anyone who's an expert in anything—whether it's bicycle racing or brain surgery—what they think when they read a newspaper article about their field. Chances are they cringe, because the material is so dumbed-down, and because it's so clear that whoever wrote the article has no real expertise on this topic.

Frankly, a lot of newspapers just stink. People worry about the fate of the San Francisco Chronicle, but that paper has been an embarrassment for decades. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press are in trouble, but they deserve it: for one thing, they spawned  Mitch Albom; for another, they're both pretty awful. The Boston Globe, my current hometown paper, is smug and provincial, and the writing is embarrassingly bad. Much of the Globe reads like a college newspaper. Would any of us really be worse off if these crusty, crappy old relics suddenly disappeared?

Please, Congress, drop this crazy idea about saving newspapers. You can't save them. They are going to die. All you can do is prolong their agony, and delay the shift to the Internet. That doesn't do any of us any good.

An international student seems to have had a less-than-wonderful experience at Australia's Griffith University. He states his case in passionate and amusing fashion on YouTube.

How is a government-run "crook slum" different from a "diploma mill"? As a general rule diploma mill customers seem highly satisfied with their purchases, and according to the epic research work of Dr. R. C. Douglas find high utility as well. On the other hand, we hear many similar tales of exploitation and woe incurred at the hands of the vaunted government-endorsed cartels.

Quote:This is a video to WARN ALL FELLOW INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS who are planning to go study abroad or overseas of REASONS WHY NOT TO STUDY AT GRIFFITH UNIVERSIY THIS CROOK SLUM

THIS VIDEO TELL YOU THE TRUTH of what HORRIFYING MATTERS HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN HAPPENING IN THIS CROOK SLUM AND WHAT DIRTY EVIL SCHEMES THIS CROOK SLUM HAVE BEEN USING TO MOB ON THE PREY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS!!

If you all have any questions or want to discuss about matters related to the info of this video please feel free to leave comments here or at my blogs. I will be glad to give you a reply as soon as possible. Thank You!! :-)

These guys have been around for about 20 years now. Everyone says that they're a diploma mill or a degree mill with minimal standards, but it's worse than that. What they really do is lure you in with the impression of lax standards, collect money from you up front and a tuition fee from you monthly and then give you literally endless amounts of work until you drop out in desperation.

There aren't any graduates because no one can complete the endless amounts of work MUST gives its students. The people who try to stick with the program end up paying tens of thousands of dollars and decades of study until they drop out in shame. The value of its degrees never comes up because there are NO graduates.

Even Harvard allows its students to graduate after all. With MUST the policy is to graduate no one. They have you read a library's worth of books and write endless papers and introspections until you've understood everything known to man and have written a dissertation on every word in the dictionary. And even then they'd probably ask you to do it over and pay some more in tuition.

Does that make MUST the best school in the US?

Has anyone noticed that on DegreeDiscussion that the majority of Gollin's threads have like ZERO replies ? Zilch, zero, nada, zed.

Gollin, hate to break it to ya, no one cares about what you have to write or say. No one cares even on DD. It is now officially time to go back to your day job and teach your two 300 level physics courses.

Note: the original article is no longer available free on the Chronicle website. We include a copy here as a public service to prevent people from re-writing their own sordid public history.

Quote:U. of Illinois Administrators Ask Professor to Remove Web Site About Diploma Mills

By ANDREA L. FOSTER, Chronicle of Higher Education

October 13, 2003

Under pressure from administrators at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a tenured physics professor has shut down a Web site he created to make information available about the unaccredited distance-learning institutions often referred to as "diploma mills."

The physics professor, George Gollin, says administrators ordered him to remove his site from the university server last month because proprietors of some of the online institutions mentioned on his site had threatened to sue the university over the Web material. Administrators at the university justified their demand by telling Mr. Gollin that his research into the controversial institutions did not meet the "public service" obligation for faculty members of land-grant universities, he says.

Visitors to Mr. Gollin's site are now urged to visit the State of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization site instead. The Oregon agency and the North Dakota Department of Career and Technical Education are planning to use the material from Mr. Gollin on their own Web sites.

Mr. Gollin said Thursday that he shut down his Web site after a meeting with the administrators, including David L. Swanson, the associate provost, and Mark Henss, the university counsel. Both administrators declined to comment.

But Robin Kaler, a spokeswoman for the university, denied that the university had ordered Mr. Gollin to remove the site. "We were trying to help him find a more appropriate place for his Web site," she says. A Web site about diploma mills should be "housed in a place that deals with accreditation," she adds.

Ms. Kaler says the university does not view Mr. Gollin's research into diploma mills as meeting the institution's public-service requirement since the work is not related to physics, his area of expertise. "He has a lot to offer the community and the world outside of his discipline," she says. "But for the university support he receives, it's for his work in his discipline."

Among the institutions that complained to the university over material on Mr. Gollin's Web site were James Monroe, Robertstown, and St. Regis Universities, all of which operate from Liberia, and American Coastline University, based in Metairie, La. American Coastline also threatened to sue Mr. Gollin. The institutions accused him of making inaccurate statements about them that were harmful to their businesses.

American Coastline declined comment, saying the issue is in litigation. Representatives for the other institutions could not be reached. None of the institutions has been accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

Mr. Gollin says he has done exhaustive research about these and other unaccredited online institutions. His findings were detailed on his Web site, which totaled 109 pages of printed material. Alan Contreras, administrator for the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, called the professor's work "superb."

"We think it's a very helpful consumer-protection tool," he says.

Mr. Gollin has spoken on the television network CNN about St. Regis University, and he gave a talk this year at his university titled, "Sources of Unconventional University Diplomas from Online Vendors."