Quote:TSA Let 25 Illegal Aliens Attend Flight School Owned by Illegal Alien
By Edwin Mora
July 18, 2012

(CNSNews.com) -- The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved flight training for 25 illegal aliens at a Boston-area flight school that was owned by yet another illegal alien, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The illegal-alien flight-school attendees included eight who had entered the country illegally and 17 who had overstayed their allowed period of admission into the United States, according to an audit by the GAO.

Six of the illegal aliens were actually able to get pilot's licenses.

Discovery of the trouble at the flight school began when local police--not federal authorities--pulled over the owner of the school on a traffic violation and were able to determine that he was an illegal alien.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R.-Ala.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security, said he found the GAO's findings "amazing."

"We have cancer patients, Iraq War veterans and Nobel Prize winners all forced to undergo rigorous security checks before getting on an airplane," said Rogers, "and at the same time, ten years after 9/11, there are foreign nationals in the United States trained to fly just like Mohammed Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers did, and not all of them are necessarily getting a security background check."

Stephen Lord, who is the GAO's director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, testified about the matter Wednesday in Rogers' subcommittee. Rogers asked him: "Isn't it true that, based on your report, the Transportation Security Administration cannot assure the American people that foreign terrorists are not in this country learning how to fly airplanes, yes or no?"

Lord responded: "At this time, no."

Although the illegal alien who owned the Massachusetts flight school had not undergone a required TSA security threat assessment and had not been approved for flight training by the agency, he nonetheless held two Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot licenses, also known as FAA certificates.

The GAO report, released today, is entitled General Aviation Security: TSA's Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Risk Has Weaknesses.

In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. homeland perpetrated by terrorists who learned how to pilot aircraft at flight schools in Florida, Arizona, and Minnesota, the TSA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), developed the "Alien Flight Student Program (AFSP) to help determine whether foreign students enrolling at flight schools pose a security threat," said the GAO's Stephen Lord in written testimony prepared for Wednesday's hearing in the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security.

According to the 911 Commission Report, four of the Sept. 11 hijackers who entered the United States with legal visas had overstayed their authorized period of admission.

Under the Alien Flight Student Program, foreign nationals are supposed to be subjected to a TSA security threat assessment prior to receiving flight training to determine whether they pose a security threat to the United States.

"According to TSA regulations, an individual poses a security threat when the individual is suspected of posing, or is known to pose, a threat to transportation or national security, a threat of air piracy or terrorism, a threat to airline or passenger security, or a threat to civil aviation security," Lord said in his written testimony.

"According to TSA officials, when a foreign national applies to AFSP to obtain flight training, TSA uses information submitted by the foreign national--such as name, date of birth, and passport information--to conduct a criminal history records check, a review of the Terrorist Screening Database, and a review of the Department of Homeland Security's TECS [anti-terrorism] system,"? Lord testified.

However, a "weakness" in TSA's Alien Flight Student Program, noted by GAO, is that it does not check for immigration status.

"AFSP is not designed to determine whether a foreign flight student entered the country legally; thus, a foreign national can be approved for training through AFSP after entering the country illegally," stated the GAO in its report.? "In March 2010, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigated a Boston-area flight school after local police stopped the flight school owner for a traffic violation and discovered that he was in the country illegally. In response to this incident, ICE launched a broader investigation of the students enrolled at the flight school."

"ICE found that 25 of the foreign nationals at this flight school had applied to AFSP and had been approved by TSA to begin flight training after their security threat assessment had been completed; however," reads the GAO report, "the ICE investigation and our subsequent inquiries revealed the following issues, among other things:

--"Eight of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by TSA to begin flight training were in 'entry without inspection' status, meaning they had entered the country illegally. Three of these had obtained FAA airman certificates [pilot's license]: 2 held FAA private pilot certificates and 1 held an FAA commercial pilot certificate.

--"Seventeen of the 25 foreign nationals who received approval by the TSA to begin flight training were in 'overstay' status, meaning they had overstayed their authorized period of admission into the United States.

--"In addition, the flight school owner held two FAA airman certificates. Specifically, he was a certified Airline Transport Pilot (cargo pilot) and a Certified Flight Instructor. However, he had never received a TSA security threat assessment or been approved by TSA to obtain flight training. He had registered with TSA as a flight training provider under AFSP."

A GAO official told CNSNews.com that, based on their names, none of the 25 illegal aliens who attended the flight school appeared to be from Muslim countries. Instead, they had Latin American names.

The GAO found that, "From January 2006 through September 2011, 25,599 foreign nationals had applied for FAA airman certificates, indicating they had completed flight training." That information is placed on the FAA airmen registry.

The GAO provided information from the FAA's airmen registry to TSA "so that the agency could conduct a matching process to determine whether the foreign nationals in the FAA airmen registry were in TSA's AFSP database and the extent to which they had been successfully vetted through the AFSP database."

The GAO found that not everyone in the FAA registry had been vetted properly.

"TSA's analysis indicated that some of the 25,599 foreign nationals in the FAA airmen registry were not in the TSA AFSP database, indicating that these individuals had not applied to the AFSP or been vetted by TSA before taking flight training and receiving an FAA airman certificate," stated the GAO.

The GAO continued, "TSA's analysis indicated that an additional number of the 25,599 foreign nationals in the FAA airmen registry were also in the TSA AFSP database but had not been successfully vetted, meaning that they had received an FAA airman certificate but had not been successfully vetted or received permission from TSA to begin flight training."

The GAO did not provide the full number of individuals who were not properly vetted.

The GAO's Stephen Lord, in his prepared remarks, told lawmakers that the TSA does not screen new and existing FAA pilot license holders against the Terrorist Screening Database until after the foreign national has completed flight training.

"Thus, foreign nationals obtaining flight training with the intent to do harm, such as three of the pilots and leaders of the September 11 terrorist attacks, could have already obtained the training needed to operate an aircraft before they received any type of vetting," warned the GAO.

The TSA and ICE are working on a pilot program for vetting the names of foreign nationals against immigration databases.

However, the GAO noted that the two agencies "have not specified desired outcomes and time frames, or assigned individuals with responsibility for fully instituting the program."

The GAO further stated, "We recommended that TSA and ICE develop a plan, with time frames, and assign individuals with responsibility and accountability for assessing the results of their pilot program to check TSA AFSP data against information DHS has on applicants' admissibility status to help detect and identify violations, such as overstays and entries without inspection, by foreign flight students, and institute that pilot program if it is found to be effective."

"DHS concurred with this recommendation and stated that TSA will prepare a plan by December 2012 to assess the results of the pilot program with ICE to determine the lawful status of the active AFSP population," said the GAO.

Thinking of enrolling at Trident/TUI? Trident is among those listed by the Dept of Ed as failing their financial responsibility test. The scale is minus 1.0 to 3.0, with 1.5 needed to pass. Trident's most recent (2009-2010) reported score was 0.2 (that's not a typo, that's two-tenths!) A score below 1.0 requires posting a letter of credit.

Their score for 2008-2009 also was 0.2. Their score for 2007-2008 was -1.0; that is, negative 1.0, the lowest possible score.

Quote:October 12, 2011
Degree-Granting Institutions With Low Financial-Responsibility Scores in 2009-10

All private colleges that award federal student aid must participate in the Department of Education's financial-responsibility test, which is based on information from their audited financial statements. The department develops a composite score on a scale of 3.0 to minus-1.0, based on financial ratios that measure factors such as net worth, operating losses, and the relationship of assets to liabilities. Institutions with scores of 1.5 to 3 pass.

In addition to being subject to extra monitoring, those with scores below 1.0 are required to post a letter of credit with the department equal to 10 percent of the federal student aid that goes to their students annually.

The figures shown are for the 180 institutions that received a score below 1.5, as well as the scores that they received in past years, when available. The figures below are for institutional fiscal years ending between July 1 and June 30, and institutions without a score provided for the selected time periods are indicated as "n/a."
. . .
Trident University International Cypress Calif. Private for-profit 0.2 0.2 -1.0
. . .

Quote:

Course: Economics VMU2012
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Dates: July 22 – July 28, 2012



Over the course of 27 years, Mises Institute scholars have crafted and perfected a world-class week-long intensive program in Austrian economics: Mises University. This program has changed the lives of thousands of undergraduate students. Now, thanks to the support of our generous donors, it can change your life too, even if you cannot make it to Auburn. You can enroll in Virtual Mises University, and partake in the intellectual feast over the internet.

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The online course also provides digital copies of any lecture materials (powerpoints, handouts, etc.) used by professors during their presentation.

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We are very excited to be able to offer this unmatched educational experience to anyone in the world, without being limited by physical space or geographic proximity.

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• Thomas DiLorenzo, Loyola University Maryland
• Lucas Engelhardt, Kent State University
• Roger Garrison, Auburn University
• David Gordon, Mises Review
• Jeffrey Herbener, Grove City College
• Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute
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• Peter Klein, University of Missouri
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Too bad Janko didn't have this guy's foresight (or sense of humor). His postmortem confessions might have been a lot more entertaining than his miserable life.

Then again, perhaps that's how his Loyola PhD attempt went south. The girl working the counter no doubt immediately recognized he was an asshole and put his dissertation proposal in the rejected stack.

Quote:Val Patterson
Obituary

...Now that I have gone to my reward, I have confessions and things I should now say. ... I really am NOT a PhD. What happened was that the day I went to pay off my college student loan at the [regionally accredited] U of U[tah], the girl working there put my receipt into the wrong stack, and two weeks later, a PhD diploma came in the mail. I didn't even graduate, I only had about 3 years of college credit. In fact, I never did even learn what the letters "PhD" even stood for. For all of the Electronic Engineers I have worked with, I'm sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked very well, and were well engineered, and I always made you laugh at work.

I nominate Trident/TUI for membership in the distinguished DL Truth Hall of Shame for schools. In addition to their recent accreditation snafu, here's a few other supporting tidbits:

czecksikhs Wrote:Posted 15 June 2012 - 09:49 PM

I submitted 5 files that were just .jpeg files renamed to "Czecksikhs essay 1-5.doc" for my capstone class. I was just hoping for an extension by making the professor think the files were corrupted, but got all A's. The professor even commented on my "insightful discussion of the topic."

Scholar Wrote:Posted 15 June 2012 - 07:12 PM

I was interested to learn of the tuition increase at Trident University and joined this board specifically to let you know that the situation there is, in my opinion, possibly much worse than you might imagine. If what I write below is common knowledge or has been announced by the university then my apologies in advance but my understanding is that it is not known by students nor has it been announced publicly by the new management despite the fact that it has possibly serious implications for the nature of the educational model at Trident University International as well as the future of at least some of its programs and its future as an educational institution.

As you are probably aware Trident University International was served with a "show cause" letter by its accrediting agency, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, (WASC), in the Summer of 2011as a result of inadequate procedures it ints handling of the transcripts of incoming students who had taken courses elsewhere, and because it failed to inform WASC of this despite knowing about it for some time beforehand. The issuing of a "show cause" letter is the most severe reprimand an accreditor can issue short of directly revoking accreditation, as it demands that the institution should show cause why the accreditation should not be revoked. Trident University International had until March 2012 to do so.

As a result staff and faculty there worked extremely hard to weather the crisis, keep students informed and help avoid them defecting to other schools. In March 2012 TUI succeeded in having the show cause injunction removed and instead it was placed on probationary status for the following twelve months. Not exactly a stellar situation but better than losing accreditation.

Almost immediately after successfully passing the show cause deadline the university's management rewarded a slew of its hard working and devoted staff with pink slips. But these followed a series of firings, dismissals and letting goes which had been taking place in 2011.

The prior President had been let go at the time the crisis became known and the Vice-President of Academic Affairs, who was also implicated, took early retirement. The head of the Marketing department, probably seeing the writing on the wall, left shortly thereafter, as did the VP of Human Resources. The Dean of the College of Business, the university's only African American full-time faculty member had already been fired before the crisis broke, and his job was handled for many months by the VP of Student Services. Once the crisis broke the remaining staff worked extremely hard to get TUI through it, but as I indicated their reward for many once they succeeded was to be fired. This applied to the VP of Student Services, (who had been holding down two jobs for many months), the remaining VP of Marketing and a number of other staff.

Then at the end of May full-time faculty were also fired. Professors who had been with the university virtually since its inception in the mid-1990s, and who were an integral part of the doctoral, MBA and undergraduate business degree programs were summarily dismissed apparently as part of a cost-cutting measure in which it seems the educational model of TUI is being radically changed. This model had placed an emphasis on a core group of full-time faculty to develop and deliver the educational content of courses. At the end of May it was made clear that the number and pay of full-time faculty would be reduced and much greater reliance would be placed on part-time faculty than before. It is perhaps worth noting that in the business of online education many part-time faculty work for multiple employers, and because they work part-time their loyalty to any one institution and concern for the students is limited. Often they regard their work as being about "processing" as many students and their papers as possible. You can draw your own conclusions as to what implications that might have for the quality of the education and how the degrees being granted are regarded.

At the moment students may not feel an immediate effect, as courses designed by dismissed faculty are still being used, and indeed dismissed faculty are still shown on Trident's website as still employed by the university. However, these actions along with the tuition increase and the kinds of reactions posted above suggest:

1. An institution in financial crisis which is desperately trying to cut costs and increase revenues, regardless of the medium term impact doing so will have on either educational quality or enrollments.

2. The questionable future of the university's doctoral program.

3. Serious gaps in key personnel. For instance the university has been advertising for a replacement for their VP of Academic Affairs for months with the position still unfilled. There's also no VP of HR. No VP of Marketing. No librarian. No Director of Institutional Research, and as far as I know the Director of the undergraduate Business degree program was also fired.

4. Having seen how devoted and long-standing employees have been treated the morale of the remaining staff and faculty will be in the toilet and you can imagine that many will surely be looking for other options, and that will have a further effect in eroding educational quality.

5. As indicated by the posts above tuition fee increases will put off potential students and one can reasonably expect enrollments to fall adding further to the institution's financial problems.

6. As Trident University International has been owned by venture capital investors (Summit Partners) since 2007, you can also reasonably expect that they are now considering whether to hold on to their investment or whether to sell it off instead, and that may well be the reason for the underlying change in the educational model towards using more part-time faculty - to make the place a better fit for some other potential buyer.

Clearly all this is not likely to be good news for many students, who not unreasonably will be concerned about the uncertainty this situation creates. Yet in the face of all this turmoil the silence from the university is deafening and further undermines confidence in its future. Perhaps new President Sansing, who worked previously for Argosy, will make another YouTube video explaining what is going on, like she did during the "show cause" crisis, but I'd have thought that if she intended to do that she'd have done so by now.

I apologize for how long this post is but I wanted folks to know what's going on at TUI as best I know about it. If anyone here is enrolled there and hears anything further or can provide more information or clarification then posting it here will probably be very helpful to other students.

Quote:2. The data include a variety of variables with different properties. What the variables? Can you identify the variables that has interval properties? How about ordinal? Nominal/categorical?

2. Calculate basic descriptive statistics for the six demographic variables (Gender, Grade, Age, Race, District, and School), show the frequency table for the nominal and ordinal variables.

Quote:3. Organize your report from SPSS, explain how simulation works and how the result looks like and compare it with the probabilities described in the article. Please show the summary statistics of your simulation and the pie chart.

Quote:4. Explain why the simulated result doesn't have to be exact as the theoretical calculation.

Quote:When we want to test multiple groups, we would need to use ANOVA test. Let us using ANOVA (and follow up pair-wise t tests if necessary). Interpret the results. You are welcome to draw the confidence intervals and compare them.

They're from the quasi-governmental administrative agency and they're here to help you....

Oh, that's just the COE, they're a minor national trade-school type accreditor. Nobody at a gold-standard regional accreditor would ever do such a thing just to screw a for-profit for political reasons...would they?

Quote:'False' Statements About a For-Profit
July 13, 2012 - 3:00am

By
Doug Lederman

The 2005 bankruptcy of Decker College drew more than its share of national headlines, not least because one of its investors (and, for a time, its president) was William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts and, at the time, a candidate for governor of New York.

The closure of the for-profit college in Kentucky was precipitated by the U.S. Education Department's September 2005 decision to terminate Decker's eligibility for federal student financial aid. The federal agency made its decision in large part based on statements by the college's accreditor, the Council on Occupational Education, that Decker had delivered three of its programs online without the agency's approval.

On Tuesday, a federal bankruptcy judge in Kentucky ruled that the accrediting agency's representations to the Education Department were false -- saying that Decker officials had made clear to the council on numerous occasions that the college was using distance education to offer the programs, and that the agency had approved the programs nonetheless.

While the judge's ruling comes far too late to resuscitate Decker, it could have major implications for two court proceedings over the college's assets. It could also prove costly for the Council on Occupational Education, as lawyers for the college's estate could sue the agency over actions that they say led to the institution's demise.

"This misrepresentation is absolutely what destroyed Decker," said Peter Coffman, a lawyer with Dow Lohnes who is representing Decker's bankruptcy trustee.

Decker was not entirely trouble-free in 2005, its lawyers admit; the Education Department was auditing the for-profit college, and state and federal officials were examining various sorts of possible wrongdoing, too. But those things "would have been handled," Coffman said, were it not for a series of interactions that summer between the occupational accreditor and the Education Department.

As laid out by Judge Thomas H. Fulton, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Kentucky, a U.S. Education Department official, Ralph LoBosco, asked leaders of the Council on Occupational Education in June 2005 if they knew that Decker was operating associate degree programs in carpentry, electrical and heating/refrigeration work entirely online. In a series of telephone and written communications between the agencies over the next few months, the accreditor stated that its officials "understood that these degrees would be taught primarily using the traditional delivery mode with limited distance education," and that "the programs in question had not been approved to be offered primarily through distance education."

It was based on those and other statements -- which Decker officials tried to challenge at the time -- that, on Sept. 30, 2005, the Education Department made Decker ineligible to participate in federal aid programs, taking away its primary source of revenue. The college entered bankruptcy less than a month later.

But in Judge Fulton's analysis, Decker officials had given the accreditor ample evidence that they planned to use online education to deliver the programs, before the agency approved them. Fulton identifies numerous places in the college's May 2004 applications for approval of the programs where it stated that they would be offered via distance education. Similarly, the judge notes that the college's accreditation self-study in 2004 mentioned the programs' online delivery, and that the agency sent members of its site visit team to tour the college's distance education facilities.

He also recounts a meeting at which Weld, then the institution's president, " 'glowingly' described the nature, structure, and majority online component" of the programs to Representative John Boehner, then the senior Republican on the House education committee, at a May 2005 meeting, with the accrediting agency's president, Gary Puckett, looking on.

"Dr. Puckett sat next to Mr. Boehner at a 'small table' with Mr. Weld but testified that he does not recall such discussion," the judge wrote. "The Court finds Mr. Puckett's lack of recollection somewhat incredible given the detail of Mr. Weld's testimony."

That tone of incredulity marks much of the judge's ruling, which concludes: "For all of these reasons the court [m]ust find that defendant in fact approved delivery of the programs through distance education and that, therefore, the statements were false insofar as they asserted that plaintiff had not been approved to offer the programs through distance education."

The judge offered no explanations for why the agency would have misrepresented Decker's situation, saying that was not within the court's charge. But Decker officials have asserted that Education Department officials were suspicious of the college's growth and that some may have had past differences with Weld.

What Happens Next

Fulton's ruling is likely to have implications for two separate legal proceedings, one before an administrative judge in Washington and the other in bankruptcy court in Kentucky, that have limped along in the years since Decker's bankruptcy. The proceeding in Washington involves the Education Department's attempt to recoup $32 million in funds that Decker disbursed through its online programs; the bankruptcy court is sorting among the creditors' claims (including the federal government's) for the college's remaining assets.

Michael B. Goldstein, another lawyer at Dow Lohnes involved in the case, said that with this week's ruling, the department's claim that Decker should be forced to repay those funds "just went out the window."

Officials at the accrediting agency and at the Education Department did not respond to several messages seeking comment.

Another conflict of interest scandal at UIUC. What is George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) doing to stop this lawless conduct? Does UIUC have a Conflict of Interest Officer? Oh yeah, that's right, it's his domestic partner, Mel Loots--the same person who was cited by the FDA for selling mutant lab pigs to the public for food.

Maybe if George Gollin wasn't being sued over and over in federal court for stalking, extortion, defamation and civil rights violations he could spend more time sticking his big nose in his own business.

Quote:University of Illinois criticized after contract raises conflict of interest concerns
$4.6 million deal went to architectural firm partly owned by husband of key administrator for construction planning


The University of Illinois faces a dispute stemming from a contract awarded to renovate a dilapidated building. A state watchdog board says the school initially failed to alert it about a potential conflict of interest. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune / June 13, 2012)

By Ray Long and Jodi S. Cohen, Chicago Tribune reporters
July 13, 2012

The University of Illinois handed out a $4.6 million contract to an architectural firm partially owned by the husband of a key administrator who oversees the planning of campus construction projects.

The school initially did so without asking for the blessing of a state oversight board that is supposed to review public contracts with potential conflicts of interest. Now the watchdog panel wants the contract voided, with one member contending that the U. of I. is acting "above the law."

University officials say they have been operating within the law, but they acknowledged room for improvement. The contract is on hold as the Procurement Policy Board plans to revisit the issue Tuesday and Gov. Pat Quinn's administration is urging caution.

"This is a serious matter that should be carefully reviewed now and going forward," Brooke Anderson, Quinn's spokeswoman, said Thursday.

The case illustrates the type of cozy relationship that the state wanted to be sure got an extra layer of scrutiny as part of reforms following the impeachment of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The idea is to improve transparency in how contracts are awarded.

The project in question involves renovations to the Urbana-Champaign campus's Natural History Building, where geology, biology and other classes are taught. The 120-year-old building is in such disrepair that half of it is closed, and the university considers it one of the campus's "most critical priorities."

The university gave the architectural design contract to BLDD Architects, a central Illinois firm where Bruce Maxey is a principal who owns 8.9 percent of the company, records show. His wife, Jill Maxey, previously worked at BLDD and is now U. of I.'s associate director of planning. In that position, she works on the initial stages of construction projects. That includes helping draft the scope of the work, coordinating the vendor selection process and helping determine budgets.

Bruce Maxey's firm won the initial contract over 33 others in 2010. BLDD scored just barely above the next two closest competitors, and the university agreed to pay the company $368,000 for the renovation plans. Satisfied with the plans and having secured funding, the university's board of trustees awarded BLDD an additional $4.3 million last December to continue working on the $70 million project.

In a post-Blagojevich world, contracts with potential conflicts of interest are required to go before the five-member procurement board appointed by Quinn and the four legislative leaders.

The oversight board didn't learn about the potential conflict until March — more than a year after the first contract was awarded and months after trustees approved an expansion of the deal. Procurement board members found out the university had bypassed them when the state's chief procurement officer for higher education, Ben Bagby, asked them to waive any potential conflict of interest issues for the upcoming work.

The procurement panel was not on board with that, however. In April, the oversight panel voted 4-0 to recommend the contract expansion be voided because of concerns about conflicts.

"I did not think there was enough transparency so that I could look anybody in the eye and say, 'There's no way … that this woman was involved in that project," said Bill Black, a procurement board member and former Republican state representative from Danville. "You've got to put it out there where reporters and other individuals can look at it and say, 'Ah, that was a fair process.'"

Ed Bedore, the board's senior member appointed by Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago, suggested that the university is acting like it is "above the law."

The procurement panel's thinking was summed up in a letter written by its executive director, Aaron Carter, after the board's vote. "Even the perception of such a conflict of interest can create such a level of distrust with an individual, agency or university that it becomes just as damning to the process as an actual conflict of interest," Carter wrote.

The decision against the U. of I. represents a rare instance when the procurement board voted to recommend voiding a contract. Of the 678 potential conflicts reviewed in the past two years from agencies and universities across the state, the board has voted only three times to void contracts, a board official said. Two of them involved the U. of I.'s partnership with BLDD.

The procurement board's decisions are only advisory, however. Last month, Bagby determined he would disregard the board's recommendation and allow the contract to go forward. He agreed with the university's argument that it would be too costly to change course and pay another company to get up to speed. He also said there was no evidence that anyone acted improperly.

Though they can proceed, university officials indicated Thursday that they probably will wait until the procurement board discusses the issue again Tuesday.

"We will wait until we see the outcome of the meeting and any issues that may arise," said Mike Bass, a U. of I. senior associate vice president in the office of business and financial services. Bass also said he anticipates trustees will discuss the issue at their board meeting next week.

Jill Maxey did not return a call for comment, and university officials responded to questions in writing. University officials said they thought they had procedures in place to avoid a conflict of interest and did not realize they needed to send the contract to the procurement board under the state's new rules. Both the university and BLDD had disclosed the Maxeys' relationship as required, records show.

In addition, the university said it devised an internal "firewall" to keep Jill Maxey out of decisions involving the contract or her husband's company.

But during a May public hearing triggered by the procurement board's recommendation to void the contract, Jill Maxey's supervisor acknowledged that it was an informal wall, and there were "a few slips," according to a transcript. For example, Jill Maxey was copied on emails discussing the project's scope of work as BLDD's proposal was pending, the transcript said.

While Jill Maxey said she did not participate in the selection process, she appointed her subordinate, Tony Battaglia, to the committee. Battaglia had his own potential conflicts: He plays in a band with BLDD employees and his brother-in-law works at the firm.

Battaglia testified that he participated in narrowing the bidders to four but then "recused" himself from working on the final scores because of the associations.

Jill and Bruce Maxey testified that they did not discuss the project while BLDD's proposal was pending.

"Actually, it is going to be hard to believe," Jill Maxey testified, "but we don't talk a lot about the specific projects that Bruce works on because we know that this is a potential situation, and so we actually make a conscious effort to refrain from doing so."

Bagby, along with the deputy general counsel for the state's Executive Ethics Commission, ruled that the U. of I.'s "firewall" was too lax, but neither thought the contract should be killed.

In an interview with the Tribune, Bagby acknowledged that the BLDD contract is "not the best-looking one" but said the U. of I. acted aboveboard.

"You have a situation where the university knew of the potential conflict, it was disclosed, people in the office knew about it, and Jill is not in the decision tree," Bagby said. Going forward, he said, the university should have "a process in place that deals with this better than what was there before."

The two Chicago firms who had the second- and third-highest scores during the selection process both agreed to continue what BLDD started with little or no delays, records show. One declined to comment and the other did not return calls.

Randy West, a vice president at BLDD, said it would "absolutely not" be fair to void the contract. He said the company has worked on U. of I. projects for the past 30 years and has no plans to stop competing for work there. Both he and Bruce Maxey are working on the Natural History Building project.

"We adhere to all requirements and are transparent about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise because we have too much respect for the state and the university to do it any other way," West said.

While the procurement board members plan to discuss the contract at their meeting Tuesday, Bagby said it's time to move on. The university is aiming to complete the project by September 2013.

"You take a situation and you learn from it. Hopefully these things won't have reoccurrence so things can be looked at early on and ahead of the game," Bagby said. "We need to move forward."

Mountain State University lost their NCACS accreditation on July 10, 2012. On July 11, 2012 they got hit with a class action lawsuit. Do similar actions await non-hackers like Trident?

Quote:Burger v. Mountain State University, Inc.
Class Action Complaint
by Sean McGinley on 7/11/2012

A Class Action Complaint was filed against Mountain State University, Inc. in Charleston, West Virginia on July 11, 2012. Mountain State University is a private, for profit university head-quartered in Beckley, West Virginia, with campuses around West Virginia including in Charleston. On July 10, 2012, the HLC announced Mountain State University's accreditation was revoked, leaving thousands of students with worthless college course credits, now unaccredited, after many Mountain State students had incurred tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to pay the college. The Class Action Complaint against Mountain State University, filed by the Charleston law firms of DiTrapano Barrett & DiPiero, PLLC ( http://www.dbdlawfirm.com ) and the Webb Law Firm, PLLC ( http://www.rustywebb.com ), asserts claims false and deceptive practices, negligence, breach of contract, and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing by the University and its Board of Trustees.

The Class Action Complaint explains that accreditation is a third-party stamp of approval that ensures universities or programs are meeting a minimum set of national standards. If a university loses its primary accreditation, any subsequent degrees conferred by the university are effectively worthless. The Higher Learning Commission (“HLC”) is the regional accrediting agency that accredits institutions of higher education in West Virginia. According to a spokesman for the HLC, losing an accreditation “is a very rare circumstance.” Mountain State University is the first higher education institution in West Virginia history to have its school-wide accreditation revoked.

In 2008, the HLC told Mountain State in its report that despite the university's strong financial position and rising student enrollment, "it is not clear how the University will continue to respond to future challenges and opportunities with no clearly defined process for updating the University's long-term plans; limited empirical evidence [transparency] guiding planning and budgeting ... no program review processes to determine and sustain academic quality and viability; and a lack of strong communication and collaboration in governance." The 79-page 2008 report went on to say "long-term planning was remarked as “not necessary” and “pie in the sky” by some employees and board members,’ and expressed concerns that there were no mechanisms in place to get feedback on how to improve the university.”

In 2010, a national agency (“NLNAC”) revoked the accreditation for Mountain State University's nursing school. That prompted the West Virginia nursing board to place Mountain State's nursing program on provisional status, for major problems in leadership and failure to keep up-to-date student records.

Throughout the accreditation problems, members of Mountain State's board of trustees said they didn't know how bad the issues in the nursing school were. They promised to take corrective action. But in June 2011, the HLC placed Mountain State University on "show cause" status, citing the school for its top-down leadership, lack of long-term planning, failure to collaborate with faculty, failure to give information to students, and the loss of specialized accreditation for the nursing program. The HLC gave Mountain State one year to make big fixes at the school or risk losing its accreditation altogether. Also, in 2011, the Chronicle of Higher Education indicated in its report that “[n]o other college in the survey [of 519 colleges] devoted such a substantial share of its resources to a president[,]” as did Mountain State University.

After a long, drawn out process of embarrassing events featuring then President Charles Polk, which included the revelation that Polk had a salary of more than $1.84 million in 2009 (according to media accounts) – higher than his counterparts at Harvard and Yale – and had used the school’s two private planes on an excessively high number of occasions, Mr. Polk was fired as President by Mountain State University's Board on January 19, 2011. Internal employees and students of MSU have indicated to media outlets that the Board obviously should have fired him sooner.

From 2008 through July 2012, Defendants reassured students and prospective students that Mountain State University was in sound shape, when in fact, such was not true. On June 28, 2012, the Board of Trustees of the Higher Learning Commission voted to withdraw Mountain State’s accreditation, effective August 27, 2012. The HLC’s action was made public on July 10, 2012. Students found out about Mountain State’s accreditation being withdrawn by hearing it on the news. The HLC explained Mountain State lost its accreditation after years of failing to correct major problems in leadership, program evaluations, and campus-wide governance. The Class Action was filed by Charleston West Virginia lawyers Sean McGinley, Lonnie Simmons and Robert Bastress, and Rusty Webb.