DL Truth: Distance Learning Truth

Irish International University is the target of a BBC investigation:

Quote:Bogus university scam uncovered  
Investigation
By Nigel Morris
BBC London Investigations Producer  

An international education scam that targets foreign students who come to study in the capital has been exposed by a BBC London investigation.

The bogus Irish International University (IIU), which offers sub-standard and worthless degrees, has been allowed to flourish in the UK - virtually unchecked by the government - for the last seven years.

Although the organisation is unaccredited, hundreds of students have been given educational visas to enter Britain and take its exams at private colleges in London.

The IIU, which has 5,000 students worldwide and thousands of graduates, maintains the illusion of a valid education through its elaborate but highly misleading website.

This illusion is enhanced by the university's continued use of Oxford and Cambridge facilities to stage its award ceremonies.

After each event photographs appear on the IIU website showing happy students receiving awards at the UK's best seats of learning.

Our investigation took us from London to Dublin, Oxford and finally Monte Carlo in search of those behind the IIU.

A BBC journalist and an actor posing as fake academic were invited to the IIU's award ceremony which, surprisingly, was held at the Divinity School, next to the Bodleian Library, in the very heart of Oxford University.

The ceremony was due to go ahead at Cambridge, but after BBC London alerted the university authorities the event was cancelled. That did not stop the IIU switching venues to Oxford at the last minute.

Dublin campus?

In Oxford, our journalist and actor secretly filmed the award ceremony and recorded meetings with university boss and Executive President Professor Hardeep Singh Sandhu, a Malaysian businessman and faculty member Dr Edwin Varo.

Dr Varo, told us that the IIU was not bogus and was registered in Ireland and that it had applied to the government and had been given approval to use the word university.

In Dublin, Sean O'Foghlu, Chief Executive of the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, told BBC London: "To use the word university in a title it needs approval from our Department of Education and Science - no such approval has been given by our department."

The university website clearly stated that the university had a campus in Dublin. We visited the address given by the IIU on its website - there was no campus, just a mailbox.

The website also claimed that the IIU's educational programmes were accredited and quality controlled by the impressive sounding QAC-UK Ltd - the Quality Assurance Commission, based in North London.

During secretly filmed meetings, Professor Sandhu told our undercover team that the QAC was an "independent body" that maintained the quality of education in the UK and elsewhere.

Faculty member, Dr Varo explained that the QAC staff: "Focus more on your curriculum - on your teaching; focus on your evaluation - they focus on your faculty - who are your faculty - what amount of real teaching takes place."

The QAC website listed an impressive roll-call of staff including the QAC Commissioner General and an Acting Commissioner General.

Our reporter visited the QAC and instead of finding a commissioner general we found four telephonists fielding calls for countless companies at yet another virtual office.

A further check at Companies House revealed that far from the being "independent" the QAC is in fact owned by university boss Professor Dr Sandhu.

Bona fide academic, Professor Geoffrey Alderman, gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on the subject of bogus institutions.

He told us: "Some of these colleges will say, 'sure we're accredited', but when you say 'by whom?', they name an accrediting institution which in fact they themselves own."

University boss Professor Sandhu, who sits on the governing council is a Doctor of Letters, a doctorate awarded by another unaccredited university based in the Caribbean.

His professorship is "honorary", awarded by a European association set up to give out professorships.

On the website he also called himself "Sir H Sandhu" but his knighthood was not bestowed on him by the Queen.

One person missing from the Oxford award ceremony was the university's Honorary Chancellor, His Excellency Baron Knowth - real name Professor Jeffrey Wooller - a successful chartered accountant from London.

Professor Wooller, a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, owns a £1.2m townhouse in Kensington but spends most of his time living as a tax exile in Monte Carlo.

Our actor, again posing as a fake academic, arranged to meet Professor Wooller, at a hotel in Monaco. We secretly filmed this meeting.

'Dreamt up'

He told our fake academic that the IIU was not "recognised anywhere".

He admitted to our actor that the website was an illusion: "When you look at the website, it's a figment of someone's imagination. Someone's dreamt up what a university should look like, and that's what's on the website."

Professor Wooller told us that students paid a lot of money to attend the award ceremonies, adding: "If you can mention Oxford, Cambridge then the whole world thinks that it must be a good university."

He then said of the university's operation: "The whole thing's dodgy." He even said that the IIU's governing council, of which he and Professor Sandhu are both members, did not exist.

A BBC London reporter then confronted Professor Wooller:

Reporter: You said the whole thing is dodgy.

Mr Wooller: It is dodgy!

Reporter: Oh so you admit it's dodgy?

Mr Wooller: Of course it's dodgy.

He also told our reporter that he had been given his professorship by the IIU and that he had bought his "Baron" title.

Professor Wooller refused to quit as honorary chancellor stating that most IIU students were happy and that the university was good value for money.

Professor John Arnold of Loughborough University has seen coursework from an IIU graduate.

He said: "Students are paying for this, what I would regard as worthless and bogus qualifications. I would say buyer beware from the point of view of students.

"You know I really think that they'll probably be getting qualifications which are unlikely to be taken seriously at least in Western Europe."

'Banned'

Following BBC London's investigation the IIU will now no longer be allowed to use Oxford and Cambridge's facilities to stage their award ceremonies.

Oxford University issued a statement stating that they would not be renting its facilities to the Irish International University in the future.

The IIU website survives but since our investigation it has undergone a radical overhaul.

The reference to a Dublin campus has been removed, the QAC is "no longer involved with the Irish International University" and its logo no longer appears on the website.

Professor Sandhu told BBC London that the university will not renew its affiliations with any private colleges in London.

The government is promising that by 2009 all colleges wishing to bring overseas applicants into the country will need to be accredited.

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said: "Our universities are rightly regarded as world class and any attempt by bogus institutions or conmen to tarnish this hard won reputation will not be tolerated.

"The UK has some of the toughest regulations in the world governing the award of higher education qualifications. The vast majority of private colleges in London operate lawfully and provide a high-quality service to their students.

"We are working very hard on behalf of students to ensure that all private institutions meet strict quality standards.

"Where we are not satisfied that this is the case with a particular college, we will not hesitate to investigate and if necessary, close it down.

"I would encourage all new students to carefully check the credentials of the college they wish to enrol at and if they have any concerns, contact their local trading standards team."

The full investigation can be seen in two parts on BBC London News at 6.30 pm on Monday 7 January and Tuesday 8 January.

Hans Kempe demonstrating one of several similarities between an IIU diploma and a stick of dynamite:

I always wonder what "foreign" country it is where people are impressed by men in weird costumes and funny hats.  I think it's the same one Eddie Murphy was from in "Coming to America."

A very interesting article by John Kersey on the IIU situation, and how it relates to legitimate, independent education:

“Neither Irish, nor a university” – Some observations on the Irish International University controversy

Kersey concurs that IIU is "bogus":

Quote:Like some of its commercially-focussed American counterparts, IIU has no real academic life to it; it produces no scholarly output, undertakes no philanthropic activity, engenders no real benefit to society. Where it could, with effort and commitment, provide a determined alternative to the mainstream, it has been content to be merely a pallid and perhaps deceptive imitation of it, justifying the BBC’s “bogus” description.

He does a brilliant job explaining (for those not familiar with the controversy) how the state and its shills seek to drive the more efficient private sector out of the market.  

Quote:Today on both sides of the Atlantic there has developed a particular lobby group comprised of low-grade universities that are either owned by the state or under the direct control of accreditation agencies that are in turn controlled by the state.

The pattern goes something like this. The weaker the profile of a university is, the harder it finds it to attract students. Oxford has no problems in that regard. The former Peckham Polytechnic, on the other hand, cannot pick and choose with such ease, and it is likely that a high proportion of its intake will be from overseas, which of course carries higher fees and potentially a less demanding constituency which is seeking the supposed prestige of a British degree and does not much care which institution it is from.

As the university declines in standing, so it becomes more and more dependent on the state to allocate it funding and to assign those students for whom it would not have been a first choice. Indeed, most of these students would not be at university at all were it not subsidised by the state, which continues to advocate mass university education not for academic or humanitarian reasons, but because it reduces crime and unemployment.

The chief – indeed the only - strength of the low-grade state institution becomes ultimately that it is part of the state machinery and that its degrees are “degrees of the state”. It is these institutions that we hear pushing the line that “all state degrees are equal in standing” in the face of a disbelieving public. It is also these institutions whose graduates are frequently cited by employers as lacking basic skills and contributing to the “dumbing down” of university degrees.

Quote:The private college sector remains the hidden success story of British tertiary education, and it is a sector – unlike the mainstream of higher education – that is dominated by British entrepreneurs who are largely black or Asian in ethnicity. Dozens of institutions – the BBC reported over 60 in East London alone – operate without state subsidy and generate considerable profits through the supply of education on the open, unregulated market. Their customers are most usually overseas students who come to Britain seeking a year or more of productive study and cultural experience, aware that the “British brand” is a powerful marketing tool when they return home. They may be studying in small, undistinguished-looking premises over shopfronts and in unfashionable parts of town, but in contrast to the state universities, they can gain access to private education for considerably less money and often with fewer academic barriers to entry.

The demand areas for such institutions remain those that are most directly vocational, particularly business and information technology. Degree qualifications (especially the MBA) are highly valued, and some colleges partner with British universities to offer their awards. The smaller colleges, however, generally find that the fees demanded by the British institutions to franchise their degree programmes are unsustainable, and also that the British curriculums on offer are better suited to grand campuses and taxpayer-funded facilities than to students who are looking for a direct route to the assessment of their ability and to a pared-down style of study. Often those students are being taught by tutors who are earning little more than the minimum wage, without any of the security of tenure that their cosseted public sector counterparts enjoy. This may be education on a shoestring, but it is education nonetheless, and it serves the needs of many who experience it.

Into this situation have come overseas institutions such as IIU, and a myriad other counterparts, mostly from the United States, which fill the gap by providing degree franchises at an affordable price, thus meeting market demand. Some of these institutions are decent enough, while others are dreadful. None is Harvard, but Harvard is not what this market is looking for. These institutions, by contrast, are breaking a state monopoly and creating price competition. That is why the likes of Bill Rammell have seen them as a problem.

Quote:Well, for the public sector and for government, the answer is simple. The success story of the private sector must be eliminated, and there are two ways in which this will be effected.

Firstly, new legislation will make it all but impossible for most of the private colleges to operate without slashing their profits as they seek new arrangements with British universities. That will effectively shift the odds back in favour of the public sector monopoly. Many of the private colleges will probably go out of business altogether, especially if they do not have the facilities available to meet the expectations of their British university partners.

Secondly, in the process of introducing the new legislation, it would be mightily useful to discredit private sector degree providers as much as possible so as to deter students from seeing them as a viable alternative. Why not find a particularly indifferent institution to be held up as an example? IIU certainly seems to tick all the boxes.

Quote:Of course, in all these cases, there must also be victims. Bring them forth – those who spent their life savings on courses that they now believe (or have been told by the state propaganda machine) are worthless. The correct approach of caveat emptor is rejected in favour of that of presuming that consumers are merely gullible victims and that choice in the free market is too demanding for their meagre intellects. And the question of "worthless" is moot when graduates of the vaunted state system find themselves asking whether you'd like fries with that.

Quote:So the answer...is as follows: if you want to see an end to the IIUs of this world, or at least their relegation to their proper place at the bottom of the educational food chain, there’s an easy solution. Simply stop distorting the market through reinforcing a massive and aggressive public sector monopoly on higher education and providing it at extensively subsidised rates as if three years of study at the taxpayer’s expense were some kind of automatic right for today’s youth, regardless of their aptitude for university study. In short, stop providing a mass one-size-fits-all system and start thinking smart and thinking towards individualised education solutions.

If a free market is left to develop in higher education, the good and bad will be obvious for what they are, and the good will survive at the expense of the bad, which will fail and close. Fair competition is good for innovation and development, it’s good for institutions and it’s good for the public. Higher education needs to abandon the security of the ivory tower and realise that the free market is ultimately the best and most moral way to secure its future.

The private sector in higher education is currently squeezed into the small area that the state monopoly allows it to occupy – essentially a combination of niche providers and low-level outfits such as IIU. Take away the squeeze provided by the monopoly and the private sector will expand to take over the areas presently denied to it, including those where high quality is demanded.

Thanks for that link, Armando.  That article and Kersey's earlier 2004 article for the Libertarian Alliance are now a permanent part of the "announcements" (or "dogma") section of this site under Welcome to DL Truth.