Tenured Professor at Northeastern Illinois U. Has Bogus Ph.D.

Good thing he was tenured for his “teaching ability” because apparently tenure standards don’t require discernment or honesty.

There were two Pacific Western Universities operated by the same people from the same office. One was California approved (not the same as recognized accreditation, of course, but not a diploma mill, either), the other ostensibly run from Hawaii (which has no school licensing standards). The California-approved one only did degrees in business . . . and later changed its name to California Miramar University and was subsequently accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (which takes little or no account of a school’s activities prior to its application for accreditation). –John Bear, co-author, “Degree Mills: the billion-dollar industry that has sold more than a million fake diplomas.”)

How did Mr. Okosun one “attend” a “university” that had no classrooms?

“a native of Nigeria” i.e., a fake minority hire.

He flat-out bought the degree–no question of a him inadvertently choosing a non-accredited school. Read this from the Chicago Sun-Times coverage of the matter:”Okosun got his doctorate from the now-shuttered Pacific Western University in Los Angeles. In a 2004 report, the congressional agency then known as the U.S. General Accounting Office said the school was unaccredited, offered degrees for a fee and didn’t require any classroom instruction.”The report — titled “Diploma Mills Are Easily Created and Some Have Issued Bogus Degrees to Federal Employees at Government Expense” — said Pacific Western and two other schools issued “academic credits based on life experience and require no classroom instruction. … Instead, the schools market and require payment for degrees on a flat-fee basis.” The cost for a Ph.D. from Pacific Western: $2,595.”

This makes me wonder why I spent so many years in graduate school. Maybe the Ph.D. is neither necessary nor sufficient for success as an academic.

The USA government -department of Education in particular – has an obligation to protect the public from bogus degree holders who use those degrees to obtain a position of service whether in education or health care. The government needs to set a national DATA bank of the names of all Diploma mills “Schools”, past and present so the public can go to when checking the credentials of candidates. I wonder how many “diploma mill” holders are out there with full time employment because of these $200 degrees. Society needs to be protected from those who paid few dollars over a two week crash course for a Ph.D or a Masters degree in academic or health related jobs.

The fact that this fraudulent person got so far for so long sends a very bad message to the public. The only conclusion one can reach is that the hiring practices at colleges and universities rests in the hands of ninkumpoops.

So why isn’t anyone paying attention to John Bear? California has an approval process, and it requires faculty, instruction, standards, etcetera. PWU appears to have been part of the forerunners of what is now known as “online education”. Some of these schools lost their approval. But to say as, someone quoted above from an article, that Pacific Western University is “shuttered” when it changed its name and is now accredited is simply a lie. It is a lie that perpetuates the myth that all distance education schools are “diploma mills”. It is a lie that perpetuates the “gotcha” myth that all schools that give some credit for work experience are “diploma mills”. The CHE has had articles about accredited schools giving credit for work experience and life experience. So cut it out! Without reviewing the details of this man’s degree experience, we cannot judge him. Since we don’t have that, the headline of this article is libelous. It is the kind of libel that is likely to never result in a lawsuit, but it is libel just the same.

the famous psychologist, “Dr” John Gray has a fake PHD too, from California PAcific University. His ex-wife Barbara D’Angelis (sp?) degrees are fake. http://www.worldcat.org will show who have a dissertation for anyone claiming to have a PhD…

To #3 “John Bear” who says” … the other ostensibly run from Hawaii (which has no school licensing standards)”And you base your intimate knowledge of Hawaiian education on what, exactly?The University of Hawaii system is accredited by the Western Association, and the individual schools and colleges within (business, law, medicine, pharmacy) are either fully accredited, or candidates for accreditation, by the official accrediting bodies for those types of institutions/programs.Chaminade U. and Hawaii Pacific U., the 2 main private colleges, are accredited by the Western Association, and the appropriate professional/disciplinary entities as well.So, basically, you don’t know what the hell you are talking about, and should shut up.

Sorry, here’s the link: http://hawaii.gov/dcca/ocp/udgi/regulation

I suggest we all read nampman’s #11 email more carefully, as s/he may be on to the crux of the matter. A Ph.D. once actually stood for something as did bachelor and master’s degrees. Indeed, at many US colleges and universities of varying degrees of quality, a doctorate was not required for tenure until the early to mid-1970s. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest that a Nigerian A-level completer would probably compete very well with her/his US college level junior or senior peers.With the alphabet soup of doctoral degrees and multiple means of obtaining them that have emerged over the past quarter century, one could also make the case that “degree inflation” has plagued US higher education for the past 20-30 years. The very fact that Professor Okusun apparently taught well enough to earn tenure speaks to nampman’s observation: having a degree–even a doctorate– may have little to do with what one is capable of doing–no matter our claims to the contrary.

I wonder how he fulfilled his residency requirements. Who was on his committee? How did he get his transcript valiadted to get hired if the diploma mill was closed. Wonder how one can send a minimum of three years studying for PhD without realzing it was a mill. What type of publications did he have for as a scholar before and after being hired?

@7…(cwinton),You want fake affirmative action hire?A few years ago the “minority affairs” office at an Ivy was interviewing for its top post. LOTS of very qualified applicants with decades of experience at comparable schools applied (Hispanics of various and differing racial backgrounds, Native Americans with co compatible professional histories, Asian-Americans from of several ethnic contexts and African Americans with proven credentials also. Several of these applicants I knew professionally. Among the “top” finalists was a woman who to everyone on the search committee was a total fake (resume, degrees, “philosophy” of social justice, “commitment to access”…. blah,blah,blah).She shows up 30 minutes late for a 2 hour interview session (one of several over a 2 day interview period). Session after session of her inane references to “my people”, “the diaspora”, “the disenfranchised” and even to…… “honky”, her last session had arrived and AGAIN she arrived late. She excused her “tardiness” yet again as just part of how “us people” view time. She called it “colored people time”. And there she sat resplendent in her “authentic” 100% polyester robes and jeweled turban, which were adorned with glass beads she made sure tinkled and clanked with very expressive arm gestures during her “presentations”. Time passed as she rambled through inarticulate responses to very pointed questions. All the while SC members wondering how did this cretin get a PhD at a Big 10 school? It was not surprisingly in… “The African Diaspora As Seen Through The Eyes Of A Nubian Queen Laboring Under Imperialist Overlords of the Hip-Hop Generation In The Inner Cities of New World Conquest”. And just as the long-awaited summary session was about to end, she excused herself, walked down the hall to a janitor’s closet and returned with a broom, which she placed across 2 chairs. She then proceeded to stand behind it and then hop over it, stand with legs apart and yell toward the ceiling to one of her ancestral gods that she acknowledged still walked the earth in the form of Simba, the lion. The SC just sat in shock.The evaluations of all the applicants were all submitted to the upper administration.Imagine everyone’s shock when she was selected as the “best fit” and offered the job which she greedily accepted.The ubiquitous press releases followed, all of which praised her “authenticity and commitment to diversity” (talk about one exhausted and trite claim today). From there began several less-than-flattering years filled with incidents of her embarrassing and humiliating behavior in public fora (local, national AND international) that have prompted BOXES of letters to the PRESIDENT of the school who did not/has not respond(ed) to any of them. Today, she continues her self-indulgent public displays of “authenticity” alienating even African American alumni who have pulled ALL their funding of scholarships and internships for students. They cannot accept this foreign-born opportunist who harbors intense contempt for them and has publicly stated such sentiments.The moral of the story…people like this with fake credentials (not sure hers actually are), total lack of appropriateness for a post and obvious incompetence are hired BECAUSE of these factors. Nothing says lack of commitment to institutional mission(s) more than hiring a hopping buffoon, shrieking to a zoo animal spiritual guide than this STILL-ON-GOING spectacle on that Ivy campus. Hires like this are commonplace today and we can blame them on incompetent, uncaring, cowardly administrators and faculty who have long-ago outlived their campus shelf-life and really do need to move on. Mr. Chips will have more than a few questions to ask of these current day idiots masquerading as proponents of fake tolerance, diversity, scholarship and “inclusiveness excellence”. The broom? She keeps it in her office to do encores of her interview ensemble for campus student and parent visitors.

I think tabaway’s comments in #20 made a number of thoughtful and specific points, as opposed to long irrelevant anecdotes, easy jokes about Viagra ads, and other oddities (affirmative action for noncitizens?), some of them misspelled, no less. I also have to laugh at the claim that “a PhD used to mean something.” Really? Just when was that glorious golden age to be found, when one’s gender, race, class, age, religion, old-boy networks, rapidly changing or divided fields, geographical variation, human fallibility, subjective judgment, random accident, etc., etc., etc., magically had no effect?Other factors become important after the PhD anyway (teaching, ongoing research, service to students and to a discipline) and I’m not sure anyone here is in a position to say that Mr. Okosun hasn’t proven himself on those fronts. Obviously deliberately lying on a c.v. is grounds for termination, but it’s not clear to me that that’s the case here.