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Combine oxygen, heat over 450 degrees F, and paper or straw and you have fire. Combine lots of young people , coming to a famous place and those people have big money, and whoosh, once again fire, but of a different sort. The kind that is a flash that quickly disappears. The kind that seemed to be real, but leaves the person wondering what they saw. And their money is gone.
Hard to believe, maybe, but this is the infamous Silicon Valley, a real place that encircles San Francisco Bay for about 200 kilometers, with widespread office campuses, single buildings, limited apartment living and fewer and fewer single family homes. It has also, and here is the dangerous point, become a magnet for young people who want to make a fast start to millions using some kind of technology. Many parents worldwide save and scrimp even just to send their son or daughter to "the Valley" for a semester to get a foothold for the family to immigrate.
There is a whole part of our global economic world out there that churns and can be dangerous to trusting types of people. It is what Las Vegas calls "Big ticket items". This includes sports cars, real estate, jewelry, and high value art and antiques. It also includes higher education. A big ticket item involves the purchase usually triggered by the decision of one individual, commonly called "the consumer", sometimes called "the fool". Why it is so special is that the item is a once in a lifetime purchase and it has a high price, with a handsome profit for the seller. If it is a mass market, like real estate or higher education, it is a big event. We might as well name it "Cash Cow Valley".
So, we have Silicon Valley, correctly, the original and still Mecca of big money and it sits right in one of America's most likable cities. It happens to be the Mecca also for immigration.Where you have these elements, you have some honest brokers and many sharks, or wanna-be sharks. They often make seemingly stupid mistakes and take risks that are beyond the reasonable.
I created a small business university specializing in international students seeking good quality degrees at the bachelor, master, and doctorate levels. We especially wanted students with "global eyes" and passion to build global enterprises. We never held up American companies as the best, but did our share of teaching global students about the uniqueness's of the American economy and that necessarily always included excursion and study trips to Silicon Valley. For fifteen years we provided our students with weeks of exposure to entrepreneurs, their firms, and most importantly, their dreams and personal stories. The program was so dynamic, it attracted students from other universities, and many countries.
I had the fortune of watching the growth of Silicon Valley small universities during these years. My university was based in San Diego, to the south, but I was in a position in various networks to see firsthand some of Silicon Valley's worst cases of small schools trying to ride the Silicon Valley big wave. Networks upon networks, stretching from Copenhagen to Cupertino. From France to Freemont. All roads of this wave led to the Valley. Over the span roughly from 1995 through the present I have seen no fewer than ten separate small universities become corrupted by big greed and a wholesale disregard for US and California law. I have experienced the accreditation grind with my own university and traced deficiencies in its system to the worst of bureaucratic practices with an added layer of arrogance. The US accreditation establishment is now falling apart. The few spoil the hard work of the many.
The looming question is "How?". How could such a disaster happen and especially within one region Silicon Valley? Let's start with several common features.
Virtually all ten universities on the list were started by foreign nationals, some of whom have become American citizens. Their countries of origin: Taiwan, China, Singapore, South Korea, France, Denmark, and Saudi Arabia.. Most of these founders did not come from higher education. Most came from real estate or construction industries.All ten on the list are under current investigation for visa fraud and other related charges. Some have been convicted, schools closed and owners in jail. A conservative estimate would be that these ten schools processed either visas or documents permitting entry to the US by approximately 500,000 just in Northern California alone. Some of the schools have been cited by authorities but not yet shut down, allowing a constant stream of pro-forma "students" into the Bay Area and hoards of money for private school owners.Whatever big money came to these schools for being in the big ticket business was spent by owners (in some cases, non-profit schools) or owner's families on multi-million dollar private homes and it was done in complete contempt of legal regulations.Investigators and whistleblowers in some cases have uncovered fraudulent misrepresentation to students, lies to faculty and money hoarding by owners.In each case, there is, as I see it, a subtle form of contempt for State of California law, US Immigration law, and Washington, the capital of the accreditation establishment.
But, there is still something missing. Authorities in Washington were late in investigating the accreditation organizations themselves. (Who accredits the accreditors?" it is often asked. The answer is: no one.) Years went by. Many thousands of students lost their families monies to Bay Area education sharks. Thousands were sent home with deep feelings toward "the system". Some were escorted to departure airports in leg cuffs. Many students violated visa rules and have become undocumented people struggling to stay in US the cash society.
The part of this picture that is deeply puzzling is what may explain why all these organizations, especially Washington, missed it. So, now we must turn to accreditation itself and inspecting the inspectors. To be continued…
Michael L. McManus is Founder and President Emeritus of the California International Business University in San Diego. Dr. McManus is currently teaching and advising at several universities in the Seoul area. Comment and questions are welcome at mcmismism@aol.com.
