President Maxine Asher almost always ran the school from
California, checking in with workers in Iowa City. First,
the campus was the site of Answer Plus, a secretarial
service that merely fielded its inquiries.
Records show the operation later moved from 312 E. College
St. No. 205 to an office at 361 E. College St., in the
brick-building known as the Main Street Apartments where
hundreds of UI students live. After pressure from state
regulators, in August it finally moved out of the office.
One Web site still claims the apartment building as AWU's
academic headquarters -- a surprise to the current
management, AUR, which was unaware of that.
Asher distances herself from the site. A professor who
was dismissed from AWU, Gilberto Santos, illegally runs
the site, said Asher, who says she is taking legal action
to shut it down.
"He has no right to show any pictures or to advertise
AWU," she said.
While one won't find American World University included
in the U.S. News & World Report list of best colleges,
aggressive marketing has helped the school become highly
profitable.
According to one government official in Brazil who
believes the school is defrauding Brazilian students and
operating illegally, the school may have reaped $4 million
in its first two years in that country alone.
John Bear, an expert who wrote Bears' Guide to Earning
by Degrees by Distance Learning, conservatively estimates
that diploma mills make up at least a $200 million-a-year
industry.
Bear says 500 outright diploma mills -- which essentially
sell degrees for money -- operate in the United States,
and 100 more fall into a "gray area," including AWU. These
technically can't be called diploma mills because students
must do work, but the degrees offered are virtually worthless.
Most, like AWU, sound legitimate, have fancy Web sites that
end in ".edu," boast to be leaders in higher education,
claim to be accredited, and give out major credit for
previous life experience.
The proliferation of these schools is damaging legitimate
distance-education programs by confusing students and
making people suspicious, say experts who are growing
frustrated at the government's lack of interest in
stopping them.
Some are particularly angered that schools such as AWU
are allowed to award "doctorate" degrees, which the
government says cannot be earned through distance education.
"The federal government is asleep on this. It's a
national scandal that people can still sell degrees in
this country," says Michael Lambert, the executive director
of the Washington, D.C.-based Distance Education and
Training Council. "Someone should do something about it."
A degree-fraud expert who works with the FBI describes AWU
as a "dreadful, useless, and terrible" institution. A
former student says he was tricked and that the school
refused to give his money back. And a former temporary
employee insists that she was offered a job "grading
papers" after one day on the job.
The students -- 98 percent of whom are from foreign
countries -- generally fall into two categories: those who
are duped into enrolling and those who hope to use a
diploma to trick a future employer into believing they
have an American education.
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