Quote:Number Of PhD Recipients Using Food Stamps Surged During Recession: Report
The Huffington Post | By Bonnie Kavoussi Posted: 05/07/2012 11:15 am Updated: 05/07/2012 3:36 pm

In this economy, even having multiple degrees isn't a guarantee against poverty.

The number of PhD recipients on food stamps and other forms of welfare more than tripled between 2007 and 2010 to 33,655, according to an Urban Institute analysis cited by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The number of master's degree holders on food stamps and other forms of welfare nearly tripled during that same time period to 293,029, according to the same analysis.

The boost in PhD recipients receiving food stamps is just the latest indication of how Americans are struggling in a down economy. Overall, the number of Americans on food stamps rose 43 percent over the past three years to 46.3 million Americans as of February 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture.

In addition, even graduate degrees that many used to consider a guarantee to a life of wealth and success are going down in value. The sluggish economy has pushed graduates with law degrees to look for jobs outside of the legal profession, according to U.S. News and World Report.

The situation is particularly dire for faculty working outside the tenure track as cuts to funding for public colleges have squeezed their salaries. Many adjunct faculty members are likely to be on welfare, since they live on "poverty wages," the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Meanwhile, secure tenure-track jobs are disappearing as adjunct faculty positions become more the norm, according to several news sources. While more than half of all university faculty members were tenured or on the tenure track in 1975, that percentage has plunged to less than a third of all faculty members as of 2007, according to Department of Education data cited by the Chronicle of Higher Education in a separate report.

All of these factors, plus a less-than-stellar job market, have forced many PhDs to work in menial jobs. There are 5,057 janitors with PhDs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by the Houston Chronicle.

In another sign that a graduate degree is no guarantee of a secure job, some students that are just graduating from graduate school are having trouble getting job interviews, according to the Hartford Courant.

Students of Idaho-approved but unaccredited Canyon College are reporting the school has closed.  This post from a members-only Facebook group from May 4, 2012:

Quote:I started at canyon college 3 months after the closure of ccnh well surprise they closed this month wth, but now moving forward with university of natural medicine I sm two for two what r the odds

Friday at 1:18pm

Perv prof Kenneth Martin Kyle was an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at regionally accredited Cal State East Bay, and formerly Associate Professor of Sociology at (where else?) Penn State. The San Francisco resident (no surprise) got his masters and doctorate in poli sci from Arizona State.

Kyle was teaching "Seminar in Interpretive Policy Analysis" and "Human Organizations and Social Realities." In 2005 he published his first book on homelessness and federal policy addressing the homeless.
http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile...id=profile


Kenneth Martin Kyle
Regional Accreditation--the gold standard, unless you are 5 months old

Quote:Woman, 22, given two life sentences for allowing professor, 49, to have sex with her five-month-old daughter

• Tessa L. Vanvlerah met professor online when they swapped child porn
  
• Allowed him to come to her house on several occasions to have sex with both her and her baby
  
• He was sentenced to 37 years in jail

By Rachel Quigley
PUBLISHED: 11:02 EST, 1 May 2012 | UPDATED: 15:46 EST, 1 May 2012

A woman who admitting allowing her five-month-old daughter to be raped by a man she met online was handed down two consecutive life sentences without probation today.

Tessa L. Vanvlerah, 22, from St Louis, was charged with first-degree statutory rape and sodomy, as well as incest and child pornography.

Her attorneys failed to convince a judge that she should get probation because she suffers from a psychological disorder.

Dr Brooke Kraushaar said a dependent-personality disorder caused Vanvlerah to participate in the sexual fantasies of Kenneth M. Kyle, 49, a college professor from California, even though she knew sex acts involving her then-five-month-old daughter were wrong.

Kyle was sentenced to 37-and-a-half years in prison in March after pleading guilty of abusing the infant during several occasions in 2009, according to St Louis Today.

Along with hundreds of child porn images on Kyle's computers, investigators found information that led them to the St Louis area, where Kyle had visited Vanvlerah four times in five months since meeting online.

During those visits, prosecutors say the pair had sex with the girl and each other at various hotels.

Dr Krauhaar also told the court that the 22-year-old was so afraid of being rejected by others that she also allowed Kyle to choke, burn and urinate on her.

But prosecutors said Vanvlerah exercised free will when she started communicating online with Kyle and sharing child pornography. She also carved his name into her arm at his request but refused when he suggested bestiality.

They also said she spoke with another man who sent her child pornography and invited him to also come and have sex with her infant daughter.

Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Kathi Alizadeh also pointed out that Vanvlerah willingly posed for pictures with Kyle and her daughter.

St Louis today also reported that a woman obtained an order of protection in 2008 against Vanvlerah, then 18, accusing her of seducing and having sex with the woman's 16-year-old autistic son.

The autistic boy is believed to be the father of the infant in the case.

The infant, who is now three years old, was placed with a foster mother who has since adopted her.

She read out a victim's impact statement saying the child would scream when anyone bathed her or changed her diaper.

Even now she has night terrors and asks every night to make sure no one comes into the home.

The woman, in tears, said the girl was getting better day by day now that she 'is no longer Tessa's plaything and she is no longer Tessa's child'.

Quote:...We therefore offer in reward $10,000 to anyone who provides the college transcripts of President Barack Obama. Occidental, Harvard, Columbia...any would represent more intellectual curiosity about the leader of the free world than the media has demonstrated since Obama won the Democrat primary.

Quote:Blogger offers $10,000 bounty for Obama college transcripts
Published: 8:46 PM 05/01/2012
By Jason Howerton - The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller has identified the owner of a website that promised on Tuesday to pay $10,000 to anyone who can provide an authentic copy of President Barack Obama’s course transcripts from his days at Occidental College, Harvard University or Columbia University.

Although its one-page website is presented anonymously, conservative blogger Brooks Bayne confirmed to The Daily Caller that he is responsible for it.

Bayne told TheDC that a group of eight people – including some he called “recognizable” figures – are coordinating the effort to make Obama’s college transcripts public, Bayne told The Daily Caller. He declined to name any of them.

“We are doing this because we are tired of the media not doing their job,” he said. ”We are tired of the PR propaganda coming out of places like Media Matters, and we are tired of this administration stonewalling over things like Fast and Furious.”

“We are tired of a lot of things.”

The $10,000 reward, he explained, is “absolutely” real and will be paid to anyone who can provide any verifiable college transcripts belonging to Obama. Bayne said his organization’s members plan to pool their money to raise the cash prize, and added that the amount could grow if others step forward to contribute.

Obama himself is not eligible to claim the reward, Bayne said. The president may, however, release his academic records voluntarily, he added.

And given media reports about financial pressures professional educators face, he said, the $10,000 offer could be attractive.

“Maybe they have a copy of the transcripts laying around,” Bayne told TheDC. “They can make some cash. I mean, we are just trying to spread the wealth around.”

Bayne confirmed that neither Gov. Mitt Romney nor his presidential campaign is involved with his group’s effort, or with the $10,000 reward for Obama’s college transcripts. The question itself prompted a laughing fit that lasted for roughly 20 seconds. He also insisted that there are no right-wing pressure groups — what he called “shadow groups” and “beltway douche-bag groups” — pulling the strings.

But like right-leaning groups in Washington, D.C., Bayne believes media outlets have given President Obama a free pass on his personal history. And because academic records are an indication of a candidate’s intellect and seriousness, he said, Obama’s college transcripts are fair game,

But for some reason, he mused, no one has been able to find Obama’s. ”But they sure found George Bush’s college transcripts, didn’t they?”

The website advertising Bayne’s $10,000 bounty reads like a direct challenge to the press.

“You’ve failed, media,” it says.

“You’ve had over three years to vet President Barack Obama. Yet in three years in office and over a year of campaigning beforehand, you have either been oddly uninterested or purposefully ignorant of Barack Obama’s educational history.”

Finding the president’s transcripts, the website adds, “would represent more intellectual curiosity about the leader of the free world than the media has demonstrated since Obama won the Democrat primary.”

The statement provides a link to the college transcripts of former President George W. Bush, which The New Yorker published in November 1999, a full year before his election to the presidency.

“Media, your stranglehold on the truth ends NOW. Let the vetting begin,” the website proclaims.

The statement is signed “Bellum Letale,” a Latin expression meaning “deadly war.”

The website’s domain name — thetrenches.us — was registered using 9220 Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles as its contact address. That commercial office building on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood houses Ford Models, Abrams Artists, Atlas Entertainment and Media Talent Group, Mosaic Los Angeles, Sotheby’s Auction House, Comerica and Pat Boone Enterprises.

Bayne refused to identify the building tenant that registered his website, but he did confirm that Boone, an outspoken conservative who has made headlines in the past questioning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, is not connected to the effort.

Asked what he expects to find in Obama’s college transcripts, should they turn up, Bayne said that could challenge conventional wisdom about the types of classes he took and the grades he received.

“All we have heard from the media is how much smarter Barack is than all the other candidates,” he explained.

He also suspects Obama’s coursework could highlight his “hardcore leftist-slash-progressive-slash-neo-marxist point of view.”

“I don’t think it is a conspiracy to say someone can have that viewpoint,” he told TheDC. ”There are other people in America who have that view point.”

But by keeping his college history out of public view, Bayne suggested, Obama may be hiding something he should be honest about.

“If you are going to have a viewpoint, take a stand,” he said. “Don’t be a pussy about it, seriously.”

Have any of you guys ever heard of any schools offering a degree in "biblical archaeology" through distance education? The University of Chicago I think, offers an undergrad degree in this field maybe the only one in the nation..

St. Luke School of Medicine is not showing any signs of giving up its battle against stalker scumbags George Gollin and Alan Contreras. Government action without due process is a violation of your constitutional rights. If you or your business has been included in a "degree mill" list or otherwise damaged by false statements by either of these two reprobates it's time to throw down and lawyer up.

Quote:SLSOM LOOKING FOR PARTNERS IN CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT

Recently, in August 2011, SLSOM refiled its lawsuit against George Gollin, Professor of Physics, University of Illinois, the University of Illinois, Alan Contreras and his Office of Degree Authorization, State of Oregon, and others, for conspiracy to violate civil rights, libel and slander, interference with business advantage, and more than a dozen other violations of rights and privacy. There are believed to be numerous articles where Gollin may have libeled persons, institutions, or displayed racist mannerisms.

There are also numerous persons, colleges and universities that may have been libeled, or stalked, or terrorized by George Gollin through and on his University of Illinois website. Additionally, George Gollin, with the aid of the University of Illinois, claims to be the author of Oregon's notorious "Diploma Mill List", published by Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization. This same "Diploma Mill List" in many ways is fraudulent and violates the law. According to Oregon law, all colleges and universities to be placed of Oregon's "Diploma Mill List" should be summonsed for public hearings before being placed on the list. They also have the right to be represented by an attorney.

Furthermore, after the hearing the college or university has the right to appeal in a superior court located in the county of Oregon which it is located. Accordingly, the jurisdiction of the ODAS "Diploma Mill List" should be limited solely to the State of Oregon.

SLSOM does not feel that these persons. agencies, and institutions can defile peoples names and reputations, violate their civil rights, otherwise terrorize them with unjust or false claims, and then claim their are immune from lawsuits.

There are approximately a dozen other states that refer to Oregon's "Diploma Mill List" as their own law. Each of those states also violate your constitutional rights by limiting your future employment opportunities, right to assemble, right to privacy, and right to due process of law. You are labeled a criminal, and branded as a law-breaker, with less evidence than it takes to write a traffic ticket. Even worse, you have no right to appeal the branding. Branding an educational institution as a "Diploma Mill", or an individual as a graduate of a "Diploma Mill" is something that should be determined in a court of law. It is not an action to be determined by a few people using the color of law to further personal agendas, without a right to appeal.

ANY COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY THAT IS ON OREGON'S "DIPLOMA MILL LIST" THAT HAS NOT HAD A FORMAL PUBLIC HEARING, and, or, is located outside of the state of Oregon, or outside of the United States, is invited to join St. Luke School of Medicine in its class-action, for violation of its civil rights under the color of law, violation of the due process of law clause of the United States Constitution, and other charges.

Any college or university, or student, graduate or former student of any college or university that meets the above qualifications for joining the class-action lawsuit against Gollin, the University of Illinois, Alan Contreras, and Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization, is invited to join the lawsuit. Please contact Dr. Dolphin for more information about joining the class-action lawsuit, info@stluke.edu.

Any individual person who feels that he or she may have been libeled, stalked, or persecuted by George Gollin, where he has identified himself as a professor of Physics at the University of Illinois in any media (internet, newspaper, radio, television, magazine, etc.) is also invited to join the lawsuit. Please contact Dr. Dolphin for more information about joining the class-action, info@stluke.edu.

Give Dr. Jerroll Dolphin credit for persistence. After his ill-fated 2010 lawsuit against George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) was dismissed on a technicality, he took another shot in February, 2011. He attempted to file an in forma pauperis action in pro per in Los Angeles federal court, but the judge denied his request and dismissed the case.

In August 2011 Dolphin filed another complaint in Los Angeles federal court. The original complaint also was filed in pro per, and as the defendants queued up to file their motions to dismiss it looked like Dolphin was going to go down in flames again. Not because there was no merit to his case, but as in the original action because he lacked the legal expertise to comply with the convoluted legal system and the intricate local rules.

But then Dolphin found a real lawyer, Larry D. Walls of Beverly Hills, who substituted in and filed a first amended complaint on Dolphin's behalf. Hope springs eternal! One might expect that with the assistance of a lawyer with some 36 years experience that at least Dolphin would not be getting tripped up on arcane procedural matters.


  First Amended Complaint Pt1.PDF (Size: 2.47 MB / Downloads: 1891)

  First Amended Complaint Pt2.PDF (Size: 2.03 MB / Downloads: 1871)

  First Amended Complaint Pt3.PDF (Size: 1.74 MB / Downloads: 1932)

  First Amended Complaint Pt4.PDF (Size: 2.82 MB / Downloads: 1837)

  First Amended Complaint Pt5.PDF (Size: 557.81 KB / Downloads: 1834)

Unfortunately it looks like Walls is a former LA County DA who only recently jumped back into private practice. He hasn't even updated his profile on the California state bar website. It appears he might not be entirely up to speed on civil law and motion practice in the federal courts. The court is rejecting Walls' paperwork for trivial compliance issues, such as failing to include a title page.

So far, two groups of defendants, including the State of Oregon and Anal Contreras, have been dismissed from the case. Several of the original plaintiffs also have been dismissed.


  Order Dismissing Ed Foundation.PDF (Size: 21.35 KB / Downloads: 1985)

  Contreras Motion Dismiss.PDF (Size: 616.85 KB / Downloads: 3072)

  Order Dismissing Contreras.PDF (Size: 21.34 KB / Downloads: 1927)

  Order Dismissing Farmer.PDF (Size: 9.14 KB / Downloads: 1808)

Defendants Gollin and U of I have a motion to dismiss scheduled for hearing April 30, 2012. The court has refused to grant Dolphin leave to file corrected paperwork, which suggests the court is warming up to clear the decks.


  Gollin Motion Dismiss.PDF (Size: 747.47 KB / Downloads: 2159)

  Plaintiffs Opp To Gollins Motion to Dismiss.PDF (Size: 335.43 KB / Downloads: 2009)

Again, it's a shame Dolphin can't seem to get his case heard on the merits. Reading over the complaint it seems clear that Gollin has been engaging in his customary slimy and despicable conduct, all to Dolphin's severe detriment. In addition to the previously alleged defamation and extortion, we see new allegations of civil rights violations and even computer hacking as well.

Wonder why Gollin hasn't mentioned any of this? Illinois is bankrupt; how many tens of thousands of dollars is George Gollin's chronic assholistic stupidity going to cost Illinois taxpayers this time?

Bill Dayson, aka Hungry Ghost at DD, is upset. Seems that the DEA aggressively raided his favorite pothead, dope addict enterprise, Oaksterdam University.

Quote:...with a small army of federal agents in full SWAT-style body-armor, helmets and burp-guns drag. It seems that they had some search warrants to serve, so they used the opportunity to completely trash the premises, breaking down doors and seizing and carting off anything that wasn't nailed down as 'evidence'.

Quote:...using the warrant as license to smash their way in and steal and/or destroy personal property.

Quote:It's not just an army of paramilitary police with body armor, helmets and automatic weapons smashing in doors (apparently the US Dept of Justice has never heard of doorknobs), reportedly the IRS is all over Oaksterdam's and its owner's finances as well, looking for any irregularities.

Thanks, Washington. Glad to know you're protecting all us little people.

Quote:Michael Horn, Contributor
4/12/2012 @ 11:33AM
Yes, University of Phoenix is Disruptive; No, That Doesn't Make It the End-All

Many of my friends in the education world are fond of talking about how the University of Phoenix is not in fact a disruptive innovation.

They don’t just stop this statement with the University of Phoenix of course. I’m using the University of Phoenix as shorthand. What they mean are many of the distinctly online universities that have emerged over the last couple of decades—everyone from Kaplan University to DeVry to Bridgepoint.

They are wrong. These online universities are disruptive innovations relative to traditional universities. They are now on their own sustaining innovation track, which every disruptive innovation moves to as it grows, expands, improves, and marches up market. It’s also true that not all of them will succeed in these endeavors.

The fact that I’m saying they are disruptive innovations in the face of many saying they aren’t strikes me as ironic, given that I often find my job is to correct people who want to declare nearly everything disruptive and misapply the term. I also readily admit that online learning isn’t inherently disruptive; when it’s used in a hybrid format to complement or extend traditional brick-and-mortar learning, chances are it’s being used as a sustaining innovation. No technology is inherently a disruptive innovation, as all technologies can be applied to sustain or disrupt the industry’s incumbents.

I’ll explain though why online universities are disruptive in a moment, but one more word. Just because these universities are disruptive relative to the traditional universities doesn’t mean that what they do is for the common good per se. For a variety of reasons, I personally tend to think that is often the case, but disruptive innovation isn’t a normative term; it doesn’t imply that something is morally good or bad.

Nor does the term imply that these universities are the end-all be-all of disruption in the higher education space. Over the last couple of years—and in a flurry in the last few months—we’ve seen another wave of disruptive innovations launched in higher education that I suspect may disrupt the first disruptors. Combined with continued up-market movement by some in the first wave, I suspect this new wave will have far reaching consequences for the higher education sector over the next decade.

But let me first explain why the University of Phoenix and its peers are disruptive relative to traditional institutions.

A disruptive innovation is one that transforms a sector by introducing a product or service that is more convenient, simple to use, and/or affordable than the existing products or services in a market. Disruptions tend to start as not as good as the existing products or services as judged by their historical measures of performance, and then, over time, they are able to march up market such that they are able to handle more complicated tasks. Many people flock to the disruptive innovation over time as it becomes good enough, as the customers are delighted by something that carries this new value proposition around convenience, simplicity, and/or affordability. As a result of these dynamics, disruptive innovations first serve nonconsumers (people who previously could not participate in the market) or people who have been overshot by the incumbents in the market. A critical thing to keep in mind is that this process does not occur over night; sometimes it occurs over several decades. And not every incumbent or traditional institution will be wiped away. Some will continue to perform important jobs for which a, relatively speaking, small set of customers are willing to pay.

Lastly, for something to be a disruptive innovation, it has to have two components: a technology enabler and a business model that together allow it to extend a low-cost value proposition up market.

In Disrupting College, we discussed that this is why land-grant universities and community colleges have not in fact been disruptive innovations. Although they have many of the characteristics of disruptive innovations—entities more affordable than their higher education predecessors that extended access to populations previously unable to participate in higher education—they didn’t have a technology core that allowed them to take a low-cost value proposition up-market. To move up market and serve students at the higher end, these institutions instead had to replicate the costs of the existing institutions—research faculty, buildings, and so forth—which meant they ended up taking on the same business model as the incumbents and, as they went up market, ultimately offered the same value proposition.

We asserted that online universities, however, had this technological core that allowed them to extend their new value proposition around, in this case, the disruptive attributes of convenience and accessibility, up-market.

Many have been quick to take a swipe at this assertion. Kevin Carey, who authored an insightful piece in the New Republic recently about the next wave of disruptive innovation, said that because these online universities were still offering degrees, they were ultimately offering the same value proposition.

I don’t think this is true.

When minimills disrupted integrated steel mills, for example, they were still offering steel ultimately. It was simply at a lower cost.

“Aha!” skeptics claim. That’s just it. Look at the prices that the University of Phoenix and others charge, and you see that it’s not all that different—and sometimes it is even a bit higher—than their traditional competitors. Doesn’t that mean they are not disruptive?

Not necessarily. When the minimills were disrupting the integrated steel mills, prices only really fell in a given tier of the market each time the minimills succeeded in chasing out all of their higher-cost competitors. So long as there are high-cost competitors in the market, there is little incentive in place to price significantly lower. Once the integrated mills were gone, for example, prices collapsed by 20 percent in the market—which represented the cost advantage that the minimills held over the integrated players.

A typical traditional university today incurs operating deficits of 10 percent of revenues, even as the disruptive online players report operating profit as a percentage of sales to be roughly 30 percent. In other words, these online players have a cost advantage of roughly 40 percentage points. Western Governors University—one of the few disruptive institutions that truly prices its offering lower—shows how much room the leading online institutions likely have to price lower if they had to (although Western Governors University likely actually costs less than many of the other online universities because of its innovative teaching model that leverages technology in some more purposeful and innovative ways).

Stay tuned in other words—although it is important to acknowledge that this picture is complicated by the role that the government (at the state and federal level) plays in propping up costs and prices in the market through its subsidies, grants, and loans. Carey also does an excellent job of capturing this dynamic in an article he authored in the New Republic. In the case of the online players, because of the existence of Pell Grants and because institutions are unable to limit the amount of loans students may take out, the government has in essence created a price floor below which it hasn’t historically made much sense to price oneself (although some of the newer disruptive players like New Charter University, which will not take any federal funding, will change that). In addition, the picture has been complicated because traditional universities receive a significant amount of funds from these and other sources, which means they have historically been able to keep tuition prices relatively low, even as their costs have increased rapidly. As the fast-rising tuition prices in California and elsewhere suggest, however, that game is nearing its end, particularly as government sources of financing continue to dry up in the years ahead.

Indeed, when disruptive innovation takes hold in a market, as Clayton Christensen wrote in The Innovator’s Dilemma, often the basis of competition goes through several phases—from first competing on functionality, then to reliability, then to convenience, and then finally to price. Today’s dominant online universities do seem to compete much more heavily on convenience than anything else, which signals that the price competition is still to come.

Furthermore, there is one other critical difference in the value proposition that many of the online universities offer compared to their traditional university peers. For the traditional colleges and universities, the way they go up market is by climbing the Carnegie Classification “ladder” to gain prestige—and more money. How do they climb the ladder? By looking more and more like Harvard. Becoming a research institution is a good jump for many. As a result, a critical—one might even say overriding, as judged based on what faculty tend to prioritize—value proposition traditional institutions offer is around knowledge creation.

For the online universities, however, this isn’t their path to greater returns and more money because adding a research mission would in fact cause their margins to decline. As we identified in Disrupting College, one of the critical reasons for climbing administrative costs in traditional universities is the complexity of managing the fundamentally different business models of research and teaching under one umbrella. Taking on this complexity for focused online universities therefore makes no sense, which ensures that their value proposition will continue to be built around proliferating knowledge and learning—not research.

Even though both traditional and online colleges and universities offer “degrees,” they have different value propositions in some critical respects.

I do tend to agree with Carey, however, that the disruption that will, in many cases, have more weight across the entire sector when all is said and done is from the entities that are starting to offer certificates—and are modularizing the university and eating away at the monopoly on credentials that the market has historically valued. As any industry becomes more modular, the brand that is valued in a market tends to shift to the component level—so those institutions offering courses (like an MITx) will begin to be what is valued. The parallel will be similar to what happened in the computer industry where there was a transition period in which people swore by the power of their Silicon Graphics server and just couldn’t imagine a Dell server ever being good enough. And then all of a sudden Silicon Graphics filed for bankruptcy protection, but what mattered in the server market wasn’t the fact that what replaced it was a Dell, but rather the Nvidia processor inside.

Indeed, there are a substantial number of students today for whom a degree doesn’t matter, which is why the focus out of Washington, D.C. and other quarters on bolstering the percentage of Americans with degrees is somewhat worrisome. More than that, the “job to be done” that many students hire education institutions to do today isn’t even to get a credential per se, but to help them get access to a better or different job, get promoted—or hang on to the job that they have now. A credential is merely a key attribute of the solution for many, but not all.

But that doesn’t mean that the University of Phoenix and its brethren aren’t in their own right disruptive—and won’t necessarily have something to say about all of the exciting entrepreneurial action taking place in the market now either. Stay tuned because the disruption in higher education is heating up.

Ever wonder how a notorious stalker and crackpot like George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin) could have gotten the time of day from the SS? The FTC laughed him out of the building, as did all other reputable law enforcement agencies.

Now we are seeing the real SS in action. No character, no morals, no common sense...just the kind of losers and degenerates who think an ass-scratching, armpit-sniffing nose-picking stalker has any credibility.

I guess the SS figured that after consorting with a national embarrassment like George Gollin there really was no conduct low enough to be considered "infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful."

Quote:Inquiry points to wider Secret Service scandal involving as many as 21 women
By David Nakamura and Ed O'Keefe, Tuesday, April 17, 6:31 AM

Investigators believe that as many as 21 women were brought by U.S. Secret Service and military personnel to the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia, last week during a night of carousing, a dramatic increase in the number of women previously disclosed by government officials.

Officials said 11 Secret Service and 10 military personnel are suspected of misconduct that took place before President Obama arrived in Colombia for an economic summit. Initial reports suggested that the military personnel, some of whom were confined to their rooms after the scandal broke, had violated curfew, while the Secret Service members had engaged with the women, who were allegedly working as prostitutes.

But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Tuesday that Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told her that the preliminary investigation has determined that 20 or 21 women were brought to the hotel last Wednesday night. Agency investigators in Cartagena have obtained copies of the women's identification cards, which they were required to present at the hotel, and are attempting to interview some of the women, said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), head of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

King said investigators have determined that none of the women were minors.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said that Sullivan briefed Collins on the investigation "and advised her that 21 U.S. personnel were involved, to include 11 Secret Service personnel. The allegations involved misconduct with women. The exact number of individuals beyond the U.S. personnel is still under investigation."

The disclosures make clear that what first appeared to be an isolated case of misbehavior was in fact a night of more widespread debauchery that included heavy drinking and a trip to the Pleyclub, a strip club where the men allegedly paid for women's services. The participation of two Secret Service supervisors, according to people with knowledge of the investigation, suggests that the men had little fear of repercussions -- until hotel workers and Colombian police reported the matter to the U.S. Embassy.

At his daily briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama has "confidence" in Sullivan's leadership of the Secret Service and is awaiting the results of an internal investigation.

"Sullivan acted quickly in response to this incident, and he's overseeing an investigation as we speak," Carney said. "This incident needs to be investigated, and it is being investigated. We need to see what the investigation reveals. We're not going to speculate about the conclusions it might reach."

Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Sullivan told her that "the most important quality for a Secret Service officer is character. If the facts prove to be as reported on this, this is an incredible lack of character and breach of security, and potentially extremely serious."

The Secret Service has revoked the top-secret security clearances of the 11 men under investigation and placed them on administrative leave. The men have also turned in their agency BlackBerrys, said King, who said the men did not have any sensitive documents in their hotel rooms. He added that some of the men said they did not know that the women were prostitutes.

"Even if they weren't prostitutes, it's not right to bring foreigners back to their rooms," King said. "It would probably be safer if they were prostitutes because then we would know who they were working for."

Two of the Secret Service personnel are senior agents paid at the higher levels of the government's pay scale, according to congressional officials with knowledge of the investigation.

The two agents, whom one official referred to as "GS-14s," are near the top of the General Schedule, the compensation system for federal employees. Depending on where the agents are based and other factors, they could earn $110,000 or more annually. Two people with knowledge of the investigation described the men as supervisors.

. . .

The rules at the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, are more vague. According to the regulations, employees are prohibited from engaging in any "criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, or other conduct prejudicial to the government," an official said. . . .