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Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:07 pm by frags

A follow up to the discussion we started way back in the little india days. I found this one article dated Jan 2008 about the now famous International Irish University which i was following closely. It was quite an elaborate operation with graduation ceremonies etc.

Now the website is empty.

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7175730.stm

The IIU, which has 5,000 students worldwide and
thousands of graduates, maintains the illusion of a valid education
through its elaborate but highly misleading website.

This illusion is enhanced by the university's continued use of Oxford and Cambridge facilities to stage its award ceremonies.

After each event photographs appear on the IIU website
showing happy students receiving awards at the UK's best seats of
learning.

In Oxford, our journalist and actor secretly filmed the
award ceremony and recorded meetings with university boss and Executive
President Professor Hardeep Singh Sandhu, a Malaysian businessman and
faculty member Dr Edwin Varo.

Dr Varo, told us that the IIU was not bogus and was
registered in Ireland and that it had applied to the government and had
been given approval to use the word university.

In Dublin, Sean O'Foghlu, Chief Executive of the
National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, told BBC London: "To use
the word university in a title it needs approval from our Department of
Education and Science - no such approval has been given by our
department."

During secretly filmed meetings, Professor Sandhu told
our undercover team that the QAC was an "independent body" that
maintained the quality of education in the UK and elsewhere.

Faculty member, Dr Varo explained that the QAC staff:
"Focus more on your curriculum - on your teaching; focus on your
evaluation - they focus on your faculty - who are your faculty - what
amount of real teaching takes place."

The QAC website listed an impressive roll-call of staff
including the QAC Commissioner General and an Acting Commissioner
General.
Our reporter visited the QAC and instead of finding a
commissioner general we found four telephonists fielding calls for
countless companies at yet another virtual office.

A further check at Companies House revealed that far
from the being "independent" the QAC is in fact owned by university
boss Professor Dr Sandhu.

Professor Wooller, a member of the Institute of
Chartered Accountants, owns a £1.2m townhouse in Kensington but spends
most of his time living as a tax exile in Monte Carlo.

Our actor, again posing as a fake academic, arranged to
meet Professor Wooller, at a hotel in Monaco. We secretly filmed this
meeting.
'Dreamt up'
He told our fake academic that the IIU was not "recognised anywhere".
He admitted to our actor that the website was an
illusion: "When you look at the website, it's a figment of someone's
imagination. Someone's dreamt up what a university should look like,
and that's what's on the website."

Professor Wooller told us that students paid a lot of
money to attend the award ceremonies, adding: "If you can mention
Oxford, Cambridge then the whole world thinks that it must be a good
university."

He then said of the university's operation: "The whole
thing's dodgy." He even said that the IIU's governing council, of which
he and Professor Sandhu are both members, did not exist.

A BBC London reporter then confronted Professor Wooller:

Reporter: You said the whole thing is dodgy.
Mr Wooller: It is dodgy!
Reporter: Oh so you admit it's dodgy?
Mr Wooller: Of course it's dodgy.
He also told our reporter that he had been given his professorship by the IIU and that he had bought his "Baron" title.

Professor Wooller refused to quit as honorary chancellor
stating that most IIU students were happy and that the university was
good value for money.
Professor John Arnold of Loughborough University has seen coursework from an IIU graduate.

He said: "Students are paying for this, what I would
regard as worthless and bogus qualifications. I would say buyer beware
from the point of view of students.
"You know I really think that they'll probably be
getting qualifications which are unlikely to be taken seriously at
least in Western Europe."

Comments: 15