Adam Smith University

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Adam Smith University is a controversial unaccredited private distance learning university founded in 1991 by Donald Grunewald, still its president.^[1] Grunewald, a onetime president of Mercy College and is now a business professor at Iona College.^[2] According to the university, the institution was founded on the principle of independence from state control, where it believes that control prevents it from furthering its mission.^[1]

1 History
2 Controversy and criticism
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Currently, the institution claims to maintain a campus and offices at the ground floor of a Girls' Hostel in Monrovia, capital of the African nation of Liberia, under the direction of a former high school principal and with a Liberian board including two former Presidents of the University of Liberia. It rents these premises which, according to the university, have been converted into a suite of offices and classrooms where face-to-face instruction takes place.

According to the university, it has been accredited by the Liberian Ministry of Education since 1995, well before the most recent conflicts, and was accredited as a result of an act of the Liberian legislature.^[1] Other controversial degree-granting institutions claiming Liberian approval include Saint Regis University.

However, in the United States this form of accreditation is not acceptable and the institution is not recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Also the institution is not on UNESCO's list of accredited schools throughout the world.^[3]

The university does not maintain a physical campus in the United States.^[1] Its office address has been sited in a number of different United States states, and has moved as those states have progressively tightened standards for degree-granting institutions that do not seek recognized accreditation.^[2] These states have included Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana and South Dakota.^[2] Adam Smith's current American mailing address is a private mail box in Garapan on Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth.^[1]

[edit] Controversy and criticism

Adam Smith University was listed in the 1995 title "College Degrees by Mail: 100 Good Schools" by distance education consumer writer Dr. John Bear. Since that time, however, Bear has turned sharply critical of the school. In a 2002 post to the distance learning discussion board degreeinfo.com, he made light of their one-time claim "that their 29,000 book library was at their South Dakota campus (which was a mail forwarding service)." ^[4]

Steve Levicoff referred to Adam Smith University as a degree mill, and he notes that it operates in Louisiana due to the lack laws of degree granting.^[5] Adam Smith University and Columbia State University have the same address, which is "likely a mail forwarding address".^[6]

Critics described Adam Smith University as a "diploma mill". Alan Contreras from the Oregon State Office of Degree Authorization, an agency of that state's government, called Adam Smith "a diploma mill with a long and unattractive history." in an article written in a personal capacity. However, in 2005, he updated Adam Smith's listing on the ODA website to remove the term "diploma mill" following a settlement reached with the unaccredited Kennedy-Western University under which ODA personnel received training in defamation law. Oregon has made it illegal to use in any professional context a degree from an institution not having what it judges to be the equivalent of regional accreditation in the USA. Adam Smith has refused to seek such accreditation, and consequently its degrees may not be used in that state.