Maxine Asher dubbed Yasser Arafat with a honorary diploma mill degree.
"At 70, Asher still travels the world recruiting students
and universities and awarding honorary degrees to
government leaders, such as Yasser Arafat."
News Story on Fraudulent American World University.
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j Feb 23 2003, 7:49 pm show options
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Date: 23 Feb 2003 19:49:27 -0800
Local: Sun, Feb 23 2003 7:49 pm
Subject: News Story on Fraudulent American World University.
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'Stealth U' in Iowa City duped many, experts say
By Ryan J. Foley - The Daily Iowan
For most of the 1990s, downtown Iowa City played host to
two universities that claimed a high-caliber faculty,
many areas of study, and a president with several degrees.
The UI was one. American World University was the other.
The corporation that calls itself the "premier global
institution of higher learning" quietly claimed a College
Street office as its campus headquarters. A handful of
staff members graded papers and awarded degrees to
students around the world.
But experts say that's where AWU duped scores of students
from foreign countries. And while Iowa City no longer is
the home to the school with a self-proclaimed "proven
track record for excellence," it still operates out of
Mississippi.
Experts say AWU offers little instruction and that almost
anyone can get a degree -- even a doctorate -- by paying
the $1,650 tuition and handing in easy assignments.
When Iowa tried to wipe out approximately a dozen similar
schools operating in the state in 2000, AWU was supposed
to get accreditation or split. But AWU officials in 2001
set up a separate corporation that continues to handle
its calls -- to an Iowa City phone number, an investigation
by The Daily Iowan has found. And a Web site for American
World University's Latin American Division falsely claims
a downtown Iowa City apartment building as its "academic
headquarters."
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.
*****
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."
Throughout the 1980s, the FBI shut down dozens of diploma
mills, hoping to send a message that the U.S. government
would not allow the integrity of higher education to be
undermined. But after the special agent in charge of that
operation, named "dipscam," resigned, the bureau largely
ignored the problem even as the Internet was making it
increasingly easy and cheap for businesses to offer fake
diplomas to anyone willing to pay, experts say.
Because federal authorities no longer hunt such
institutions, the task has fallen to the states.
Bear said that Iowa was a haven for these so-called
universities for years. The state's reputation for
education made it attractive to businesses, which also
liked lax state laws that allowed unaccredited schools
to operate. In addition to AWU, American Global University
operated in West Des Moines, Mellen University in Mount
Vernon, and there were a handful of others.
That changed in 2000, when the state passed a law requiring
postsecondary schools in Iowa to gain accreditation or
shut down. "A lot of schools left the state at that
time," said Rob Berntsen, the chief of staff to Secretary
of State Chet Culver.
When AWU was essentially run out of Iowa, it relocated
in Rapid City, S.D. When South Dakota enacted a bill
similar to Iowa's, the operation moved to Mississippi,
where it resides today. AWU's affiliate in Brazil asked
for a special exemption to be able to operate in Iowa
this year; it was rejected in May.
*****
But it still has an Iowa connection.
It lists an Iowa City address in the Northwest Bell
Building on Linn Street (though there is no evidence
it operates from there). An Iowa City phone number from
the business' Web site transfers callers to an answering
service in Waterloo. Workers there insist they have no
knowledge of AWU and that they cannot give any information
out but only leave a message for the school's president.
"The only information I can give out is that I answer
calls for international education," one woman said.
"I know it sounds really odd, really horrible, but
that's all I know."
The calls are to a business called International
Educators Inc., which was incorporated as a domestic
nonprofit in 2001 by James Sayre, AWU's attorney in
Iowa. Asher and two other AWU officials are listed as
corporate officers under an address that no longer
exists, 312 E. College St. No. 205 -- the old location
of AnswerPlus in the Masonic Lodge Building. Workers
there say they still handle quite a bit of mail
addressed to AWU.
After the state learned that students were making
payments for AWU to International Educators, AWU began
making students pay in Mississippi.
As one Iowa City observer who requested anonymity put
it: "'International Educators appears to be a phony
corporation designed to allow Asher to continue operating
out of Iowa and Iowa City in exactly the same way, with
Iowa City continuing to be the main hub or spoke for
her extensive mail fraud." Sayre declined to comment,
and Asher said, "There has never been any mail fraud."
Filings with the state claim International Educators is
"for the purpose of providing support services to
educational institutions and other related functions."
Some say it's just another example of the sly way Asher
does business. They describe her as a clever woman who
has made a career of bending the law, tricking people,
dodging authorities, and getting rich in the process.
"She has had much experience in track-covering," Bear says.
*****
A local temp agency sent Alanna Shaikh to work for AWU
in 2000 at the College Street office, where vertical
blinds did not allow people to see in the windows. She
says she quickly came to the conclusion that it was
a "total fraud."
The office consisted of three staffers, including her,
and some graders who read students' assignments. Asher
would call from California about once an hour to see
what was going on.
At the end of her first day, she says, Asher offered her
a job grading students' papers, telling her "to write
comments on them so that students would feel like they
were being read."
Though she found the $10-an-hour pay attractive, she
turned down the job and refused to work there again.
"One of their victims -- students -- had the same last
name as me and was from Pakistan," said Shaikh, who now
works for the United Nations in Turkmenistan. "I thought
this could be one of my relatives getting fleeced."
She said the assignments were simple, and the quality of
the work was poor.
Asher did not agree to several requests for a telephone
interview, saying she was busy traveling around the globe.
She responded to detailed questions from The Daily Iowan
via e-mail, repeatedly stressing her own credentials.
"My own reputation in education is without a single
flaw. This is true of all of our professors and
advisers," she wrote.
*****
John Shaw enrolled in American World University in 1997
while he was teaching in South Korea. He had hoped to
land a job in Saudi Arabia, and he says he received
assurances from Asher that the master's degree he was
seeking would be acknowledged there.
"She said that the [World Association of Universities
and Colleges] accredits a school in Saudia Arabia, and
that she knows a member of the royal family, and that
the degree would be recognized there," he said.
When he applied for the job, he found out that neither
the degree nor the school were considered legitimate in
the country. "In fact, they told me that I was wasting
my time and money studying with that school," he recalled.
He says AWU repeatedly refused to send him the books he
needed, and he quit the program. Asher refused his request
for a refund. "I got so downhearted after being duped and
losing $3,000 that I did not finish," he says.
Lambert of the distance-education council says he's heard
similar stories over and over from students in such places
as China and Africa who want an American education. "These
places can make a lot of money quickly by bilking fairly
naive customers," he said, but he added that "many many
people" who buy these degrees know exactly what they are
doing.
"The true victim is society," he said, as well as
employers who hire the graduates.
While the U.S. Department of Education does not recognize AWU, it is
accredited -- by the accrediting agency that Asher herself founded and
continues to run out of a post office box in Nevada.
*****
Asher formed the World Association of Universities and
Colleges in 1993. She was able to do so because there
are no legal standards for accreditation.
Bear says she sells the value of the association the
same way she sells AWU -- by stressing the importance
of having accreditation in America. It bills itself as
"the only valid global accreditation association that
stands behind its schools, guaranteeing quality of
instruction and reliability."
Its members include such well-known diploma mills as
Cambridge State University and Lacross University. At
the same time, experts say, Asher has successfully
recruited legitimate universities from foreign countries
to join.
Once it receives membership fees, WAUC does not appear
to do much more than host an annual convention.
William Howard Taft University of California sued WAUC
in 1999 for breach of contract and fraud after it claims
to have been duped into becoming a member.
Taft joined the WAUC in 1995 for $8,450 in exchange for
WAUC visiting its campus and performing "a rigid
accreditation-evaluation procedure for plaintiff and
all other member institutions." Three years later, WAUC
still had not done that work and refused to do so, court
documents state.
When Asher and two other defendants made the promises
"they knew them to be false ... with the intent to
defraud and deceive," according to the lawsuit. WAUC
could not provide documents showing it had ever conducted
an on-site visit to one of its members, which disturbed
Taft's president.
The two sides reached a confidential settlement to the
lawsuit, which also alleged that Asher used assets of
the corporation for her personal use.
*****
At 70, Asher still travels the world recruiting students
and universities and awarding honorary degrees to
government leaders, such as Yasser Arafat.
Her notoriety started in 1973, when she led a group of
researchers from Pepperdine University to the coast of
Spain in search of the lost continent of Atlantis. When
she claimed to discover Atlantis, whose existence is
alluded to in Plato's writings, she called it "probably
the greatest discovery in world history."
She has written books, including the Atlantis Conspiracy
and Ancient Energy: Key to the Universe, which she
aggressively markets through the Ancient Mediterranean
Research Association, which she started in 1972. She
describes herself as the "modern-day female Indiana Jones."
Her two main interests will come together this summer
when AWU will sponsor a six-week trip to Europe, where
she will teach a group of 25 students "underwater diving
techniques, underwater photography, and ancient history."
*****
One of Asher's favorite topics is that of accreditation.
She frequently refers to a government conspiracy against
schools such as hers, which she says offers the same
services major universities do but at a much cheaper
price. The universities feel threatened, and because
their representatives sit on the boards of the major
accrediting agencies, they make sure schools like hers
are considered fraudulent, she argues.
Officials in Washington flatly dismiss that idea with a
chuckle.
Lambert said Asher applied for accreditation for AWU to
his organization in 1996. He said she complained about
the requirements and the paperwork and challenged him to
visit her in person.
He recalls flying to Iowa City and meeting her in a few
empty rooms that were the headquarters of AWU. After a
30-minute meeting, Asher withdrew the application for
accreditation.
"She has dropped off of our radar screen since then,"
he said. "But apparently things haven't changed."
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