I read with great interest on the report by Ms. Melanie Newman titled “Private colleges are warned of inspection visits” dated 21st July 2009 on “Time Higher Education” and also Mr. Andrew Norfolk’s report on “Man given job of closing bogus colleges was sacked by university” dated 29th June 2009 on “The Time Online”. All these has to do with an accrediting organization named Accreditation Service for International Colleges (ASIC) managed and run by a person called Mr. Maurice Dimmock.
Why am I writing this? It is because ASIC’s Mr. Maurice Dimmock from ASIC visited a private school in Singapore who has been trying very hard to receive accreditation from whoever is willing to offer one, he has approved in principle the accreditation without even investigating the history of this private school. According to insider information, Mr. Maurice Dimmock has shorten the normal process of accreditation inspection to only 1 day, best of all Mr. Maurice Dimmock never even read the submitted documents properly as 90% of the submitted documents were rubbish downloaded from various internet websites.
By the way, this school is called Camford Business School (http://www.camfordbusiness.edu.sg) and Camford University (http://www.camforduniversity.com/oc_staff.html), who used to sell degree certificates from various universities in the past (http://singaporeeducation.blogspot.com/2008/02/can-you-call-this-school.html), even the CEO doctorate degree was brought. Their course of study were very straight forward, each student enroll in the course they choose, attend classes to make it legitimate and receive a set of examination questions with model answers, then sit for the examination and filled in the model answers provided earlier and whoa la! The student pass! Another way is no examinations for the student just pure assignments, complete the assignments with the help of model answers and again you graduate! There is also a very short way to get a degree by this school, study for a diploma in the school, after graduation the student can enroll into their own Camford University and get every subject studied in the diploma transferred to the Camford University, within a very short time (less than 1 year) and the student becomes a degree holder.
Majority of the students in this school are China citizens and Malaysians, the school have many branches in Malaysia and recruitment agents in China, they claim to be legitimate school that offer genuine education, but a casual talk with their students will reveal that the ultimate objective is to get the student a diploma or a degree so they can get employed, knowledge is secondary.
I wonder what has gone wrong with the UK education system where officially appointed accreditation agent can accredit such sub-standard international schools by just conducting a one day inspection, the whole process from initial application to final approval lasted less than 1 month. I am sure when asked about this case, Mr. Maurice Dimmock will again put up with his “diplomatic excuses” that what he has done is according to the book and requirements of UK legislation.
