As you can see, (or forsee), this is a very long entry. So in the spirit of all things academic, here’s an abstract. You can choose to read this, read the conclusion at the end, and then skim through the middle bits that you fancy. Or be a loyal reader and read the whole shebang anyway.
Ahem. The abstract:
This blog entry examines the opinion that the Irish International University is essentially a diploma mill. An analysis of the intricate network of institutions cannot conclusively determine the degree of interlocking, if any, of the institutions. However, I observe that the IIU does offer life-experience type qualifications, which is a common feature of diploma mills. The entry also provides information on how you can obtain a doctorate in four easy steps. There is no evidence whatsoever that suggests that the IIU is operating illegally.
*****
You know, it’s 2222 hours on a Thursday night, and I’ve just wrapped up yet another attempt at restructuring my thesis chapters. Cukuplah untuk hari ini. You can work hard, but not too hard. Brain explosions are not the way to go at this stage. Trust me, it happened once and it took me weeks to get back on track.
People sometimes use the acronym PhD to refer to Perasaan Hasad Dengki, which is lame but I don’t mind. But somehow, I get a bit tetchy when people refer to it as Permanent Head Damage, although in essence that’s what it is, isn’t it? (I personally prefer Jorge Cham’s interpretation: Piled Higher and Deeper). But you don’t need me to whine about how steep a slope this is and all that. There is an easy way out, though, if you really, really want a PhD and people to call you, ‘Doctor’. I found this entry on Razman’s blog, although it isn’t the first time I’ve come across the institution in question. That’s right, one year, to get a PhD. Well, technically not a PhD, it’s a doctorate qualification.. a DBA.
But today I had some serious procrastinating to do, so I thought, let’s see how this thing works, and more importantly, how it differs to your run-of-the-mill diploma err.. mill. Referring to our good Shaikh al-Wikipedia, a diploma mill is essentially:
an organization which awards academic degrees and diplomas with very little or no academic study and without recognition by official accrediting bodies. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines a diploma mill as “An institution of higher education operating without supervision of a state or professional agency and granting diplomas which are either fraudulent or because of the lack of proper standards worthless.”[1] Such organizations are unaccredited, but they often claim accreditation by non-recognized/unapproved organizations set up for the purposes of providing a veneer of authenticity.
For a brilliant expose on US Diploma Mills, check out this presentation (.pdf, Adobe Reader required).
So, the Irish International University, which recently held its convocation in Malaysia recently and was attended by dignitaries and key officials, isn’t really a university in the traditional sense. But we already know that, for they profess of it in a Borneo Post article. It doesn’t have a campus.. and from what I see, all it is at the moment, is a website, incorporated in Ireland, hence the name. The actual administration is done from Oxbridge College in London, which gives an funny looking address - 3rd Floor, Ilford, 1G1 4TG. Ilford is a rather big place, bigger than one building, plus typo in the postcode too: it should read, IG1 4TG. Google Maps has this image of the location:
Now the Oxbridge College itself doesn’t seem to offer any courses, but its associate colleges and institutions do. I tried to suss out what it took for me to get a PhD. One associate institution offered a Professional DBA - the EBS. Yes, European Business School, but not to be confused with the European Business School based in Regents’ Park, London; this one is based in Cambridge. As it turns out, two different creatures altogether: one a posh private university and the other.. well.. the other is this one.
It took me a while to suss out how it worked, and chances are my reasoning is still flawed. So feel free to jump in at anytime. Anyhow, in theory, if you wanted a doctorate:
You could sign up for a course at the European Business School - Cambridge. The Professional DBA looks to be a bit of hard work. You need to provide a 50k word thesis and two published articles in order to be awarded a doctorate; but you can write the thesis in any language you want, in any area you want. Fromt this I take it, there is nothing stopping you from writing a thesis on the Observed Effects of Post-World Cup Syndrome among Malaysian PhD Students, in Swahili.
The Euro DBA offers a shorter route: stage one accredits you for ‘life experience’; stage two requires you to take a course called the Cambridge Residential Euro DBA Programme. This you do at the European Business School-Cambridge, taught by the Cambridge Academy of Management faculty - again, NOT to be confused with the Judge Business School at Cambridge University.
So, what does the Cambridge Academy of Management offer? In its own words, it offers an endorsement program to validate professional and in-house training schemes. So hypothetically.. yes, hypothetically, I could have my firm hold an in-house training scheme that consists of two weeks of pure dossing and watching the World Cup, and I could get it endorsed by the Cambridge Academy of Management. Assuming that it meets their standards, because I don’t know how rigorous those standards are - the website doesn’t tell me.
Having done that, stage three requires you to prepare a Business Portfolio. This isn’t as hard as it seems - all you need to do, based on this document, is provide a brief self-description and that of your organisation. Then you are to write an analysis on what you think leadership is, and wax lyrical about a management idol of yours. The next section has you writing about examples of leadership dilemmas, followed by a section on how newly acquired knowledge affects leadership. Then you conclude. Tadaaa.. you meet the requirements to be awarded a Euro DBA. After you part with 12,500 euro, that is.
But who gives you the accreditation? Well, you get your DBA cert from the European Business School - Cambridge, and the Oxford Institute of Management (not to be confused with Oxford Investment Management, which is actually affiliated with the University of Oxford itself) will endorse your certificate for you. For £600, you get a certificate that says you are a Certified DBA.
Or you could go to the Cambridge Association of Managers, and which offers you the possibility get a doctorate in anything you want, based on life experience. All this, of course, overseen by the Quality Assurance Commission-UK, which is actually a registered company more than a governmental body. Academic progams in the UK are actually seen to by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA).
So who are the QAC? I don’t know. I have my suspicions, in as much as I believe that all the above bodies belong to the same intricate network. More sleuthing needs to be done in order to find the links, but even with Google this is not easy. For instance, the QAC Commissioner-General is conveniently named Peter Kay - yes, Google that name and chances are you’ll meet Max and Paddy instead: there is a British comic with the same name.
Still, the QAC is listed in the British Qualifications guidebook, which means its legit. As are all the other companies. I don’t see direct fraud committed here by the companies involved. If there is fraud at all, it is more clearly being perpetrated by people passing off as being more qualified than they are. But even then, qualifications are subjective, very much a human construct. So what’s wrong with these qualifications? They are non-traditional, yes. But whoever said non-traditional was bad? I leave you to judge this.
So, is it fraud? I don’t know. Strictly speaking I don’t think so. I mean, you get what you paid for, right? A degree. You didn’t pay for an education. Besides, I haven’t got all the answers yet. Like I said, this is one intricate network, and what you see here is the results of just an hour’s work. (Okay, the writing up made the whole process stretch into two hours).
But to summarise: here are my key observations:
1) All the aforementioned institutions are legit. They are not doing anything illegal, as far as my Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney eyes can see. They are all registered companies, and for all intents and purposes, are proper businesses. That’s just it, though. They are a business - not a university institution. Hence the lack of the ac.uk domain on their website. .ac websites are not the same as .ac.uk; and in the US, American educational institutions use .edu, not .ac. See here.
2) There is a propensity to use the names Oxford and Cambridge a lot; the branding power is maximised here, as you associate Oxford and Cambridge with excellence in education. There is also a propensity to name institutions similar to other leading institutions, especially when it comes to acronyms - see above examples : European Business School and European Business School-Cambridge, OXIM, etc.
3) There is nothing wrong with rewarding life experience, per se. What is disturbing, to me at least, is the need to equate life experience qualifications with that of academic qualifications. As argued above, qualifications are a human construct; and therefore, you can make it whatever you want it to be. But if your qualifications are based on experience, it is unfair to call it the same qualification as what was attained via academic study. They are not the same - someone with a life experience Masters would not be able to secure positions that an academic Masters could: for example, teaching positions at university. So it is unfair to equate them.
4) The Irish International University have always been transparent about who they are, and what they do. You can see this in the various newspaper article write-ups that are available.
5) I am not assured about the indepedence of the affiliate institutions, While they declare themselves to be independent, it is not made clear of whom they are independent from. Is it the UK government, or the institutions which they accredit? I have insufficient information at this point to ascertain any interlocking elements in the governance of any of the associated institutions, and therefore, will reserve my judgment for until more information is available.
Verdict: Is the IIU a diploma mill? Entah. But that was two hours well spent.
Comments (27)
You were wearing your Batman mask when you wrote this, right?
before this, i never give a damn about this fake degree business. but having read the /pdf document, it;s just not funny anymore. it is worrying. just imagine those ppl, who now prob. work at places like hospitals, or in pharmaceutical business… :-/
urgh! and my alma mater’s acronym is tainted. IIU (the Irish one) sounds similar to International Islamic University IIU.
I see you put your time to good use. Hari ni nak pegi mana pulak.
Actually Sashi, I had mask, cape and codpiece on.
Hari ni, kita akan kupas siapakah dalang di belakang syarikat2 ini..
To the non-believers.. real time chat
*idlanzakaria*: aku takde kerja
*nursyefa*: ko memang.. meh aku keje kan..
*idlanzakaria*: sebab uniten ada nak amik sorang with such a doctorate ..oh noi, kejekanlah aku
Oh noi, stop being a tease..
hot on the press.
mek… got this news semalam from a fren within my arch-world: the rm490j proposal has been rejected by the council. not 100% sure though, coz i couldn’t find any planning application (all available to the public) regarding this matter. my guess, it was not recommended after pre-planning discussion with the planners. but… i’ll check again.
nevertheless, the annual Msian Carnival will be there again this year, Saturday 26th August.
ok, gotta go packing… (nak balik jenguk tanah serendah sekebun bunga kejap esok).
All these organisations revolve around Dr Harold Jeffrey Wooller, a UK chartered accountant who is proprietor of a London-based accountancy training college, Jeff Wooller College. He also established the Institute of Professional Financial Managers in London, which purported to award UK business degrees (which against the law if you are not authorised by UK govt.), but he was convicted in about 1995/96 under the UK Education Reform Act 1988 — this is why he now has Ireland-based “universities” to award the degrees — Irish International University, and also Irish University Business School. He also has, or has had, links with St Clements University at some point. Note: on one of these websites there is a photo of Jeff Wooller as chancellor or rector, maybe, under the assumed name “Baron Knowth”. (There is no Lordship of this name.)
His aim, I think, is to sell his ACCA and CIMA accountancy courses around the world via franchises or correspondence courses, the selling point is supposed to be that you get a “degree” as well. These degrees are worthless in the UK at least.
Thanks for this info, Hodmadod. I did find a Baron Knowth in the offcials of the Irish International University, and as you said, there is no Lordship of this name. There is a place called Knowth in Ireland, though, I think.
I will look up Wooller and the IPFM.
Information from the Legal department of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (England & Wales): “Mr Wooller was the subject of a complaint considered by the Disciplinary
Committee [of the Institute] on 22 September 1995.”
(This was following his conviction under the Education Reform Act 1988.) The details of this complaint and the result of the disciplinary hearing were noted in “Accountancy” magazine for November/ December 1995. I have not got a copy of this issue, the Institute of Chartered Accountants have archived their library copy, so I cannot quote from it.
By the way, as I thought, Jeff Wooller is listed on the St Clements website (www.stclements.edu) as some sort of London affiliate. Some St Clements courses are aimed at the membership requirements of the IPFM.
Scott Sommers’ discussion of St Clements is valuable: http://scottsommers.blogs.com/taiwanweblog/2004/08/st_clements_uni.html
The world is awash in this kind of degree. You can spend your life writing about them. And there is no end to them. As soon as you smite down one of them, another sprouts up to take its place. I have stopped writing them unless someone asks me a direct question about a certain school. My feeling now is that it’s an employer’s responsibility to do their research. If they get caught hiring untrained and improperly certified people, that’s their own problem.
On the other hand, this is great research and I laud your efforts to raise conciousness about the problems of this industry.
The board at DegreeInfo.com has some additional information:
http://tinyurl.com/zdjfs
in my opinion, whether it’s a traditional university or non-traditional university, it does not really matter….don’t get me wrong, i’m against all the instant degree mills too. But if you do your work and research just like in a normal university, the non-traditional universities should not be taken into granted. That’s the purpose of internet in a sense that, more people could be educated even though through a NON-TRADITIONAL Universities AS LONG AS the basic concept of studying is still applied.
Anyway, this is only my opinion. Ciao!
Oh, nono, I totally agree. The defintion of ‘non-traditional’ as used by Irish International Unversity is not internet-based or open-uni style learning, but issuing degrees not commensurate with the level of education undertaken. I have nothing against distance learning - am taking up a few courses that way myself; but it will be assessed by qualified tutors, and I will need to sit exams; which is the way it should be. Not self-accrediting yourself and passing yourself off as someone with a qualification you hardly deserve to have - not for the lack of intellect, mind you, but more for the lack of effort.
From my understanding, the IIU does have their own lecturers and professors to assess their students….are you saying that their students are not being assessed by anyone from the university? self-assessment and self-accrediting? I don’t think they’ll simply accept a 50K words thesis full of rubbish, they DO evalute them.
ciao
Their lecturers and their accreditation bodies are not properly verified, meaning that degrees that they award are not on par with the degrees awarded by other universities. Therein lies the problem. As you correctly pointed out, the university perform assessment, but assessment is also a function of the assessor. If the assessor(s) qualifications are not verifiable, then the quality of the degree should not be passed off as being equal to the quality of the degrees given by other institutions who do go through the rigmarole of being accredited by external bodies that are not headed by people within the same consortium.
The Irish International University has already been listed as a university with questionable credentials by The Office of Degree Authorisation, where you can find a list of other similar businesses passing themselves off as universities. The URL is http://www.ossc.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html
The issue for me is the name of the degrees. You want to award life experience degrees, fine. Just don’t call it an MBA or a DBA which imitates other degres. An MBA implies that you have undertaken about 12-24 months of instruction, not a 2 week course. A doctorate implies at least 3 years of rigorous original research, for most people a lot more; not a one year essay writing event.
the trouble with our LAN system nowadays, they just don’t accept any distance learning PhDs and some MBAs, hence for such universities that offer all that, they will never get accredited forever….even though some of the online thesis maybe much better than any of the local U’s work. Thus, I still think it’s really up to the individuals’ goals in the first place; some ppl rather not work in the govt sector, hence all this accreditation matter is not a big issue
Regarding the life experience degrees and the 2weeks MBA courses, that’s definitely degree mills! Although from my point of view, a one year PhD does not mean it’s hopeless; my dad did his PhD in less than 2years from the Al-Azhar University (which is definitely accredited!)…
You’re quite right there with the LAN issue - imagine the Irish International University being listed as an acceptable institution by OUM (refer here http://educationmalaysia.blogspot.com/2006/08/bogus-universities-iv.html) but can’t accredit legitimate distance learning courses!
Good job for your dad in getting his PhD in less than two years, a very admirable feat; mine never got his - but I suspect you knew what I was getting at with the 1 year program example - or are all the PhD programs at Al Azhar structured to be under two years?
hi again,
yeah, the link you gave me is pretty amazing, maybe that just to show that the IIU Maybe going towards for a better accreditation, i suppose?
anyway, back to my dad, he’s the first malaysian to have achieved that (at that time laa, i have no idea if someone else have broken his record), the others take longer time, and that was yearsssss ago, more than two decades! I have no idea how the systems work now
I just opened the OUM website and discovered that they never mentioned that their Post-graduates programmes are being recognized by the LAN or JPA, other than their diplomas and Bachelor degrees. Thus, they are now at the same par as IIU and other online universities.
hi Idlan, from your website, I’m assuming that you are living and studying in London, right? And you are doing your PhD in Accountancy, me too….
I’m looking forward to get a job in London too, but it’s still a dream for me. What’s your thesis about and how far have you reached on your work?
I’m not based in London no, but I am based in England. My thesis consists of papers that study the cross sectional variations in executive remuneration target difficulty and disclosure levels in remuneration reports. InsyaAllah, I hope to submit within the next few months.
congrats to you for being able to your phd at a young age…. so are you going to work in the UK after you graduates? I did my ACCA in London long time ago, so I guess we got similar background, ie. accountancy ;)……
http://tinyurl.com/w8wgc
This is a well-researched piece from Asia Sentinel, from a fortnight ago:
“The time-honored practice of awarding university degrees for money is alive and well in Cambodia. After being turfed out of Malaysia for being neither Irish nor a university, the Internet-based Irish International University of Europa is showering Cambodian political leaders with degrees and establishing an “Asian campus” in Phnom Penh…”
By the way I was wrong in some of what I said about Jeff Wooller in comment 12 above. More information has been supplied to me by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, as follows:
“Mr Wooller accepted a Consent Order on a complaint that in a Magistrates Court he pleaded guilty to two offences under Section 214(1) of the Education Reform Act 1988 for which he was reprimanded, fined £1,000 and ordered to pay costs of £250.”
“There is not a report from the Disciplinary Committee because, as the term implies, he accepted a Consent Order, i.e. he pleaded guilty by post, and an order was made with his agreement by the Investigation Committee.”
Idlan, these are closely related:
IPFM (www.ipfm.com)
OHRM (Mr Masjuki is in IPFM and EBS Cambridge)
IIUEDU
OXIM
EBSCAMBRIDGE (domain registered in Ascension Islands, therefore “.ac”)
FAIRFAXU.EDU (Max Blythe
Saw a report on the IIU on BBC television news today (7 1 2008).
Mea non culpa.
My name, apparently now tarnished by association, should not encourage people to think that I am guilty of any disreputable practices. I taught French at Glasgow University for 35 years. A fairly kosher job, though dumbing down was beginning to get to me towards the end. I coped by having my final contract relate to language teaching only. Where things are either right or wrong, not in an indeterminate «What do others think?» / life experience haze in the middle.
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[...] As a follow up to an earlier entry, I’ve managed to uncover some more information on the Irish International University. This time, I was interested in the people behind the scenes. In particular, who they were, and where they got their academic honorifics from. [...]