Quote:The Corruption of Scientific Journals Continues Apace

David Strom  1:00 PM | July 19, 2025

... Springer-Nature's journal dedicated to obstetrics is called "Pregnancy and Childbirth," and it just hired a woman with no research experience and credentials from an online university to be the Lead Editor. She has not published a single research paper, and the thesis she wrote to get her diploma mill Ph.D. was entirely on racism, not pregnancy or childbirth. 

When a member of Springer-Nature's Editorial Board brought this fact up and pointed out that her sole qualification was that she was a black woman, they relieved him of his duties. 

[Greg J.] Marchand is an obstetrician who also teaches at medical schools. He has invented several surgical techniques, so he knows a thing or two about pregnancy and childbirth. The new "Lead Editor?" Her "research" is in DEI. 

... But Franklin has no research experience at all, and the idea that she would make a competent editor of a prestigious journal is absurd. A recent Ph.D. from an online diploma mill is only valuable because Springer Nature wanted to put a black woman as the face of the journal. That's it.

Quote:“Dr.” Nicole Wadsworth falsely claimed University of Alabama PhD, campaign admits

Grayson Everett — June 11, 2025


(Dr. Nicole J. Wadsworth for Lt. Governor/Facebook, Screenshot)


After demanding to be referred to as “Dr.” by news organizations in their coverage of the 2026 Alabama Lieutenant Governor’s race – it turns out that Nicole Wadsworth does not have the PhD she claimed.

A campaign spokesperson for Wadsworth, age 41, explicitly described her credentials to Yellowhammer News in a statement last week.

“She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a master’s from the Florida Institute of Technology (Huntsville campus), and a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. She also holds an Economic Development Leadership Certification from Auburn and an Alabama Planning and Zoning Certification from the University of North Alabama,” the campaign spokesperson wrote.

The same campaign spokesperson specifically told another news outlet last week that her PhD from the University of Alabama was in economics. 

According to one of the many online profiles created by Wadsworth, formerly Nicole Jones, to promote a commercial real estate group she formed in April 2012, she holds a Doctor of Theology  (Th.D) in Faith and Public Policy – however no institution is listed. 

Without context, the Wadsworth campaign released a statement on Wednesday morning saying that she does not in fact have a PhD from The University of Alabama.

“We would like to issue a brief clarification regarding Dr. Nicole Wadsworth’s academic background. In an earlier communication, our campaign made a mistype, specifically the institution that conferred her Ph.D. It was mentioned that she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Alabama,” a campaign spokesperson wrote.

The statement goes on to claim that Wadsworth does hold an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and that Wadsworth “began graduate level coursework at the University of Alabama, then transferred to the Florida Institute of Technology – Huntsville campus and earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Master of Science in Acquisition and Contract Management.”

Ultimately, Wadsworth claims she “completed” her PhD at [unaccredited] North Central Theological Seminary – an institution that she has never publicly listed across her expansive web presence.

Yellowhammer News requested verification of Wadsworth’s degree credentials from the University of Alabama System and Florida Institute of Technology.

A spokesperson for the University of Alabama System responded in a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying, “The University of Alabama does not have any record of Nicole Jones Wadsworth obtaining a degree at UA. Due to federal privacy laws, we are unable to provide additional information.”

Alabama news outlets became suspicious of Wadsworth’s credentials when a memo was distributed to media organizations effectively demanding they refer to her as “Dr.” Nicole Wadsworth in their coverage. However, the designation of “Dr.” is reserved in news reporting only for those who have earned their Doctor of Medicine (M.D.)

In a recent radio appearance, Wadsworth claimed she has never run for public office prior to seeking the Lt. Governorship now in the 2026 election cycle. 

However, while under the name Nicole Jones from a previous marriage – prior to marrying State Rep. Tim Wadsworth (R-Arley) around 2021 – Jones ran for office twice.

First, as a Republican for Alabama State Senate District 7 in 2017 – which she filed paperwork for with the Alabama Secretary of State’s office during the 2018 election cycle – before dissolving the campaign in August 2017. 

Instead, she opted to run for Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, and campaigned for the office until March 2018, months short of the June 2018 primary election date. 

A news report from July 2017 detailed her campaign for Ag Commissioner. 

“Over the past several weeks I have prayerfully considered where to best leave a legacy in our State, and the Lord presented an opportunity that overwhelmed my heart. At this time, I would be honored to have your support as I run for Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries,” she was quoted as saying. 

At that time, she reported that she was “working on a Doctorate in Theology…”

• The Order directs the Secretary of Education to hold higher education “accreditors” accountable, including through denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, for accreditors’ poor performance or violations of federal civil rights law.
  

• It directs the Attorney General and Secretary of Education to investigate and take action to terminate unlawful discrimination by American higher education institutions, including law schools and medical schools.
  

• The Order mandates the Secretary of Education realign accreditation with student-focused principles by:
  • Resuming recognition of new accreditors to foster competition.
    
  • Requiring institutions use program-level student outcome data to improve results, without reference to race, ethnicity, or sex.
    
  • Requiring high-quality, high-value academic programs.
    
  • Prioritizing intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.
    
  • Launching an experimental site to test innovative quality assurance pathways.
    
  • Increasing the consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the accreditor recognition review process.
    
  • Streamlining accreditor recognition and institutional transitions between accreditors.
    
  
  

• Accreditors—the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities can access over $100 billion in annual Federal student loans and Pell Grants—have routinely approved low-quality institutions, ultimately failing students, families, and American taxpayers.
  

• Accreditors have failed to ensure quality, with a national six-year undergraduate graduation rate of just 64% in 2020.
  

• Nearly 25% of bachelor’s degrees and over 40% of master’s degrees offer a negative return on investment, burdening students with debt and limited earning potential.
  

• Accreditors have also abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards, violating Federal law.
  • The American Bar Association’s (ABA) accreditation standards for law schools require unlawful race-based preferences, which the Attorney General recently reminded the ABA are illegal.
    
  • The Liaison Committee on Medical Education and Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education imposes similar discriminatory requirements, prioritizing ideology over quality medical training.
    
  
  
• These practices have diverted focus from student success to ideological conformity, undermining academic integrity and student achievement.
  

• In his first term, President Trump took historic steps to promote school choice, expand apprenticeship programs, and increase transparency in college costs.
  

• This Executive Order builds on that legacy by reforming the accreditation system to prioritize student outcomes, eliminate unlawful discrimination, promote academic freedom and intellectual inquiry, and restore accountability.
  

• These reforms will rebuild public trust in higher education, empowering students and families to make informed choices.
  

Quote:Disciples of Truth, diplomas of fraud: The tumultuous tale of the ‘Anglo Saxon Sikhs’ of Oklahoma
Led by spiritual seeker Homer Bradshaw, The Disciples of Truth had a brief, failed tryst with a religion they understood little of. Then came a second act.
Philip Deslippe
9 hours ago



Courtesy Philip Deslippe.

The first mass conversion of Americans to Sikhism occurred in Oklahoma nearly 70 years ago. Decades later, it spawned a vast illegal enterprise involving fraudulent degrees. After two years of research through newspapers, magazines, and government records, its story is told here for the first time.

In 1955, a handful of spiritual seekers began to meet weekly at a small, single-family home within a quiet residential neighborhood in northern Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their aim was to study the world’s religions in chronological order, and their host and guide was a thin, middle-aged man in glasses named Homer Bradshaw.
   
After a few months, the study group became an official organisation and was incorporated by Bradshaw as “The Disciples of Truth” with a stated purpose of embracing and teaching “the underlying truth contained in all systems of religion, philosophy, and science”.


Articles of Incorporation for the ‘Disciples of Truth’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Towards the end of 1956, the Disciples of Truth had made their way to the final religion of their survey, Sikhism. They became convinced that they had found “the most complete revelation from God to our world” and were determined to meet actual Sikhs and learn more – although at that time, Sikhs numbered only a few thousand across the entire United States. They were mostly living in agricultural centres along the West Coast.

In what they saw as serendipity, the group soon learned that there were two Sikh students from India studying at the University of Oklahoma. The Disciples drove 120 km to meet them.

The students, JS Bakshi and KL Mehea, were likely astonished, given the lack of familiarity with Sikhism in the United States and the absence of any converts in the country. But they answered questions from the Disciples, gave them some literature, and told them to write to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society in Stockton, California.

Bradshaw wrote a lengthy letter to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society and asked them for literature in English and guidance so that the Disciples of Truth could “become good, full-fledged Sikhs”. He also introduced his small group of six persons to the Sikhs of Stockton and expressed hope to establish a gurdwara in Tulsa and serve as a missionary to “assist in bringing this wonderful Faith to many of our fellow Americans”.

In the spring of 1958, Bradshaw incorporated a new entity called Akal Sat Ke Sikhen or the Disciples of Eternal Truth. Newspapers in Oklahoma published stories about the state having its first “Sikh Church” and for a short while Bradshaw and his fellow converts conducted weekly services at his home that mostly consisted of lectures and reading the Ardas or Sikh prayer.

Amar Singh Khalsa, the editor in chief of Sardar magazine in Lucknow who had been corresponding with Bradshaw, arrived in Tulsa shortly after for a month-long visit to provide assistance and give lectures to the local community.


Listing for the Tulsa Sikh Community, from the ‘Tulsa Tribune’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw then took his missionary efforts on the road and visited Sikh communities in Texas, Arizona, California and then Canada. While his Sikh hosts generously received him, they often did not know what to do with the head of a self-described “Anglo-Saxon Sikh community” in Oklahoma.

Bradshaw’s account of the trip included unintentionally humorous events such as waiting for days for talks that never happened or lecturing in English to a handful of elders who only spoke Punjabi. But he did record a talk for a radio broadcast in California and spoke to Sikhs at a Gurdwara in British Columbia.

After his tour, Bradshaw wrote a series of articles for The Sikh Review in Calcutta, mostly on the possibilities of spreading Sikhism and establishing it as modern, global religion for the “Atomic Age of mankind”. His suggestions were both sensible and flattering.


Madan Pal Singh Makhani, Amar Singh Khalsa, and Homer Bradshaw in 1958, from from the ‘Tulsa Tribune’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw hoped that Sikhs and their institutions would start devoting resources to catechising young Sikhs outside of India and proselytising the general public through motion pictures and literature in English. With a convert’s zeal, Bradshaw spoke glowingly of Sikhism and referred to Sikhs in inclusive terms such as “we” and “our people”.

Despite his enthusiasm, Bradshaw had come to Sikhism recently and only through materials in English. He knew little of Sikh history or culture, and did not know any Punjabi. Bradshaw’s ideas about Sikhism were largely his own and shaped by his personal preferences and spiritual worldview.

While the Sikh Review carefully edited Bradshaw’s articles and omitted what would have been seen as bizarre or offensive by their Sikh readership, those ideas were freely published by newspapers in Oklahoma and Canada.

Sikhism, according to Bradshaw, was the New Age culmination of “the progressive evolution of religion.” He told the Tulsa Tribune, “We accept Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ, Mohammad and Guru Nanak as prophets of God of equal rank and dignity.”

Bradshaw was also adamant that beards and turbans had no place in Sikhism, and that Sikh communities in North America needed to hold their services in English, install pews in their gurdwaras and enter them wearing shoes. In Canada, he told the Times Colonist that the Sikhs of British Columbia were “smothering their religion through the worship of outward symbols”.


Homer Bradshaw in Canada on his Missionary Tour, from the ‘Times Colonist’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Remarkably, despite his lukewarm reception on the West Coast and his unorthodox ideas, soon after Bradshaw travelled to India where he was warmly received by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, an institution that manages gurdwaras in northern India and is the closest thing to a governing body for Sikhs around the world.

Bradshaw was given a copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture and living guru of Sikhs, for the newly established American Sikh community led by an American convert.

Whatever hopes Sikh authorities in India may have had for the Akal Sat Ke Sikhen were soon dashed. Not long after his return to the United States, the SGPC asked a man named Dr Harbans Lal, then a student at the University of Kansas, to go to Oklahoma and check in on the care being given to the Siri Guru Granth Sahib and the progress of Bradshaw and his fledgling congregation.

In an interview for Scroll, Lal recounted how he found Bradshaw and his mother as the only two remaining members. Unable to read the Gurmukhi script and unaware of the standard ritual care Sikhs show to the Guru, they stored their copy in a cabinet like an ordinary book. Perhaps even more offensive, Bradshaw smoked in the house where the Guru was stored. Without any protest, Bradshaw surrendered the copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib to Lal who became the new custodian.

Less than four years after the Disciples of Truth began to meet in the home of Homer Bradshaw, the first group of American converts to Sikhism were no more, but nearly two decades later, the Disciples of Truth would re-emerge for an astonishing second act.

The Doc and Crime by Degrees

By 1960, a man named James Caffey became the owner of the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth. He was an unlikely person to head up a religious organisation. The year before he became its head, he was arrested and released on suspicion of narcotics possession and killed a schoolteacher in a traffic accident.

The year after he assumed control of the Disciples of Truth, Caffey was a suspect in a robbery and his home was searched by the police.


James Caffey in 1961, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

The officers described what they found in Caffey’s residence as “one of the largest and most weird assortments ever obtained here with a search warrant”. The cache included stolen goods, lock picking equipment, narcotics, hypodermic needles and syringes, and “lewd photographs”.

Officers also found suitcases filled with diplomas and gold seals, a package addressed to “James R. Caffey, MD” and a prescription pad with the same name and title. These last items connected Caffey to the Disciples of Truth.


Items found in the home of James Caffey by the police, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

The articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth allowed its owner to “confer academic honors, degrees, and certificates” on students. Since degree-granting institutions at this time were mostly unregulated, this allowed Caffey to operate what is commonly known as a diploma mill: a business that sells certifications and degrees through the mail while requiring little, if any, coursework, or abiding by educational standards.

Caffey was also able to use the Disciples of Truth to award himself credentials as a medical doctor, which he used to order and receive narcotics through the mail. (Ironically, his friends and family had called him “Doc” after he worked at a local hospital as a teenager.)

But his plans were quickly put on hold. After the police searched Caffey’s residence, they discovered a large quantity of cocaine he was storing in a safety deposit box at a local bank. “Doc” Caffey was then charged with possession of narcotics and given a 20-year prison sentence.

In 1973, Caffey was paroled after serving a little more than half of his sentence, and only a few years later, he was operating a massive and lucrative diploma mill.

Caffey acquired the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences, a long-dormant unaccredited school from Missouri that only existed on paper, but made the Disciples of Truth the centre of his operation.

Through it, he created and organised the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences and numerous other churches, seminaries, and universities. Caffey also erroneously believed that the Disciples of Truth provided him with a loophole to avoid paying taxes on his earnings since it was a religious organisation.

The operation was promoted through small, classified advertisements in national magazines that offered readers “degrees, diplomas, (and) certificates” that they could earn through studying at home, writing a thesis, or by earning credit from their previous work experience.

Those who wrote into the Disciples of Truth soon found that the requirements were negligible, and they could essentially buy degrees ranging from high school diplomas to doctorates, as well as ministerial credentials.


Credit: Philip Deslippe.

As the money poured in, Caffey was savvy enough to avoid criminal charges for years despite constant complaints. When the regents of the state of Oklahoma passed a resolution to stop one of his colleges in 1979, he moved and reestablished his operation in the neighbouring state of Missouri, one of a handful of states that had no laws against diploma mills.

He also used numerous semantic tricks to stay technically within the law: his schools were called “non-traditional” institutions, degrees were “awarded” not bought, and all monies sent to the Disciples of Truth were described as “examination fees” that only covered administrative expenses.

For those members of the public who doubted the legitimacy of his degrees, Caffey created a fake accrediting body to provide the appearance of validity to his schools.

Bringing criminal charges against Caffey proved to be impossible for investigators and prosecutors. Not only did he operate within a legal grey area, but it was difficult to find people who bought degrees through the Disciples of Truth who would come forward and testify against him, since these potential “victims” had their own ulterior motives in obtaining dubious credentials.

Two US government agencies, however, looked for indirect ways to shut down the Disciples of Truth. The Internal Revenue Service investigated Caffey for not paying taxes on the money he made selling diplomas, and the United States Postal Service tried to establish that he was using the mail to “obtain money through false representations”.

Their efforts dramatically culminated in January 1982. As the Internal Revenue Service was finalising a warrant to search Caffey’s home for evidence of tax evasion, postal officials ordered a stop the mail that came to the Disciples of Truth which effectively ended its ability to operate.

Five days later, Caffey’s home in Missouri was gutted in a massive fire. Investigators found gasoline and lighter fluid throughout the charred remains of the house and described the fire as a clear act of arson.

Caffey was so scared by these developments and the prospect of returning to jail that he immediately cut ties with his diploma mills and left them to his former salesman turned associate Anthony Geruntino. For the next few years, Geruntino used the Disciples of Truth to open new schools such as American Western University in Utah and Arizona.

Despite his efforts, Caffey acted too late to avoid criminal charges. While the Internal Revenue Service and Postal Service were closing in on the Disciples of Truth, a third US government agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had been gathering evidence on Caffey and others for years as part of a nationwide investigation of diploma mills codenamed “Operation Dipscam”.

In 1985, Operation Dipscam bore fruit. A federal grand jury indicted Caffey, Geruntino, and several others on charges of fraud and conspiracy stemming from the sale of thousands of degrees from a network of twenty-two bogus educational institutions.

Geruntino was arrested in Utah along with his secretary after making a presentation to a local town council about the benefits of his Southwestern University. Caffey was arrested the next morning in Missouri. Eventually they were both found guilty of fraud and each sentenced to five years in prison.

There was a wave of outrage in the wake of Operation Dipscam that was directed at both the operators of the diploma mills as well as their customers who were seen as knowingly buying fake degrees for their own advancement or vanity.

Through the diploma mills, thousands of unqualified people were placed in positions of power as nurses, medical technicians, schoolteachers, and accountants. Holders of bogus degrees were found in such high-reaching places as NASA, the Navy, the Pentagon, and even the White House.


Man with a degree from the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences, from the ‘Intelligencer Journal’, 1983. Items found in the home of James Caffey by the police, from the ‘Springfield News-Leader’. Credit: Philip Deslippe.

‘The most ordained man in the world’

In all the publicity surrounding Caffey and his diploma mills, Homer Bradshaw was rarely mentioned, and when he was, it was only briefly as the original incorporator of the Disciples of Truth. Bradshaw made no public statement about the massive crime ring that developed from the small study group that began decades earlier at his home.

There is no evidence as to how and why the articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth originally changed hands. Homer Bradshaw most likely crossed paths with the inveterate criminal Caffey because of Bradshaw’s life as a closeted gay man.

Although Bradshaw described himself in a letter as having “no sense of guilt or shame” about who he was, he lived in an era when homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness in the United States. Gay social spaces were often controlled by members of organised crime who offered protection from police raids at a cost.

Gay men and women of that time were vulnerable to blackmail and extortion. This may have been the reason behind Bradshaw’s missionary tour of Sikh communities on the West Coast in 1958. A few months before he departed, two young men were charged with extorting Bradshaw after robbing him. Being out of state on business as a reverend kept Bradshaw from having to testify in court and explain why he picked up one of the young men in his car late at night outside a train station.

The various Sikhs in America and India who backed Bradshaw’s efforts likely took his claims of conversion seriously, but Sikhism was a just small part of Bradshaw’s prolific history of joining religions, collecting titles and creating organisations.

In the year before establishing the original Disciples of Truth, Bradshaw had incorporated another New Age organisation and the Oklahoma diocese of the Reformed Catholic Church, a schismatic group not aligned with Rome. During his time as a Sikh, Bradshaw gained a PhD from the Living Way Bible College in Tulsa.

Bradshaw’s religious experimentation continued at a similarly dizzying pace after he left the Sikh fold. During a 10-year period between 1964 to 1974, he founded seven more religious organisations and was a participant in several others. He lectured on Islam to the Moslem Students Association at a nearby university, officiated a Christian wedding and funeral, became a Buddhist priest, and established one society dedicated to the Shinto-derived new religion of Oomoto and another to the Bengali saint Haranath Banerjee.

As he did with Sikhs in California and India 14 years earlier, Bradshaw offered himself to various groups as a humble and devout convert who was eager to serve them and establish centers for them in the United States. One representative was so convinced by him that they wrote, “The yearning, firm faith, sincerity and enthusiasm of Rev. Homer… are unparalleled.”

Beyond enthusiasm, he was also adept at creating organisations and navigating bureaucracy. In a letter to the Haranath Society, Bradshaw made specific requests for letters and certificates that would allow him to incorporate a new organisation in the United States, accept donations, and order books at a wholesale rate. By the late-Seventies, he worked for a municipal government in Oklahoma in which he navigated local homeowners through complicated federal grant programs.


Credit: Philip Deslippe.

Bradshaw clearly took personal satisfaction from his many titles, publications and lectures. He referred to himself as “a recognised authority on the great world religions” and boasted of others referring to him as “the most ordained man in the world”. But this did not necessarily mean that Bradshaw was a dilettante with no real or fixed religious identity.

Like so many spiritual seekers in America, Bradshaw saw the exploration of one religion after another itself as a legitimate path, and one that granted him expertise and authority. He described his many conversions as both a quarter-century-long “search for Truth” and a single, consistent ministry that was “characterized by its freedom, universality, and love”.

The freedom and universality of Bradshaw’s ministry, however, bordered on anarchy. Bradshaw believed that others like him should be free to move from one faith to another as he did, and that they should be empowered to do so with whatever credentials they wanted.

Years before the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth were handed over to Caffey, Bradshaw used them to grant divinity degrees and certificates of ordination to “a number of other sincere persons” that left them “free of any type of ecclesiastical obedience or doctrinal formula”.

There are only scant traces of the ordinations granted by Bradshaw. One was his friend Alvin Gibson who became a minister through the Disciples of Truth, ran a small spiritualist church in Tulsa, and conducted an interfaith marriage between a Baptist groom and a Jewish bride.

Years later, in something close to Bradshaw’s original intent, a temple for the syncretic Brazilian religion Umbanda used a degree from the Disciples of Truth to become credentialed and establish a place of worship in New York City.

It is far less likely that the massive and lucrative diploma mill operation that came out of Bradshaw's group of spiritual seekers-turned-Sikh converts was part of his original intent. In the hands of someone like Caffey, the unique power and lack of oversight given to religious organisations like the Disciples of Truth under American law was able to be exploited on a scale far beyond a handful of ministerial credentials.

Homer Bradshaw died in Tulsa in February of 1989 at the age of 62, and James Caffey died in his home in Springfield, Missouri, 12 years later at the age of 69.

Traces of the Disciples of Truth have remained in the decades since their deaths in the resumes of political candidates, the biographies of businessmen, and numerous obituaries around the country that have touted degrees from American Western University and the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences.

The first Sikh gurdwara in Tulsa was recently established by the local Punjabi Sikh community. Like so many other gurdwaras in the United States, it was purchased through fundraising and renovated with volunteer labour. It stands 20 km away from the small home in northern Tulsa where Homer Bradshaw met with several others nearly 70 years ago and created the first group of American Sikh converts.

Quote:Crooks graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County in May 2024 with an Associate in Science degree in Engineering Science, a spokesperson for the college confirmed to CBS News. Crooks also worked at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center as a dietary aide, according to the facility's administrator.

Quote:'Egregious failure': Union Institute loses federal aid, fined millions for misuse of funds
91.7 WVXU | By Zack Carreon
Published November 29, 2023 at 4:53 AM EST
 

Union Institute & University headquarters in Walnut Hills.

Union Institute & University's days may be numbered after losing its access to federal financial aid on Monday and receiving a nearly $4.3 million fine from the U.S. Department of Education for several violations.

Since the beginning of the year, the Cincinnati-based university has failed to consistently pay its employees and give many of its students their federal loan refunds.

Earlier this month, the Department of Education informed Union Institute it would take emergency action and terminate the school's eligibility to participate in federal aid programs. That means all students attending the university will have to pay out of pocket to stay enrolled. Schools that have received a similar penalty — like ITT Technical Institute — closed soon after. Union Institute had the opportunity to appeal the emergency action and fine by this Monday, but the department has not yet said if the university has done so.

RELATED: Union Institute students and staff have little confidence as school faces sanctions, investigations

The department claims immediate action became necessary to prevent further misuse of funds after it analyzed multiple complaints from students and staff along with documents provided by Union Institute.

According to a letter sent by the department to Union Institute & University President Karen Schuster Webb, the school committed "serious, ongoing violations of Title IV regulations," including using federal student aid money to pay off delinquent debts.

The letter goes on to describe the poor financial and educational conditions at the university, calling Union Institute's handling of federal dollars an "egregious failure to protect UIU students' Title IV funds."

Union Institute has not held classes for undergraduate students this fall due to a lack of money and staff. Some students in the school's graduate and Ph.D. programs have been able to continue working on their degrees because all communication with instructors happens online. Still, based on this information, the Department of Education says due to widespread resignations among faculty and in its business office, Union has stopped providing many, if not all, the educational services and instruction promised to students.

No employees have been paid since August and the school owes nearly $450,000 in back rent for its headquarters in Walnut Hills. Employees say Union Institute was first locked out of its headquarters in August and were officially evicted from the building recently.

More than $753,000 in federal dollars is owed to 157 students which Union has apparently been unable to pay because it neglected to properly identify accounts containing federal funds. Because of Union's debt, a third party placed a lien on UIU's bank account, taking $200,000 worth of federal money intended for students.

RELATED: Faculty call for investigation into management at Union Institute

On top of all this, Union Institute has not paid its annual dues to its accrediting agency, the High Learning Commission (HLC).

In early October, the HLC sent a letter to Union informing the school that it was not in compliance with the "obligations of membership," because of their inability to respond to complaints submitted against the institution.

Union Institute was also required to submit a provisional teach-out plan so students could transfer their credits to other schools, but it also failed to do this as well.

HLC's website shows the Union Institute is still an accredited university, though its status is still up for review. The accrediting agency went over the school's finances in late October to determine whether to change its status. A spokesperson for HLC says this process can take several months.

Union Institute & University's website is still inviting students to apply for its next term set to begin in January 2024, though students and staff who have spoken with WVXU expressed little confidence this will actually happen.

For now, faculty say they're demanding university leadership make a definitive decision about the upcoming term and present a teach-out plan by Dec. 1 so students can more easily transfer.

As many students await such a plan from the university, others who are close to finishing their degrees tell WVXU they plan on finishing their programs before the end of the year. Whether they'll actually receive a diploma from Union Institute remains to be seen.

Quote:
Sunday, August 20, 2023
Jack Montgomery

DeSantis PAC Chair Claimed ‘Sizzler’ Certificate was Business Degree.

One of the chairmen of Ron DeSantis’s Super PAC ‘Never Back Down’ attempted to pass off a training certificate from the ‘Sizzler’ restaurant chain as a business degree when running for office in Iowa, The National Pulse can reveal.

Mark Chelgren, one of a number of controversial county chairmen for the DeSantis PAC in the Hawkeye State, is a former State Senator who was exposed as having burnished his resume by claiming to have a “degree” in business from Forbco Management – a now-defunct company that ran a Sizzler franchise.

“This was a management course he took when he worked for Sizzler, kind of like Hamburger University at McDonald’s,” admitted a spokesman for the Republican Party in Iowa at the time, confirming Chelgren got a “certificate” rather than a degree.


Chelgren, who approved the bogus biography, played dumb after the ruse came to light, suggesting he didn’t know “a degree and a certificate are different.”

His biography also claimed he “attended the University of California at Riverside majoring in astro-physics, geo-physics and mathematics,” and biographies elsewhere claimed he received a full degree from that institution. He later admitted he did not actually graduate from the University of California.

Chelgren exited the Iowa Senate in 2019, and failed to win reelection to the Iowa House in 2022. He is now the chairman of the Appanoose County, Iowa ‘Never Back Down’ operation.

Quote:Organizations Linked to Chinese Military Are a Cash Cow for American Colleges
Universities received $88 million from CCP entities behind cyber attacks and espionage



Yuichiro Kakutani and Jack Beyrer - January 11, 2021 5:00 AM

Chinese military-linked entities, including those behind extensive cyber attacks and espionage, funneled at least $88 million into U.S. universities over the course of six years, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of federal records.

Some of America's most prestigious universities have cashed lucrative checks from Chinese institutions that directly threatened national security. Duke University operates a joint-campus in China with Wuhan University, a public university that repeatedly carried out cyber attacks on behalf of the Chinese military. Northwestern University and the University of California Irvine have together received more than $4 million in research funding from an entity controlled by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a Chinese defense contractor that used stolen designs of American F-35 fighters to build planes for the Chinese military.

Institutions controlled by the Chinese government—state-owned enterprises, state-controlled public universities, government-controlled nonprofits, and other sources—collectively donated at least $315 million to American colleges between 2014 and 2019. More than a quarter of the contributions—27 percent—came from either state-owned defense contractors or public universities that closely partner with the Chinese military to conduct defense research.

The expenditures indicate that the Chinese government is a much bigger player in U.S. academia than previously thought. State-backed entities often avoid scrutiny as their government ties are not immediately obvious. The $315 million sum, based on federal disclosures, is likely a conservative estimate of Chinese influence peddling on campus. A Department of Education audit found that U.S. universities failed to disclose more than $6.5 billion in foreign funding from China and other countries in recent years.

Ian Easton, the senior director for the Project 2049 Institute think tank, said that the Chinese donations to American universities could pose a grave threat to national security.

"It is imperative that the U.S. government dams up the torrent of CCP-linked money currently flowing into our education system. For U.S. national security, the implications of a continuation of the current arrangement are grave," Easton told the Free Beacon. 

The Free Beacon combed through nearly 1,000 Chinese donations to U.S. universities logged in a Department of Education database, reviewing each donor to see whether it is formally owned or controlled by the Chinese government. The review found that 198 separate Chinese government entities funneled money to dozens of U.S. universities.

The biggest regime-backed donors were Chinese universities, which collectively donated more than $192 million to U.S. colleges. These donations funded a wide variety of projects, but more than 40 percent of the money came from institutions that have been identified as close research partners of the Chinese military by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's China Defense Universities Tracker.

Some U.S. universities received research funding from a Chinese university with a history of stealing U.S. research. The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign collectively received more than $28 million from Zhejiang University. In 2013, the FBI charged a Chinese researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin for stealing U.S. cancer research to pass onto Zhejiang University.

None of the universities responded to requests for comment about their dealings with China.

Easton said that the Chinese military could easily exploit state-owned institutions to illicitly acquire American research knowledge. "The CCP's armed-wing, the People's Liberation Army, has access to any and all information collected by Chinese entities at American universities," he said. "Xi Jinping's military-civil fusion strategy has removed even the thin cloak of plausible deniability Chinese companies and other civilian organizations previously could hide behind."

Several Chinese donors are also placed on various U.S. government ban lists. The University of Michigan has received $1.3 million from Harbin Engineering University, an institution that the Treasury Department included on its ban list in 2020.

Zack Cooper, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned against considering all Chinese donations as nefarious, since the dataset provides few details on what the money is going toward. He said that while some donors likely do want to acquire U.S. technologies for military purposes, others are likely motivated by more innocuous reasons.

"I'm sure there are some cases in which some of this money is going toward research that would be useful from a military or strategic standpoint. But also, I'm sure there's a lot that is just sort of public relations outreach," Cooper said. "A lot of companies, globally, give money to many different causes."

U.S. policymakers in recent years have started to crack down on Chinese government attempts to gain clout in U.S. universities. In 2020, the FBI arrested several American researchers, including the chair of Harvard University's chemistry department, for concealing their research funding from the Chinese government-backed Thousand Talents Program. Congress also recently passed a bill to rein in the influence of the Chinese government-backed Confucius Institute.

"Americans must know how the CCP is poisoning the well of our higher education for its own ends, and how those actions degrade our freedoms and our national security," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a December speech. "If we don't educate ourselves, we'll get schooled by Beijing."

Quote:American Colleges Are Headed for a Meltdown
The coronavirus crisis could sink many schools—and leave a windfall for the survivors



Charles Fain Lehman - May 18, 2020 5:00 AM

They've been through riots, protests, and natural disasters—but America's colleges have never seen anything like the financial meltdown the coronavirus is about to bring to their campuses.

The rising wave of health fears, added costs, and vanishing tuition payments could crush small colleges, many of which were already hanging by a financial thread. Those that can weather the crisis—including big-name universities with billions in their bank accounts—in turn stand to gain big from the fallout.

The emptying out of schools and the mass transition to distance learning has already been "the largest all-sector hit that we've ever seen," Jim Hundrieser, a vice president with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), told the Washington Free Beacon. But the challenges of this spring pale in comparison to the shock many colleges are expecting in the fall, when social distancing measures and a possible second wave could create the most surreal semester ever.

That strangeness, experts project, could in turn cause a massive drop in college revenue. Well-endowed colleges and big research schools have the savings to weather those effects. But many schools are beholden to semi-annual tuition payments, which are about to undergo the biggest shock since the Second World War.

The result could see the shuttering of many universities, particularly small liberal arts colleges, accelerating a trend of rising closures since the Great Recession. At the same time, experts predict, the drop off in demand will be temporary, as a prolonged recession sends millions back to school—resulting in renewed profits, and power, for the schools that make it through to the other side.

When 20 million college students return to school this fall, their campuses will look very different. Schools are considering shortened school years, smaller class sizes, and keeping classes partially virtual. In addition to social distancing measures, Purdue University will use its on-campus laboratory to test students and trace contacts. The California State University system will be entirely online through the fall—its University of California sister schools are expected to follow suit.

These changes will radically alter not just campus life, but schools' balance sheets.

Added safety measures mean more expenses, Brown education professor Susanna Loeb told the Free Beacon. Colleges will need to pay fixed costs, like staff salaries and facilities maintenance, while simultaneously spending more on cleaning, testing, and added space for socially distanced classes and living. At the same time, money will stop flowing in; Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, said that colleges are expecting a 20 to 30 percent drop in revenue next year.

The net effect will be monumental. Hundrieser, whose organization represents over 1,900 schools, predicted that the crisis "will transform the finances of a lot of institutions, and they'll have to be incredibly fiscally prudent and innovative in order for them to rebound in a year."

"The effects of this crisis are likely to be much larger than the Great Recession," Kelchen said.

Universities, Kelchen explained, have four sources of income: tuition, public funding, on-campus fees (for housing, food services, etc.), and donations/endowments. Those funding streams are not equally distributed, however. Among 768 endowments surveyed by NACUBO, more than half of the value was held by the top 25, just 3 percent of schools.

Research funding is similarly concentrated: Data from the National Science Foundation show that the top 5 percent of recipient universities get over 60 percent of federal research dollars.

Wealthy Harvard or well-funded Johns Hopkins can smooth the coming bumps. But most colleges are dependent on either state budgets that are rapidly drying up, or on tuition and activities payments.

That explains why universities are scrambling to reopen. As Brown University president Christina Paxson wrote in the New York Times, "remaining closed in the fall means losing as much as half of our revenue." Even larger schools are afraid. Cornell University has a $7.3 billion endowment, but its president recently wrote that without a reopening, the school is looking at "hundreds of millions" in losses.

Unfortunately, absent a medical miracle, any reopening will only be partial—which still means substantial losses.

College costs a lot, over $40,000 at the average four-year school. For that much money, students expect the full package: not just classes, but the extracurriculars, parties, and social connections that come with attending a college.

Corona-college will be nothing like that, leaving many education consumers considering other options. Some will just be unwilling to keep forking out for online courses: Georgia resident Alex Popovich told the Free Beacon that his daughter, who is a freshman at William & Mary, is considering taking a semester off or taking classes at a local university in the fall if her school remains online.

Others are worried about in-person education: Thirty-five percent of students in a recent poll said that if colleges reopened in the fall, they would either only attend online (31 percent) or not attend at all (4 percent). Others are indecisive. One in six were considering taking a gap year as of April.

Those numbers might change further as it becomes apparent that many classes will remain online—63 percent of current students say e-learning is worse than in-person classes. Tuition will also be disproportionately affected by declining foreign enrollment, as foreign students generally pay full price.

Even if colleges manage a partial reopening, therefore, they will inevitably take a hit to their revenue. That's a recipe for financial disaster. As Paxson put it, "It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many."

Which colleges will be hardest hit? Kelchen said he was most worried about "small, rural private colleges," where students will be less willing to travel to or live. Losing tuition and housing revenue, Kelchen said, "will be more than these colleges can handle."

Beth Akers, a higher education fellow at the Manhattan Institute, thinks the colleges most at risk are "the expensive institutions that are offering that kind of boutique college experience, but ones that aren't sitting on the pile of cash that could help them weather this kind of storm." Loeb noted that "many small liberal arts schools" were in financial straits even before the crisis began, adding "that difficulty will likely increase."

Will all of this mean the end of college education? Probably not—paradoxically, colleges which weather the crisis may find themselves on the other side with too many students, not too few. If one in six students take a gap year, then the fall of 2021 will see student populations swell.

There will be even more students if the current financial crisis persists and, as experts project, unemployment remains elevated. That's because in a recession, people return to school; college enrollment rose by 13 percent between 2007 and its peak in 2011.

"People like to go back to school" when unemployment is high, education policy expert Preston Cooper told the Free Beacon.
"They say, ‘the labor market's really weak right now, there aren't a lot of job opportunities, this is my opportunity to go back and get that degree I always wanted.'"

Many of those who return will go back for associate's degrees, as enrollment in two-year colleges rose disproportionately during the Great Recession. Online colleges will likely also do well, as they have the infrastructure in place to absorb recession demand immediately. But high-prestige universities will benefit indirectly. The same demand, paired with lower supply, will necessarily lead potential students to attach more value to degrees.

Higher education resembles many other industries facing the coronavirus crisis. The small players look set to be decimated by the coming storm, while the ones that are big and wealthy enough to survive will wield even more power on the other side.