Dubious Universities

For an unaccredited institution, the 14-year old American World University (AWU) does remarkably well with over 7,000 students globally. No one would guess that the hub of this hugely profitable enterprise is a posh apartment building in the Los Angeles district of Westwood, where its founder and guiding light, Maxine Asher lives. According to a three-month investigation by the prestigious Washington, DC-based weekly the Chronicle of Higher Education (www.chronicle.com), Ms Asher, who is in her 70s, claims to be the foremost scholar on Atlantis (a mythical place that many loonies are looking for). She believes that this lost continent can be found off the coast of Spain! “AWU has had brushes with the state regulators in Louisiana and Hawai and is now based in Mississippi,” notes the Chronicle (‘Maxine Asher Has a Degree for You,’ June 25, 2004).

The Chronicle, read by over 450,000 college and university administrators and regarded as the best US-based source of news and information in this field, observes that behind the AWU’s front desk, the fax machine continually spits out reams of paper. Asher doesn’t know how to use a computer and hence issues orders from her apartment, telling her employees what to write.

Asher has become a central figure in the devious world of unaccredited higher education, thanks to another organization she founded in1993, the World Association of Universities and Colleges (WAUC). Located in Nevada, it assumes the “authority” to “accredit” alternative institutions – including Asher’s AWU. The US Department of Education does not recognize this accreditation service.

The WAUC website http://www.web-hed.com/wauc/universities.htm lists members and institutions it has ‘accredited’ worldwide. Such institutions offer easy degrees through advertisements in the pages of USA Today, the Economist and increasingly in Pakistan’s prestigious publications.

The Pakistani connection is not limited to it being a country where such ads are printed. Or from where the gullible and the dishonest get quick degrees from such institutions. One of Asher’s partners in forming the WAUC, according to the Chronicle report, was a Pakistani “education entrepreneur”, Abdul Basit, listed as WAUC vice president in its incorporation record in Louisiana. His campus of Preston ‘university’ was one of the colleges originally ‘accredited’ by WAUC – but is no longer a member, according to the Chronicle. Preston University (www.preston.edu) is licensed in Wyoming and located at Cheyenne airport while Basit lives in Pakistan, where students can receive an unaccredited degree from the American branch of Preston – PhDs cost $7,500.

Business has clearly been good for Preston internationally (www.preston.ac). In May 2003 at a Preston “graduation ceremony” held in London, Michael Ancram, Conservative deputy leader and shadow foreign secretary handed out diplomas and medals. It was announced then that Halifax University, an associated institute of Preston, was opening campuses in London, Birmingham and Dublin. The Conservative Party is annoyed at Halifax’s claim that Ancram launched its campuses. A controversy has also arisen over the use of the term “university”, which is protected under UK law. According to a BBC report of July 7, 2004, titled “Ancram in ‘university’ dispute,” the British Department of Education and Skills has reported these institutions to Companies House, which regulates the use of business names.

Preston’s website assures students that:

“Preston International College Middlesex campus is the trading name of Preston Internatinal [sic] College London Limited and is a part of Preston University Worldwide chain.

“Middlesex campus is an exclusive campus of Preston International College in the UK is acknowledged by the British Home Office as a bona fide private educational establishment offering acceptable degree programs [sic].”

The Hindustan Times flashed London ceremony with the headline: “Indian students outshine at Preston University.” The campus had 510 students from 10 countries including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and East European countries. Out of the 150 who passed out, over half were Indians. The ceremony included Bollywood actress and former Miss World Yukta Mookhey, whose photo with Michael Ancram adorns the Preston’s printed prospectus, according to the BBC report.

The UK legislators are now waking up to the hundreds of fake and unaccredited universities that Britain has allowed to operate. The Guardian report “MPs plan to stamp out bogus colleges” (September 9, 2003) exposes “the scandal of overseas students paying substantial fees for worthless qualifications from so-called ‘British’ universities” which are not accredited in Britain and which are not recognised by British universities or employers. It reports that ministers were considering “Tough new action to stamp out the growing number of bogus ‘offshore’ degrees and misleading university titles to protect consumers and uphold the reputation of British higher education courses.”
Similar concerns had been voiced in the USA much earlier. In March 2001 The Chronicle carried two stories on this issue, noting that by then, Preston claimed 30 “affiliated” campuses in 19 countries, with 8000 students -- the bulk of them in Pakistan.

Preston’s web site now boasts nearly 50 campuses -- Pakistan leads with 15, followed by Malaysia (9) and India (4). This is in addition to the other UK “university” mentioned earlier, -- Halifax.

Dr. Jerry Haenisch the Chancellor/CEO of Preston told the Chronicle that Preston would eventually like to be accredited but could not afford the expense of having each campus evaluated (http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i28/28a03401.htm). “We can live with or without it,” he said. The accreditation would require the institute to have full-time faculty – Preston has none.

The Preston website page that listed part-time faculty in 2001 has vanished, making it difficult for outsiders to investigate their credentials. In 2001 Preston listed 49 faculty members, which included William Lieberman and Kenneth Dolbeare [Lieberman was a student advisor at South California University for Professional Studies; Dolbeare taught political science at University of Colorado, Denver]. Both were selected at random and contacted by the Chronicle. Both claimed that they were not associated with Preston and did not know of their names being on the Preston’s faculty list!

“They send their transcripts [in response to university ads seeking professors with doctoral degrees to supervise students]..., and we put them on our faculty list,” Haenisch told the Chronicle. Students interested in the field of the professor are paired with such “adjunct” faculty, but he admitted that for 50 per cent of the announced faculty, that never happens. He also admitted that it was misleading to have the names of such professors on the universities’ rolls – so they now no longer list faculty members on their website.

Haenisch has had to face a lot of irate students unable to obtain jobs because the university is unaccredited. He says his response to them is: “We are sorry, you’ll have to get the job on other merits, other than your degree.”

Such concerns prompted a letter from a Fazal Elahi in a Pakistani daily on Aug 16, 2000, demanding that Preston be chartered in Pakistan. Elahi was incensed that 56 other universities had received this honor, and he appealed to General Musharraf’s policy of ‘merit and fairness’ to grant the charter in “the supreme interest of the students.”

The Sindh government granted a charter to the Preston Institute of Management Science and Technology on 31 July 2001, while Preston University, Kohat got its charter in Nov 2002, and Preston University, Karachi, in February 2004. All three appear on the page of approved universities at the website of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC). That a university with a shady past, unaccredited in its home country, USA, has managed to get three members of its family accredited in Pakistan speaks for the situation of higher education in this country.
That’s not the end of it. A charter given by a province is only valid within that province – Preston only has charters in Sindh and NWFP; its campuses in other provinces (5 in Punjab, one each in Balochistan and Islamabad) continue to function unchecked and unauthorized.

Preston’s latest newsletter (Preston News, Vol 4, No 2, July-Sept 2004) reports the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor, Dr Nazir Mughal, at its Karachi campus. Dr Mughal has been associated with Sindh University (SU), Jamshoro, and Edinboro University, Pennsylvania. The latter too, is not accredited by CHEA, the US Council for Higher Education Accreditation (www.chea.org).

Mughal’s record doesn’t impart much confidence. He was appointed at SU in early 1974, but soon thereafter left to join Edinboro, without “confirmation of service.” According to SU Syndicate’s enquiry report of 2001 his total service (accumulated through short annual visits) came to about 2 years over a nearly 12 year period, so his services were terminated in 1986 (to be restored later and again cancelled!). All this was changed when he became vice chancellor of SU. In 1997 he get himself confirmed against the post of professor – this was during his term as VC (joined July 1995 and completed 4-year term in July 1999). He managed to get pension for over two decades of service and promotion to grade 21 prior to retirement in 1997; both these decisions being in contravention of the 1995 ruling of the syndicate. There were also serious audit objections raised about purchases made by him. This detailed account is merely to show the murky waters that run through our university system, public and private.

In 1985 when I decided to end my university teaching career, there were only 24 accredited universities in Pakistan. Most were terribly bad, including the one where I worked. It was apparent even then that unless the government assessed and assured the quality of higher education, additional funding for this sector would be wasted. In the 1990s, several private institutions gained university charters, to rumours of much money having flowed into various pockets. Then, in 2002, the government went into overdrive and chartered 27 new universities, many of which did not even deserve to be colleges.

The Higher Education Commission’s June 2004 newsletter states that “All substandard campuses will be closed. New universities and campuses that do not pull their weight in two-and-a-half years will be closed down according to the decision of the federal cabinet.” Why wait so long, allowing the existing students to suffer?

The newsletter goes on to say that future funding will depend on the rating system that HEC plans to introduce for all universities. This clearly has no impact on private institutions which do not receive support from HEC. It would be far better to not recognize obviously deficient institutions. Now that the genies are out of the bottle, it will be near-impossible to put them back. But there is hope yet…

Improving the prognosis of the sick higher education sector requires that the government and the HEC first rip out dubious institutions in the public and private sector, in order to regain credibility and direction. A patient lined up for surgery cannot be cured with palliatives. The higher education sector needs surgery – followed by a long struggle to improve the standard of surviving institutions. There is really no other way.
The writer is the Project Leader of Comstech’s Center for Frontier Technologies, Islamabad.