Waiting for Cash in Illinois

Quote:...Faced with its own backlog of $436 million, the University of Illinois System announced furlough and hiring freeze plans Tuesday that would trim $82 million from its operating budget.

...The University of Illinois’s furloughs of 11,000 employees are expected to generate $17 million, which would address only about 4 percent of the $436 million backlog.

Quote:First Transgender Presidential Appointee

Quote:For Amanda Simpson, believed to be America's first openly transgender presidential appointee, the job she starts Tuesday in the U.S. Commerce Department is an honor and the culmination of a career dedicated to understanding military technology. -...-
I've broken barriers at lots of other places and I always win people over with who I am and what I can do -...-.
President Obama has walked a fine line when dealing with members of the gay and transgender community. He was widely supported by gay voters in 2008, but has since come under criticism from many of those same proponents for not acting fast or hard enough to expand their rights, in their view.

Why do I think it can't?

Quote:— By Bernie Woodall

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sesame Street will soon introduce its first HIV-positive Muppet character to children of South Africa, where one in nine people have the virus that can lead to AIDS.

The upbeat female Muppet will join "Takalani Sesame" on Sept. 30 for its third season on the South African Broadcasting Corp.

The character -- which has yet to have a name or final color or form -- will travel to many if not all of the eight other nations that air versions of the educational children's show that began in the United States in 1969, said Joel Schneider, vice president and senior adviser to the Sesame Street Workshop.

Schneider said talks are under way to introduce an HIV-positive character to U.S. viewers.

Schneider announced the new character this week at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, where he spoke by telephone on Thursday.

"This character will be fully a part of the community," Schneider said. "She will have high self-esteem. Women are often stigmatized about HIV and we are providing a good role model as to how to deal with one's situation and how to interact with the community."

The program is aimed at children from 3 to 7 and the messages delivered by the new character will be "appropriate," said Schneider, meaning that there will be no explicit mention of sex.

"Not every show will deal explicitly with HIV/AIDS," Schneider said. "We want to show that here is an HIV-positive member of our community who you can touch and interact with.

"We will be very careful to fashion our messages so they are appropriate to the age group. What do I do when I cut my finger? What do I do when you cut your finger? That sort of thing."

"Takalani Sesame" will be the second children's show in South Africa to have an HIV-positive character. But it is believed to be the first among shows designed for preschoolers, said Beatrice Chow, spokeswoman for the Sesame Street Workshop in New York.

In some parts of South Africa, 40 percent of women of child-bearing age are infected with HIV, and in 2000, about 40 percent of adult deaths in South Africa were attributed to AIDS, according to the State Department.

Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Free online university gets high first marks

Quote:Wed, Dec 23, 2009

Well receieved [sic] among students in its first year, University of the People adds well-known educators to its faculty lineup
By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor

University of the People, one of the newest members of the free online education arena, is adding academic heft with credentialed faculty and advisors, and nine out of 10 students who took classes in its first term said they would recommend the university to family and friends.

Launched in September with $1 million in startup money from founder and president Shai Reshef, University of the People's inaugural class included 179 students who took web-based college courses free of charge, only paying between $10 and $100 to process exams taken at the end of the semester.

The charge depends on the student's country of residence. Admissions, study materials, and online interaction with faculty members that include retired and working professors, experts from various fields, and graduate students are available at no cost.

A university poll released last month showed that 90 percent of respondents from the first class said they would "definitely or likely recommend the school to their peers and family."

The online school also unveiled demographic information for the first time. The 120 new students joining University of the People for its second term--which began Nov. 19--are between 18 and 63 years old and hail from 47 countries.

Eighty-two students in the newest class are taking business administration courses, and 38 are enrolled in computer science classes.

University officials plan to expand their course offerings in the coming years. University of the People's third term starts in mid-January, Reshef said. University officials decided to split the school year into five terms instead of three because the institution's pedagogy called for shorter, more focused lessons and reviews.

Officials were somewhat surprised by students' overwhelming approval, Reshef said, because faculty members are searching for the best ways to manage classes that include students proficient in English and others who speak English as a second language.

"We expected some bumps in the road, and we're still expecting them," Reshef said. "There will always be surprises. And not everything was smooth and perfect, but our students are happy with the opportunity we provide them, so they're patient with us."

Reshef said University of the People professors documented stark contrasts in class participation. Whereas American students would ask series of questions during online lectures, students from Asian countries rarely followed up with queries.

"In some cultures, asking questions is very positive," he said. "In some cultures, it's an admittance of not knowing the material ... so it is all about perception."

Reshef announced this month that David Harris Cohen, former vice president and dean of Columbia University, and Alexander Tuzhilin, a New York University professor of information systems, were named as the university's provost and computer science chair, respectively.

Who is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab?

Quote:In the wake of the attempted terrorist attack of a Northwest flight on Christmas day, a profile of the suspect, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is beginning to emerge. Here, a timeline of the Abdulmutallab's life, as collected from media reports:
...
2005: Abdulmutallab enrolls at University College London — one of Britain's elite universities — for his undergraduate studies.

2007: The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center adds Abdulmutallab to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, which includes 500,000 individuals with suspected ties to known terrorists or terrorist organizations. His name is not added to the "no-fly" list.

Spring 2008: Abdulmutallab graduates from University College London with a degree in mechanical engineering.

June 2008: The U.S. embassy in London grants Abdulmutallab a long-term, multi-entry tourist visa. Shortly after receiving the visa, he travels to Houston, Texas.

May 2009: Due to increased scrutiny of foreign students, British authorities deny Abulmutallab entry to the U.K. because the course of study cited on his application is judged to be "bogus."

May 2009: Abdulmutallab goes to Dubai instead on a student visa, where he studies for a master's degree at a satellite campus of an Australian university. He reportedly stays in Dubai for two-and-a-half months before "disappearing."

Fall 2009: Abdulmutallab tells his family in a text message that he wants to go to Yemen to study Arabic and Sharia law. His parents plead with him to finish his degree in Dubai, where he is expected to graduate in December. Abdulmutallab tells his family he no longer wants any contact with them.

November 2009: After threatening to cut off his son financially, Abdulamutallab's father, Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, tells American and Nigerian officials that his son may have been recently "radicalized" during his travels, adding that he went to Yemen to participate in "some kind of jihad." ...

Quote:...Mr. Johnson gave no reason for suggesting that Mr. Abdulmutallab might have had accomplices. But he noted that Scotland Yard and Britain’s security services were investigating whether the suspect’s Islamic beliefs were radicalized while he was a mechanical engineering student from 2005 to 2008 at University College London, one of Britain’s elite academic institutions.

Mr. Johnson said Mr. Abdulmutallab’s application to renew his student visa was rejected in May after officials had determined that the academic course he gave as his reason for returning to Britain was fake. The secretary said the suspect was then placed on the watch list, a procedure that would normally involve informing American authorities of the action Britain had taken.

Quote:ABU DHABI -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to detonate an explosive aboard a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, spent about 2 ½ months in Dubai on a student visa, starting in May 2009, according to an official here familiar with the situation.

Mr. Abdulmutallab enrolled in a master's degree program at the Dubai campus of the University of Wollongong of New South Wales, Australia, said the official, who is familiar with the man's immigration status. His enrollment at the school was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The school is one of many foreign universities that have set up branch campuses in Persian Gulf states to attract foreign students to their programs.

During his brief stay, Mr. Abdulmutallab didn't exhibit any signs of radicalism, according to this official.

The school, like all universities based here, offers visa support to foreign students. The Web site for the Dubai campus of Wollongong says master's degree courses range in cost from about $18,000 to $25,000 for a degree. Student visas are renewable as long as students are certifiably registered and enrollment is complete, according to the Web site.

The official familiar with the situation said that the Nigerian attended classes at the university's campus, part of a sprawling set of low-rise buildings populated by a mix of Arab, Russian- and Iranian-speaking students, and acted like "a normal student" during his stint in Dubai. It's unclear what degree he was pursuing.

The Dubai campus offers nine post-graduate programs, most of which focus on business administration, finance and management.

After about a 2 ½ month stay in Dubai, the young man "disappeared," and never returned to the U.A.E., the official said. "There was nothing at all suspicious about him. He was a normal student, going to classes, and then all of a sudden he disappeared ... and never came back" to the U.A.E., the official said.

An official at the Dubai campus Monday said the school doesn't release any information about its students, and referred questions to the Dubai police. A security-services official declined to comment.

Whats the deal? This paper seems to be really obscessed with tracking down and punishing the holders of unaccredited degrees. Now they want to bring criminal charges against the officers of a now-defunct institution.

Anyone got the dirt on this news source?

I am a working profession I wanted to do my MBA to get promoted in my company soon. I was not interested in attending week end classes also. I was looking for the best online college.

Finally I came across Caluniversity.edu, which offers distance learning programs; admission’s counselors will make your education experience smoother and easier than you ever thought possible. You can take up any of the new courses among several Masters and Doctorate programs available.

Now I am working in a manager level. Thanks to Caluniversity.edu

Odd story in Bloomberg that starts out with a cheap shot against Ashford, but overall seems to suggest that active-duty military are well-served by most online schools.

Marine Can’t Recall His Lessons at For-Profit College

Quote:By Daniel Golden

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Marine Corps Corporal James Long knows he’s enrolled at Ashford University, one of at least a dozen for-profit colleges making money off active-duty military with subsidies from American taxpayers. He just can’t remember what course he’s taking.

The 22-year-old from Dalton, Georgia, suffered a brain injury that impaired his ability to concentrate when artillery shells hit his Humvee in Iraq in 2006, he said. Long signed up for the online college, a unit of Bridgepoint Education Inc., after its recruiter gave a sales pitch this year at a barracks for wounded Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Under base rules, the barracks are off-limits to college recruiters, said Robert Songer, director of lifelong learning at Lejeune.

For-profit online colleges are taking over higher education of the U.S. military, lured by a Defense Department pledge of free schooling up to $4,500 a year for active members of the armed services, costing taxpayers more than $3 billion since 2000. The schools account for 29 percent of college enrollments and 40 percent of the half-billion-dollar annual tab in federal tuition assistance for active-duty students, displacing public and private nonprofit colleges, according to Defense Department and military data.

The shift is leading to educational shortcuts and over- zealous marketing, said Greg von Lehmen, chief academic officer of the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi, the adult-education branch of the state system and one of the earliest and biggest providers of military education.

Faster, Easier

“In these schools, the rule is faster and easier,” von Lehmen said. “They’re characterized by increasingly compressed course lengths and low academic expectations. One has to ask: Is the Department of Defense getting what it is seeking?”

Some online schools offer free laptops or fast degrees. At Apollo Group Inc.’s University of Phoenix, the biggest for- profit college, active-duty military personnel can earn an associate’s degree, which typically takes two years of study, in five weeks.

Apollo fell $1.13, or 1.8 percent, to $60.93 at 4 p.m. in New York in Nasdaq composite trading. The company’s shares are down 21 percent this year.

Taxpayers picked up $474 million for college tuition for 400,000 active-duty personnel in the year ended Sept. 30, 2008, more than triple the spending a decade earlier, Defense Department statistics show. Any college degree provides a boost toward military promotion, said James Pappas, vice president for outreach at the University of Oklahoma. Credentials from online, for-profit schools are less helpful in getting civilian jobs, especially in a tight labor market, Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington, said in an e- mail.

Disappointed Grads

“I’m afraid that the ease with which these outfits hand out diplomas is matched only by the disappointment of their graduates when they find out how little their degrees are actually worth,” Nassirian said.

Mike Shields, a retired Marine Corps colonel and human resources director for U.S. field operations at Schindler Elevator Corp., rejects about 50 military candidates each year for the company’s management development program because their graduate degrees come from online for-profits, he said in an interview. Schindler Elevator is the North American operating entity of Schindler Holding AG in Hergiswil, Switzerland, the world’s second-largest elevator maker.

Broader Experience

“We don’t even consider them,” Shields said. “For the caliber of individuals and credentials we’re looking for, we need what we feel is a more broadened and in-depth educational experience.” He does hire service members with online degrees for jobs on non-leadership tracks, he said.

Several online for-profit schools have become a concern on military bases because of practices that exploit soldiers and the federal subsidies they are promised, said Songer at Camp Lejeune.

“Some of these schools prey on Marines,” Songer said. “Day and night, they call you, they e-mail you. These servicemen get caught in that. Nobody in their families ever went to college. They don’t know about college.”

Most online for-profits, such as American Public Education Inc.’s American Military University, “do a very good job taking care of students,” Songer said.

Executives at for-profit colleges said they pay more attention to customer service than traditional schools do, and their online format suits military students who move frequently.

Flexibility, Options

“It’s about flexibility and options,” said Rick Cooper, vice president of military and corporate programs at Columbia Southern University in Orange Beach, Alabama. “You can enroll any day of the week, any week of the year.”

Columbia Southern grants transfer credits to soldiers for courses in which they earned grades as low as D. Grantham University in Kansas City, Missouri, has handed out free laptop computers and American Military in Charles Town, West Virginia, gives free textbooks as recruitment inducements.

Online schools such as American Military University have relocated their headquarters to obtain certification from regional boards with less demanding standards, according to interviews with for-profit college officials and accrediting agencies. Or they’re approved by less established organizations, leaving students hard-pressed to transfer credits to other colleges or find jobs at major corporations.

Salary Comparisons

Holders of master’s degrees in business administration from for-profits Phoenix and American Intercontinental University earn less than graduates with the same degrees from Oklahoma or Maryland’s University College, according to Payscale.com, a provider of employee compensation data.

Recent MBA graduates from University College and Oklahoma have median annual incomes of $78,600 and $68,400, respectively, compared with $60,200 from Phoenix and $54,600 from American Intercontinental, the data show. Recent bachelor’s graduates from University College earn a higher median salary ($55,200) than their counterparts at Phoenix ($50,500) and American Intercontinental ($43,100). Oklahoma, at $41,100, trails Maryland and the two for-profit schools.

Travis Daun, a 33-year-old former Navy lieutenant commander who trained as a nuclear engineer on a submarine, left the service in August after receiving an online MBA from American Intercontinental, a unit of Career Education Corp., based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Rigor, Challenge

“I was disappointed in the rigor and challenge of the courses,” Daun said in an interview, adding that each course lasted five weeks, with at most two hours a week of class time. “I don’t think I had a 4.0 effort, yet I had a 4.0 grade-point average.”

Daun is unemployed. His college roommate, who also became a nuclear engineer in the Navy and earned an MBA from the University of Maryland’s University College, did find work, Daun said. “His MBA from Maryland definitely helped him a lot more than my AIU degree is helping me,” he said.

Daun is working with Lucas Group, an executive search firm that specializes in placing former military personnel.

“Does his master’s from American Intercontinental open a lot of doors for him? No, it doesn’t,” said Lee Cohen, an Irvine, California-based managing partner at Lucas.

American Intercontinental provides a high-quality education for adult students, said Jeff Leshay, a spokesman for Career Education. Leshay said the company doesn’t track where graduates find jobs.

‘No Problems’

While deployed in Iraq, Christopher Brotherton earned a bachelor’s degree in homeland security from American Military in 2007. When the staff sergeant retired from the Army in June, his degree, which included courses in geography and history, helped him find a job teaching social studies in a middle school in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

“The state, when they saw my transcript from AMU, they had no problems with any of it,” Brotherton, 42, said. “It was a respected school to them.”

Brian Kilgore’s quest for a college degree was set back in 2007. Then a petty officer first class in the Navy, Kilgore needed two more courses to earn an associate’s degree from Grantham when the online for-profit college eliminated the software engineering program he was taking, he said in an interview. Kilgore switched to computer science and soon left school, still four classes short of that degree. “I was upset,” said Kilgore, 38, who recently retired from the military and works in aviation maintenance. “Gosh, I was almost there.” The program was eliminated due to lack of interest, Grantham said.

Career Disadvantage?

When service members do earn degrees from online for- profits, human resources executives at Fortune 500 firms are often reluctant to hire them, said Cohen, citing three where he has placed candidates. “There are some firms that are heavily credential-oriented,” he said. “McKinsey & Co. is one of them. They might balk. Amazon might balk. Shell Oil is another one.” McKinsey, Amazon.com and Shell declined to comment.

Bradford Rand, chief executive of Techexpo Top Secret in New York, which runs job fairs for defense contractors recruiting recent veterans, said a degree from an online for- profit is a disadvantage. “You have two people of the same caliber, one has a degree from a real college, one has a degree from a computer, I’m going to favor the one from the live college,” Rand said. “It’s more verifiable, more credible.”

The Defense Department plans to subject online programs to review by the American Council on Education in Washington, which already monitors face-to-face classes on military bases, defense officials said. The new online standards, which the department began to develop in 2004, have taken longer than expected and are a year away from being implemented, Tommy Thomas, deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy, said in an e-mail.

Maximum Reimbursement

Of the dozen colleges with the biggest active-duty enrollment, five are for-profits that conduct most or all of their courses online. Three -- American Military University, Apollo’s Phoenix, and closely held Grantham -- charge $250 a credit, or $750 a course, which allows them to receive the maximum reimbursed by U.S. taxpayers without service members having to pay any out-of-pocket tuition. Publicly funded community colleges offer classes on military bases for as little as $50 a credit, according to their Web sites.

American Public Education fell 1 cent, or less than 1 percent, to $34.40 at 4 p.m.

Government Inquiries

The expansion of online for-profit colleges into the military comes as the companies face U.S. government inquiries into their tactics in recruiting and educating civilians. The Obama administration is tightening scrutiny of for-profits, from the content of their pitches to prospective students to their increasing reliance on federal financial aid, Robert Shireman, deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Education Department, said in an interview.

In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Enforcement Division has begun an informal probe into how Apollo Group books revenue. Apollo intends to cooperate fully with the inquiry, the company said.

By expanding its military business, Phoenix has been able to enroll more civilian students who are supported by grants and loans from the Education Department, without violating federal law that dictates how much revenue the school can receive from the government. Phoenix derived 86 percent of its $3.77 billion in revenue in fiscal 2009 from the Education Department, according to its annual 10-K filing, up from 48 percent in 2001 and approaching the limit of 90 percent set by a 1992 law known as the 90/10 rule.

Military Market

Tuition payments to for-profit schools by the military don’t count toward the 90 percent ceiling. One way that Phoenix plans to stay below the legal threshold is building its military business, Gregory Cappelli, co-chief executive of Apollo, which is based in Phoenix, said in a June 29 conference call with investors.

When the law was enacted, for-profits hadn’t yet moved into the military market, so the legislation’s sponsors weren’t focused on Defense Department tuition assistance, Sarah Flanagan, who helped draft the law as the Senate’s specialist in federal student aid, said in an interview. The law was intended to ensure that for-profit colleges offered an education good enough that some students were willing to pay for it, said Flanagan, now vice president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington.

“Counting Defense Department funding for servicemen’s education as part of the money that’s supposed to come out of consumers’ pockets violates the purpose of the original legislation,” Flanagan said.

Phoenix Recruitment

Apollo spokeswoman Sara Jones said in an e-mail that Phoenix began serving military students long before the advent of “the misguided 90/10 rule.”

Phoenix ranks among the top five colleges serving military students, including about 5,000 in the Army and 2,700 in the Navy, according to the two services. While Phoenix offers campus-based graduate programs in education and management at Air Force bases in the Pacific, most of its active-duty students take classes online, school officials said. Phoenix has 452 recruiters in its military division, up from 91 in 2003, said Scott McLaurin, its executive enrollment counselor at Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast.

Soaring Enrollments

Military enrollment at exclusively online for-profits is soaring. American Military has 36,772 active-duty students, up from 632 in 2000, it said. It has the most Air Force and Marine Corps students of any college. Closely held Columbia Southern has 9,582 service members, up from 649 in 2002, it said. Closely held TUI in Cypress, California, has more than doubled active- duty enrollment to 7,665 in the first quarter of 2009, from 3,661 in 2004, it said.

While six public and private non-profit colleges hold face- to-face classes on Camp Lejeune, none has the highest active- duty enrollment there. That distinction belongs to American Military, with 1,623 students, up from 11 in 1999. Phoenix’s enrollment there has risen to 296 from 15 over the same period.

Active-duty enrollment at public and nonprofit schools has slumped. The University of Oklahoma, once the leading provider of graduate degrees to service members, has lost half of its military enrollment in a decade, said Pappas, the vice president for outreach.

“A decade from now, you may not find traditional national public and private universities in military education,” Pappas said. “That’s one of the real dangers.”

Curriculum Control

Faculty members at online for-profit colleges, usually part- timers with practical experience in their fields, have less control over curriculum than in conventional academia, said Benjamin Bolger, who has taught at the University of Phoenix and the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Professors assign reading and writing and discussion topics prescribed by the school. Students don’t have to log on at a specific time. At their convenience, they complete weekly coursework and respond to classmates on discussion boards.

While many colleges adopt what are known as “military- friendly” practices, the online for-profits go further than most. They accelerate course and degrees for service members, trimming requirements and granting abundant transfer credits.

At Phoenix, members of the armed forces can earn an associate’s degree by taking one five-week online class, “Written Communication.” They can make up for the other 19 courses required for an associate’s degree with credits for classes taken elsewhere, military experience including basic training, and passing grades on tests that gauge knowledge of a subject area.

Fast Track

Civilians seeking the same degree must take at least six Phoenix courses and can use credits from outside sources for no more than 14. Traditionally, two-year students must take 10 courses, or half of the required load, from the school that awards their degrees, so it can vouch for their training, Nassirian said.

Only a handful of active-duty students choose Phoenix’s one- course option, called the Associate of Arts Degree Through Credit Recognition, said Mike Bibbee, the university’s director of military programs.

At Columbia Southern, students can finish courses in three weeks and gain credit for as many as three classes taken at other colleges in which they received grades as low as D, according to its catalog. All exams are open-book.

‘Quite Unorthodox’

“It would be quite unorthodox for traditional institutions to grant transfer credit to coursework completed below a grade of C,” Nassirian said. Columbia Southern’s academic quality is comparable to a state or nonprofit university, Cooper said. The University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, also accepts D’s for transfer courses, according to its Web site.

On Oct. 16, several Marines waited their turn on benches outside American Military’s office in the education center at Camp Lejeune. Inside, AMU education coordinator Brian Miller made his pitch to Jyher Lazarre and Hyunwoo Kim. Lazarre, 19, of Orlando, Florida, and Kim, 20, of Leonia, New Jersey, joined the Marines in 2008 and are roommates at Lejeune, they said.

Of 20 courses needed for a two-year degree, they could satisfy eight through basic training and other military experience, Miller said. They could test out of seven more, leaving them to take five classes.

“I can cut the time of this degree literally in half,” Miller told them. “It’s going to make you competitive toward promotion as well.”

“If we can cut it down, that’s really good,” Kim said.

Accreditation Conflicts

Conflicts with accrediting associations that certify academic quality have dogged several online for-profits. American Military, founded in Virginia in 1991 by a former Marine Corps officer, applied in 1998 for accreditation by the Commission on Colleges of the Decatur, Georgia-based Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The southern association is one of six regional bodies that approve public and nonprofit institutions and represent the gold standard in accreditation.

In June 1999, the commission denied American Military a candidacy visit, an early step in the accreditation process, said Ann Chard, commission vice president. The university didn’t meet the requirements of having full-time professors and a library, instead relying on part-time faculty and a lending library network, said James Herhusky, a trustee.

American Military then shifted its headquarters to West Virginia to seek regional accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, according to the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of the Virginia Council of Higher Education, based in Richmond. In 2006, North Central approved American Military, which offers degrees in fields including homeland security, counter-terrorism studies and weapons-of- mass-destruction preparedness.

‘More Accommodating’

“At the time, North Central was the only region we knew that was accrediting totally online institutions,” Herhusky said. “We found their criteria to be less prescriptive and more accommodating.”

American Military now has 160 full-time professors and an online library, Herhusky said. The school has almost quadrupled active-duty enrollment since 2005, when it hired James Sweizer, former head of education for the Air Force, to run its military programs.

“I came to AMU with the philosophy of relationship marketing,” Sweizer said in an interview. “You cater to the needs of key influencers.”

Sweizer said he’s seen “dramatic improvement” in how American Military manages courses and faculty.

Probationary Period

American Intercontinental, which ranked 20th in tuition assistance from the Marine Corps in fiscal 2009, also didn’t meet the standards of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It was placed on probation from 2005 to 2007 for academic and administrative shortcomings, including an inadequate number of full-time professors, according to accreditation records. The school addressed the association’s concerns, and the improvements it made during those two years have strengthened the university, Career Education spokesman Leshay said in an e-mail.

American Intercontinental moved its headquarters this year from Atlanta to Chicago and was accredited by North Central. American Intercontinental relocated because its online campus is based there, Career Education spokesman Leshay said.

Two other for-profits in the military market, Grantham and Columbia Southern, have a status known as national accreditation. Newer than the regional groups, the seven national bodies mostly approve for-profit colleges, including vocational and distance-education programs. Only 14 percent of colleges accept credits transferred from nationally accredited institutions, according to a 2006 study by the University Continuing Education Association in Washington.

Expanding Market

Three policy changes in the past decade opened the military market to for-profit colleges. The Defense Department, which had paid tuition assistance mainly to regionally accredited schools, began in 1999 to reimburse nationally accredited colleges as well. It increased funding in 2002 from 75 percent to 100 percent of tuition up to the $250-per-credit ceiling. In 2006 and 2007, the Army cut 233 counselors who used to guide soldiers through college choices, replacing them with interactive Web sites that offer information, said Army spokesman Wayne V. Hall.

These moves coincided with the rise of Internet courses. For-profits were ahead of most traditional colleges in online education, which helps service members deployed worldwide keep up their studies. In fiscal 2008, the first year that the Defense Department collected such data, 64 percent of active- duty students took distance-education classes.

War Zones

Soldiers even take online classes in war zones. While in Afghanistan, Army sergeant Patrick Peake earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from American Military, enrolling in as many as four online courses at a time.

Cavalry scouts “set up a wireless connection at the mud- brick building we were at,” Peake, 29, said in an interview. After studying counter-terrorism at AMU, Peake said, he told friends in Army intelligence about terrorist groups in the region. “This dumb grunt helped them out a little,” he said.

Unlike most traditional schools, for-profits vie to offer inducements to students. American Military gives textbooks for free to undergraduates, who may resell them to the school’s vendor after use for $30 to $50 per book, Miller said. Columbia Southern is considering a similar buyback program, according to Cooper.

Grantham, the seventh-biggest recipient of undergraduate tuition money from the Army in fiscal 2008, gave new laptop computers made by Dell Inc., from March to July to active-duty students who had completed at least four courses with grades of C or better. The free laptops were part of a pilot research project on student retention, said Tim Arrington, Grantham director of military programs.

Laptop Largesse

Michael Lambert, executive director of the Distance Education Training Council, which accredits Grantham, advised the school to stop the laptop largesse, he said.

“The concern is, schools will outdo each other and we’ll have an arms race,” he said. “Free laptops, free Kindles, free iPods, all coming out of taxpayers’ pockets.”

Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges, a Defense Department Washington-based contractor that develops policies for 1,800 colleges involved in military education, is also considering guidelines to limit laptop giveaways and other inducements. “I don’t think it’s out of hand, but the potential is there,” said Kathy Snead, the group’s director.

Former Marines

Career Blazers Learning Center, a New York-based vocational school, gave away laptops loaded with instructional software to Marines about to be deployed to combat zones, owner Paul Viboch said. It also hired former Marines as recruiters and paid referral fees to students for signing up other service members. Entire units enrolled, and Career Blazers received $4.5 million in tuition assistance from the Marine Corps in 2006, the most of any post-secondary provider.

Career Blazers charged $4500 -- the maximum that the military reimburses in a year -- for self-paced lessons on how to perform basic computer applications or balance checkbooks. Much of the material was available for less expense at workshops or community college classes on bases, education specialists said.

“The military overpaid for laptops,” said Johanna Rose, an education technician at Camp Lejeune.

Relocated to Martinsburg, West Virginia, and renamed Martinsburg Institute, Career Blazers stopped giving away laptops three months ago. Its tuition assistance from the Marine Corps slipped to $616,000 in fiscal 2009, as education officials on some Marine bases discouraged service members from enrolling, Viboch said. “I was too successful, too quickly,” he said.

‘Underhanded’ Techniques

Unauthorized marketing pitches by for-profit recruiters have become widespread on military bases.

“Some of these schools are a little underhanded,” said Pat Jeffress, branch manager of lifelong learning at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in California, said. “They try to backdoor me. They come onto the base when they don’t have permission and they set up shop.”

One recruiter for Ashford University recently ignored the anti-solicitation rule at Camp Lejeune, said Songer, the base’s lifelong learning director. Bridgepoint, based in San Diego, has climbed 57 percent since the company went public on April 14. Bridgepoint fell 21 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $17.37 at 4 p.m. today.

Songer said he told the recruiter, whose husband is in the military, that she could only meet students at the base’s education center. Instead, she pitched the online for-profit in the recreation room of a barracks for wounded Marines. About 30 Marines showed up, said Brad Drake, a corporal who attends Ashford.

‘Attractive’ Recruiter

“It helped she was really attractive,” said Drake, 23, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan when a rocket hit his truck. “That got everyone’s attention.”

The recruiter spoke at the barracks with the approval of the unit’s commanding officer, Bridgepoint spokeswoman Shari Rodriguez said in an e-mail. “We keep our students’ needs at the forefront of all we do.”

Unit commanders are often unfamiliar with educational rules, Songer said. He told the recruiter, “‘If you cross that line again, you’ll never be allowed on this base,” he said.

Ashford’s Enrollment

Ashford ranked sixth in Marine Corps enrollment in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009, with 1,018 students. At Camp Lejeune, Ashford had 119 active-duty students, up from 25 in the previous year, and six in fiscal 2007. About eight to 10 wounded Marines signed up for Ashford after the recruiter’s presentation, among them Corporal Long, the brain-injured soldier, who also walks with a cane.

Long is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in organizational management through Ashford. In his first class, students could retake the final test until they passed, he said.

“I took it 10 times,” he said. “I kept getting the same answers wrong.”

Long, who aspires to be an occupational or physical therapist, said he wonders if he can graduate. He is married and says he needs to provide for his family.

“I got my doubts,” he said. “My family’s more important than my doubts. That keeps me going.”

Johann, formerly of online.degree.net, seems to have found his niche at DD. Well, at least he doesn't just post links like Jack Tracy has done of late.

DD thread on PhD misrepresentation

Not exactly news, but George Gollin (George D. Gollin, George Dana Gollin), the Princeton dumbass who likes to pretend he understands accreditation, has been proven clueless yet again.

This time Dr. Dumbass gleefully emitted his latest embarrassing public discharge of Ivy League flatulence, entitled United Business Institute (UBI), Belgium is zapped.  The gist of it being that UBI is not authorized to award degrees in Belgium.  

However, within minutes poster Johann politely informed Gollum that UBI degrees are awarded by the University of Wales.  Thus what Belgium has to say about it is entirely irrelevant, and Gollum's post is utter nonsense.  The only person "zapped" was the idiot Gollum himself.

As anybody who has the least clue about accreditation would know, it is common practice in the UK for degree-granting "recognised" bodies to accept coursework from non-degree granting institutions.  In fact, the UK has a large group of its own "listed" bodies that, while not authorized to issue degrees themselves, are authorized to conduct courses leading to degrees awarded by "recognised" bodies such as the University of Wales.  

Even Peter French was able to quickly evaluate the situation and note that it is a Welsh degree that is delivered, not a Flemish degree.   Apparently simple enough for the American Coastline guy, but the Dumbass Factory guy just can't quite grasp it.  

It's a foreign country, Gollum, they do it their way, which is different than we do it in the US of A, and they don't really give a crap whether you like it or not.  Get a clue, Sphincter Boy!  Ask one of your socialist buddies about "cultural imperialism," you condescending fascist loser.