*WHY WAS CPU CLOSED?

_ CPU was closed because traditional universities perceived the extraordinary success of this innovative school as a grave threat to their own existence. Higher education is a big business and its marketers resist competition. Founded in 1978 by Richard Crews, M.D., a Harvard trained psychiatrist and Les Carr, Ph.D, a former president of established American universities, CPU gained full institutional approval in the 1980s from the Private Postsecondary Education Division of the California State Department of Education. Approval was equivalent to accreditation. However, in a climate of gowing tensions among competing institutions, the Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (CPPVE) of California decided to side with the traditional academic camp. State bureaucrats began openly to persecute private postsecondary schools with what appeared to be a vendetta. Viewing with heightened apprehension the forces at play in the arena of the dirty politics of education in California, governor Pete Wilson had ordered the closing of CPPVE. This did not help much because the CPPVE transformed itself into the Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE), adopting the same acrimonious attitude towards CPU like its predecessor. In 1999 a former high-level CPPVE employee, Dr. Betty Dow, testified in court that already in 1992 assistant director Sheila Hawkins told her that a big surprise awaits CPU because they’d never be approved. And, indeed, in the summer of 1995 the CPPVE Site Visit Committee produced a severely biased report of the school. Independent critics who examined this memorendum found in it so many errors of fact that they declared it utterly unreliable. For example, the report absurdly asserts that Dr. Crews is not qualified to serve as CPU President because his degree is an M.D., rather than a Ph.D.. It is noteworthy that probably the greatest president in the history of Antioch College and University was Dr. Dixon, an M.D.. Also, numerous errors in the document involve fallacious allegations, such as that a certain dissertation did not demonstrate competency in statistical research. Mind you, there are loads of dissertations that don’t require statistical analysis. Thus, this complaint is like grumbling about a cheese store because it does not sell telephones.

* BUT THE COURT IS INDEPENDENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. IF CPU WAS SO GOOD WHY DID THE JUDGE RULE AGAINST IT?

-Bear in mind that the judicial system is not about truth or justice but about power. It is about winning the case. In order to stop CPU from operating, the CPPVE produced a dishonest report on the school that the prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General Asher Rubin, used as the basis for the law suit. Neither the judge, nor the prosecutor were experts on universities or distance learning. As a matter of fact, Mr. Rubin’s ideas regarding schooling and personal development are quite weird: In the short cybernetic memoir, “My Columbia: A Just Education”, he says that stealing underwear was part of his efforts of “trying to get an education”, www.columbia.edu (2005).

In any case, in January 2000 the judge who ordered to close CPU found that the school “awarded excessive credit for prior experiential learning to many students”. This is a fallacious finding, which ignores the fact that CPU served professional adults, students who were accomplished individuals. A mature student, for example, one who has authored a book in Russian deserves more credits than another who just took some courses in that language. A proper philosophy of education recognizes and rewards experience as a form of concrete knowledge, superior to theoretical learning.

The judge also criticized that CPU “failed to employ duly qualified faculty”. In addition to the absurd complaint about CPU President Dr. Crews’ M.D. degree, mentioned above, this finding refers to the academic qualifications of deans and professors with foreign degrees. Since accreditation is a unique American phenomenon, based on the flawed and ignorant CPPVE report, the judge repeated the error that these graduates of established European universities hold degrees from unaccredited institutions.

A third complaint of the same judgment says that CPU “failed to meet various rquirements for issuing Ph.D. degrees. Although this allegation is so vague that it means nothing, let me bring up one example from the CPPVE report. Although experts have found that on the whole CPU dissertations are as good as those written at Harvard or Yale, the CPPVE Vising Committee singled out some dissertations that they found to be only about 60 pages, without counting references, bibliography and appendixes. At some point of its existence CPU establishe the minimal length of a doctoral thesis at 150 pages. Mind you, Albert Enstein’s 1905 dissertation at the University of Zurich comprised of 21 pages.

In spite of its closing, the BPPVE has stated that CPU degrees awarded before June 25, 1997, are legally valid. Degrees and any credentials or license received by virtue of the degree should not be affected.

*Was Columbia Pacific University in California a diploma mill?

__Never. Mind you, a “diploma mill” by definition is a bogus school that sells fake academic degrees. Columbia Pacific University in California was a real school where students earned their titles by sincere study. Loads of misinformation surrounds CPU. Yet in contrast to a whole slew of unfair and irresponsible allegations published in the media, in the October 15, 2001, issue of U.S. News and World Report, Margaret Mannix singles out CPU as a distance learning university where students work very hard for their degrees. Regrettably, ethical norms and honest reporting are not always the main precepts of the media. The December 11, 2004, editorial in the San Diego Union Tribune, for example, denounced CPU with the words of Dr. John Bear, a leading expert on non-traditional education. In reality Dr. Bear’s books in the 80s and 90s rated CPU higher than many well-known traditional universities. When I protested the biased reporting and requested to publish the facts, the editors refused to make any corrections. This leads to the sad conclusion that the Union Tribune prefers to misinform the public and to victimize thousands of CPU alumni, rather than commit itself to honest journalism.

* But is not that a fact that CPU was an unaccredited school?

_ CPU was not accredited regionally. This fact has been abused by the detractors of non-traditional schools by ignoring other forms of accreditation. CPU was approved by the State of California and its approval was tantamont to accreditation. So, to say that CPU was unaccredited is like to say that Visa is not a credit card because it is not American Express. Accreditation is a voluntary process. It is a specific American phenomenon that emerged after the Second World War as a means to standardize the needs of mass education. Research conducted by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education found that accreditation suppresses innovation. According to documents issued by the California State Department of Education, the curriculum offered by CPU was consistent in quality with curricula offered by regionally accredited institutions in the United States. CPU was founded in 1978 and was forced to close its gates in 2000 due to a miscarriage of justice.

As the renowned writer and scientist Dr. Donald Burleson of Eastern New Mexico University (Roswell) points out:

” I’ve always felt that CPU from the beginning was a noble and worthy institution of which one can be very proud as I am, to have been a part. I really don’t know how anyone can look at those existing lists of alumni and the positions they hold, in academe and elsewhere, and not realize that as a group of people we can stand tall with the alumni of any university on the planet”. And he adds: “The irony is, back in the 80s, CPU was doing that most heretical and unspeakable of things, someting not then having a name but destined to be called ‘distance learning’. And the accrediting bodies were nervous about that! Nowadays, they’re nervous if a university DOESN’T do distance learning”. (e-mail, personal communication, July 7, 2005).