User:Orlady/Stuff I'm working on

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[edit] A few projects hatched here:

[edit] University of Berkley

Many active websites: http://www.berkley-u.edu/ and http://www.degreeson-line.com/ and http://www.international-university.net/ and http://www.uofb.com/ and http://www.home-studies.com/ and http://www.distance-degrees-online.com/

Chicago area phone number. No addresses. Sometimes identified in Southfield, Michigan. (For example, see http://gov.alaska.edu/faculty/2004-11-01.UAF-AcceptableDegreeMotion.pdf )

"The University of Berkley (originally founded in BERKLEY MI) has no affiliation or connection whatsoever with the University of California at Berkeley campus! The owners/operators of this site may not conduct business with residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, USA"

The UofB and its parent organization, The Society of God,* are founded upon the highest of human ideals and aspirations.

  • Also referred to as "The Church" or "The Society of God and Pantheistic Philosophy" and is incorporated as a non-profit, religious, educational, philanthropic organization. It is non-sectarian, non-dogmatic and non-judgmental.

Our University has the progressive policy of offering unlimited transfer credits. At the UofB your entire life will be assessed to determine what credit can be awarded for life experience. "You will earn 20 credits simply by examining your life in detail and completing the L.E.A.P. forms."

The UofB is completely non-residential. No formal classroom.

Associates, bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in a broad range of fields. "These are examples only. Remember...majors and degrees can be custom made by the student." Also, "The University of Berkley makes available, to deserving individuals, Honorary Doctoral degrees. Honorary doctoral degrees solicited by individuals must be paid for. The payment referred to is an "honorarium" or contribution to the UofB."

In the spring of 1995, the University of Berkley, in conjunction with a Japanese legal firm, opened a campus in Tokyo. Our Tokyo office offers only instruction in the field of business. We at the UofB (USA) and the UofB (Japan) had to undergo the closest scrutiny by the Japanese Government. The result? After extensive investigation, our school was granted full approval by the government to advertise and conduct business. Also, as a prerequisite, our MBA program materials (offered via correspondence) had to be fully approved by the Japanese government. -- http://www.degreeson-line.com/legal.html

The University of Berkley is not accredited by one of the seven regional accrediting agencies recognized by the United States Department of Education. The University is not accredited by any accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department or Secretary of Education. It should be noted for the record that MANY educators, teachers and professors as well as School District Administrators (both in the private and public sectors) have their degrees from the University of Berkley. Please see: http://uofb.com/alumni.html for a more inclusive list of alumni, including prestigious world famous schools, businesses, diplomats, dignitaries, domestic and foreign governments. University of Berkley can even count an American President among its impressive roster of degree holders. -- http://www.degreeson-line.com/accreditation.html

http://uofb.com/alumni.html does not list any people, only where they work.

http://www.maine.gov/education/highered/Non-Accredited/ta-univ.htm lists locations as Southfield, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

DEVIN VARSALONA, http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i46/46a02402.htm - Pennsylvania Court Shuts Down Web Site Accused of Selling Fake Degrees, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, 2005 -- Pennsylvania's attorney general has won a court order to immediately shut down the University of Berkley, an online operation based in Erie, Pa., that he accused of selling thousands of bogus degrees.
The order also freezes the personal and corporate assets of the owner, Dennis J. Globosky. The Berkley operation is not associated with the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Corbett told the Erie County Court that he believes that Mr. Globosky, 50, has sold more than 12,500 illegitimate degrees, including associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, and has taken in revenues exceeding $34-million, said Barbara A. Petito, a spokeswoman for the attorney general. The office has been investigating Mr. Globosky, a former New Mexico state trooper, for more than a year, since receiving a tip that the company was fraudulent, she said. Mr. Corbett found that Mr. Globosky owns the University of Berkley, the University of Berkley Online, UofB Inc., and the New Millennium Accrediting Partnership for Educators Worldwide, an organization not recognized by the U.S. Department of Education that Mr. Globosky used to accredit the University of Berkley.
Since April 2003, UC-Berkeley has sent three letters of complaint to Mr. Globosky, who responded to only two of them, said Maria Rubinshteyn, the university's director of marketing and management of trademarks.

http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=18981 Prosecutors Block Site Offering 'Berkley' Degrees Pennsylvania Man May Have Issued 12,500 Unaccredited Diplomas BY Josh Keller The Daily Californian, Monday, July 11, 2005

Until last week, a man who calls himself Dr. Dennis Globosky sold thousands of degrees over the Internet from a familiar-sounding University of Berkley for as little as $2,065. UC Berkeley officials previously sent cease and desist letters to Globosky, claiming he violated the school's trademark rights. However, it was not until last week, after Pennsylvania prosecutors sued Globosky and his business for consumer fraud, that his company was stopped from issuing degrees. Globosky, who prosecutors said actually obtained his last academic degree from an Erie County high school, issued what he told prosecutors were 12,500 degrees in everything from a masters in journalism to doctorates in nursing. If his totals are correct, prosecutors estimate he netted at least $35 million over the past decade. "(Globosky's) diploma mill does little more than sell worthless, fraudulent sheets of paper purporting to be genuine diplomas," according to the state's lawsuit. The school is accredited by one organization: the New-Millennium Accrediting Partnership for Educators Worldwide. Prosecutors say the partnership is a shell company owned by Globosky. The organization is not registered with the U.S. Department of Education and Globosky opened a mail drop for the organization under a different name, the "National Association of Police, Firefighters and Emergency Workers," according to the suit.
UC Berkeley sent cease and desist letters in April 2003, said Maria Rubinshteyn, the campus's director of marketing and management of trademarks. But Globosky said the school was founded in Berkley, Mich., and the university took no further action, she said.

American Association of University Professors, State of the Profession: Tarnishing the Image, By Martin D. Snyder, Academe Online, Sept-Oct 2005

If you are already having a bad day, you probably don’t want to visit the Web site of University of Illinois physics professor George Gollin. On his site, Gollin exposes scores of online “universities” that grant degrees despite their lack of faculty, staff, and actual course offerings. These sham universities will transmogrify your “life experience” into credits, transcripts, degrees, and some very fancy looking diplomas. The latest addition to this rogues’ gallery is the University of Berkley , styled a “diploma mill” by Pennsylvania attorney general Tom Corbett, who is trying to shut it down. Though UB’s potentially misleading name allegedly stems from Berkley, Michigan, the school’s headquarters are actually located in an industrial park in Erie, Pennsylvania. (On its Web site, the UB disclaims affiliation with the University of California, Berkeley.)
The University of Berkley offers associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees for a flat installment rate with a discount for prepayment. There are also bargain combination packages with bachelor’s and master’s or master’s and doctoral degrees. UB offers more than 160 degrees, though those listed on its Web site are only samples. Self-designed “student generated” degrees are available. UB offers honorary degrees for a minimum $2,000 “honorarium.” The Web site displays an honorary degree allegedly conferred on former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
According to the institution’s Web site, “the University of Berkley is not accredited by one of the seven regional accrediting agencies recognized by the United States Department of Education. The University is not accredited by any accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department or Secretary of Education. The University of Berkley is however fully accredited by NAPFEW (New Millennium Accrediting Partnership For Educators Worldwide).” According to Attorney General Corbett, NAPFEW is a business owned and operated by Dennis Globosky, a former New Mexico state police officer, who holds a diploma from an Erie County high school. Globosky also owns and runs UB; he refers to himself as “Dr.” Globosky, director of academic administration.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/07/08/mill - July 8, 2005; Class Dismissed - Inside Higher Ed. July 8, 2005; Class Dismissed
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday against an institution the Pennsylvania attorney general said is a diploma mill, the office is going for the University of Berkley’s jugular. The lawsuit, filed in local court in Erie County, where the business is based, charged a former New Mexico state trooper, Dennis Globosky, 50, with selling thousands of fake degrees in the United States and abroad, since the late 1990s, and operating under a bogus accreditation institution. Along with the complaint, the attorney general asked the court to immediately shut down Berkley’s operations. After several hours of review Wednesday morning, the judge granted the request. “Defendants knew their worthless, fraudulent degrees, phony accreditation, bogus faculty, falsely portrayed physical facilities … would be used to mislead employers,” the complaint reads. “We want to shut him down entirely and stop him from ever doing business in Pennsylvania again,” said Barbara Petito, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Tom Corbett. The complaint says that Globosky claims to have awarded 12,500 degrees, which would put his revenues at more than $34 million. Petito said that Globosky could face fines of up to $3,000 for each violation of state consumer protection and education laws, including misrepresenting services, affiliations or accreditations. According to the complaint, Globosky has an impressive resume of such violations, starting with his title: “Dr.” Globosky’s final recognized degree is from an Erie County high school. Globosky’s lawyer did not return calls for comment Thursday. In a letter to the state Education Department in April, Globosky said that Berkley was not conducting business in Pennsylvania, and therefore is not violating state regulations. But the complaint said Berkley is doing business out of an office at West 21st St., in Erie. According to the lawsuit, the list of infractions stretches from the use of a photograph of a Harvard building to make it appear that Berkley has a campus, to descriptions of faculty members whom the attorney general says do not exist. On one of its Web sites, Casey, an animated woman, informs prospectives “you may already have your degree and not know it.” Berkley offers the opportunity to purchase that degree for between $2,065 and $4,995. It claims the diploma will then be recognized by institutions including the University of Cambridge, in England, and Pennsylvania State University. In fact, there does seem to be some relationship between certain courses at Berkley and Penn State courses, but not quite the one Berkley implies. For example, the course description of Berkley’s course in Inner City Geography is nearly identical to the description in the online bulletin of Penn State’s undergraduate Urban Geography course. As part of the doctoral program in mass communication at Berkley, a student must take Ethics and Issues in Mass Communications, which has the same description as an undergraduate course of the same name at Winthrop University, in South Carolina. Health Care Finance and Economics, a class required for a Ph.D. from Berkley in health care administration, is another course with a description identical to an undergraduate Penn State class of the same name. “It’s not uncommon that you see degree mills copy material from reputable places,” said George Gollin, physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has made a hobby of following diploma mills for years. “It really gets dangerous for the public when you give away degrees in things like health care.”
In some cases in the past, states filed criminal charges against people with invalid degrees who pose a threat, such as public health workers. In its investigation of Berkley, the attorney general’s office found cause for concern. Petito said the office discovered an assistant police chief who had used a Berkley degree to climb the ladder, and an expert witness in structural engineering who had used his Berkley Ph.D. as proof of his expertise. The head of a company that employed the expert had, according to news reports, mistakenly assumed that Berkley was the University of California at Berkeley. “That’s really dangerous, that [engineer] should be in the slammer,” Gollin said. He noted that poorly trained structural engineers have been responsible for building collapses in the past.
Gollin thought that a lot of people who use Berkley degrees probably know that the degrees aren’t up to snuff. However, he felt many students may have been deceived, because the course descriptions sound official, the diplomas look real, and the receptionist at Berkley’s Office of Student Affairs refers to the institution’s accreditation by the “New Millennium Accrediting Partnership For Educators Worldwide.”
According to the lawsuit, Globosky also founded and owns “N.A.P.F.E.W,” an acronym he said stood for “National Association of Police, Firefighters and Emergency Workers” in his original application for a post office box in Washington.

Also reported at http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/news/patriotnews/stories/070705b1bogus.html

http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=1328 - High Country News - Heard around the West - September 18, 1995 -
When the board of Idaho Falls Institute of Arts and Technology discovered that its new president, Ted Carpenter, had a drive-through Ph.D. from a Michigan correspondence school called University of Berkley, and not, as board members had thought, from the University of California at Berkeley, it demoted Carpenter to head of admissions and set out to find a replacement. According to the Idaho Falls Post Register, Carpenter was kept on because board members thought the confusion between Berkley and Berkeley might have been an honest mistake. Plus, the new college needed an admissions director.

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