Thanks to Adrian Tribe, Phil Bradley, Simon Virr, Kriss Fearon, Bryan Martin
for this info! - I shall be passing this summary of the 'bogus web site'
postings to my management.
1. ECDOL appears to be a bogus site that lists legitimate European
Universities alongside bogus organisations such as:
the University of Devonshire and
http://universityofdevonshire.org/
Shelbourne University
http://henryheston.com/shelbourne/index.htm
to give it credibility (see complete list at the end of this email).
Adrian Tribe has found that the organisation's details are:
i)The registrant was a Dave Hudson, whose address is given as 196 High Road,
London,
England N224HH. The postcode is actually N22 8HH, and this is basically
just a mail collection point.
ii)The phone number given is 020 8938 3550,which is a message-taking
service.
iii)The technical contact is given as DNS Administrator,
[log in to unmask], Site Protect Web Services, 200 W Adams Suite
1001, Chicago, IL 60606, USA. Tel- 312-236-2132 Fax- 312-236-1958. The Web
site at www.siteprotect.com simply has a note about preventing spam etc,
supposedly reassuring but perhaps not?
iv)Some additional information about the ecdol.org domain name:
Record last updated on 04-Feb-2001.
Record expires on 27-Aug-2002.
Record Created on 27-Aug-2000.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.SITEPROTECT.COM 64.26.0.23
NS2.SITEPROTECT.COM 64.26.38.2
performing a traceroute on siteprotect.com confirms that this site is
'published' in America.
2. The bogus site University of Devonshire is also hosted through
siteprotect.com and is 'published' in America. It claims it is "a fully
recognized distance learning institution able to provide courses and award
degrees in a wide range of disciplines. Multiple degree programs are offered
for qualified candidates." http://universityofdevonshire.org/
Simon Virr suggests that a body passing itself off as a UK University with
powers to award degrees is committing an offence under s. 214(1) of the
Education Reform Act 1988. The Act is enforced by local weights and measures
authorities. However its position under US law is less clear. The Washington
Post article indicates that another bogus institution listed on this site,
Brentwick University may be 'immoral but not illegal'. Note that this
institution had the same contact address as the University of Devonshire:
".. Ezell ['Ezell, corporate fraud investigator for a Florida bank. In the
1980s, Ezell was head of the FBI's "DipScam" task force, prosecuting diploma
mill operators who openly committed mail fraud'] said many diploma mills
today--like Brentwick--are immunizing themselves from prosecution by
acknowledging they are diploma mills, and by operating out of multiple
political jurisdictions to take advantage of less rigorous laws. Indeed, the
original phone number Brentwick gave me was in New York City. But the money
I wired was to the country of Cyprus. And with my diploma came a notice that
credit card payments would reflect the destination of "Hyacinth, Romania.""
http://ww2.itoday.com/jobs-careers/transportation/wwwboard/messages/456.html
© 2000 The Washington Post Company from Bryan Martin's original posting
3. As Phil Bradley points out the site is careful to state "ECDOL
recognition is not a guarantee that credit will transfer to any college or
university."
4. Phil provides a number of options:
i)contact the British Accreditation Council for Further Independent
Education, the British Council and, if appropriate, the American Embassy (if
any such
institution claims to be an off-shore American organisation) to seek
their viewpoint.
ii)It would also be worth contacting the local Consumer Affairs
representative in the appropriate local government and ask them to look into
the situation.
iv)It may also be worth approaching the people at ECDOL to ask for their
views
as well, and to perhaps enquire how our organisation became a member as
claimed.
5. He and Kriss Fearon posted similar proposals about contacting colleagues
in the legitimate universities to ask for their opinions and ask them if
they are aware that they are included in a list of organisations along with
some possibly less reputable organisations. As Kriss Fearon suggested going
to 'a representative body such as Universities UK (ie the CVCP) or UCAS and
ask them to put pressure on. It might be more effective if more than one of
us complained.'
6. Incidentally, and bizarrely, target="_blank" is used to bring up content
for legitimate institutions such as 'University of Leicester', 'City
University' etc in a new window (which are the vast majority of links) and
not used for the bogus institutions such as Shelbourne, Brentwick and
Devonshire. The exception that proves the rule appears to be the University
of Leeds! Could there be a legal loophole behind this?!!
------------------------------------------------------
ECDOL net list - 5 Feb 2001 16:09
Anadolu University (Turkey)
Ankara University (Turkey)
Associazione Campo (Italy)
Barclays Bank PLC, Group Homepage
Birbeck College
Bogaziçi University (Turkey)
Board for Distance Education (Norway)
Brentwick University
Brunel University
Carl Von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Chelyabinsk State University (Russia)
City University
Danish Association of Open Universities
Danish Ministry of Education
Danish National Centre for Technology Supported Learning - CTU
Department of Computing, Imperial College, London
Distansutbildningsmyndigheten (Sweden)
EADL (Germany)
EDINFO - The University of Edinburgh's Information Service
ENSINUS - Estudos Superiores, SA
Europe Company Corporation S.A.
(ECC) International Centre for Distance Learning
Faculty of Economics (Slovenia)
FernUniversität-Gesamthochschule in Hagen
Gdansk Univeristy (Poland)
Goldsmiths College - London University
Harrington University (UK)
Høgskolen i Agder
Høgskolen i Akershus
Høgskolen i Bergen Studiested Landås
Høgskolen i Bodø
Høgskolen i Gjøvik
Høgskolen i Hedmark
Høgskolen i Molde / Molde College
Høgskolen i Nord-Trøndelag
Høgskolen i Oslo
Høgskolen i Stavanger
Høgskolen i Telemark - Avdeling for teknologiske fag
Høgskolen i Volda
Høgskolen i Østfold
Institut für Verbundstudien-lfV NRW
International Research Foundation for Open Learning
Janet Jenkins Consultancy in Distance Education
Keele University (UK)
King's College London
Lajos Kossuth University
Lancaster University (UK)
Loughborough University Home Page
"Iuliu Hatieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Cluj-Napoca
(Romania)
Lund University (Sweden)
Lærerforbundet (Norway)
Ministére de l'Education Nationale (Luxembourg)
National Institute for Distance Education Härnösand
NKI Fjernundervisningen (Norway)
NKS-Group (Norway)
Norges Handelshøyskole
Norges Landbrukshøgskole
Norsk Fjernundervisning
Norwegian Executive
Norwegian Institute of Technology
NTNU (Trondheim)
Open Universiteit
Oxford International University (Spain)
Oxford University Networked Information System
Private FernFachhochshule Darmstadt
Tokyo Gakugei University : Japanese
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Politehnica - University of Bucharest
Royal Veterinary College
Samisk høgskole Hjemmeside
Shaftesbury House College
Shelbourne University
SOFF-Sentralorganet for Fjernundervisning
South Birmingham College
St. George's Hospital Medical School, Tooting
Statens Skola för Vuxna i Norrköping
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania)
The London School of Economics and Political Science
Umeå universitet (Sweden)
Universidad de Malaga
Universidad Nacional ed Educacion a Distancia (Spain)
Universidade Aberta (Portugal)
Universität Lüneburg
Universitetet i Tromsø
University of Aberdeen
University of Bergen (Norway)
University of Birmingham
University of Bradford
University of Bristol
University of Buckingham
University of Cambridge
University of Devonshire
University of Durham
University of Edinburgh
University of Essex
University of Exeter
University of Helsinki
University of Hull
University of Kent at Canterbury
University of Latvia
University of Leeds
University of Leicester
University of Limerick
University of Liverpool
University of London
University of Manchester
University of Mining and Metallurgy in Cracow
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
University of Nottingham
University of Oslo
University of Salford
University of Sheffield
University of Southampton
University of St. Andrews
University of Strathclyde
University of Surrey
University of Tromsø (Norway)
University of Turku
University of Warwick
University of Westminster
University of York
Västsvenska Konsortiet för Flexibelt lärande
Viviance GmbH New Education (Germany)
Zentrum für universitäre Fernstudien
|
