International Higher Education # 32:4

Alan L. Contreras
Alan L. Contreras is administrator of the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization (ODA), a unit of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission. He also serves as director of OSAC's policy and research division. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the OSAC. Address: ODA-OSAC, 1500 Valley River Dr., Eugene OR 97401. E-mail: <alan.L.contreras@state.or.us>.

During the past few months, several regulatory and advisory organizations in the United States have become aware of an interesting case involving the international validation of degrees. Certain Liberian officials have apparently authorized a privately owned entity called the "National Board of Education" (NBOE) to "accredit" distance-education colleges anywhere in the world. The NBOE also owns one such entity, a diploma mill called St. Regis University. The only known "address" of the "Liberian" National Board of Education is National Board of Education, Inc., Washington DC 20003, Phone/Fax: 1 202 478 1779.

Because Oregon law requires that foreign degrees be from schools having the foreign equivalent of U.S. accreditation, the ODA had reason to look into the precise nature of these entities. What we found was disturbing in its potential consequences for so-called "seamless" international portability of postsecondary credentials.

The NBOE offers accreditation for a fee, with no apparent evaluation process other than a nominal application. No legitimate accreditor would do this. Indeed, the fee is simply sent in on-line, there is not even a real mailing address for NBOE, as far as we can tell. This arrangement is typical of operations falsely claiming to offer legitimate college accreditation.

Among its many services, the NBOE offers what it claims are verification apostilles of the kind used by jurisdictions worldwide to validate a degree. The NBOE claims that these apostilles can be issued with a Washington, D.C. seal, which in effect declares the degree to be a U.S. degree, not a Liberian degree, for a fee of $1,200 per item. By comparison, a legitimate apostille issued by the Oregon secretary of state costs $10. Of course, a legitimate Liberian apostille could not bear a U.S. seal.

The NBOE looks to the ODA like a degree-laundering operation sheltering under the flag of Liberia, not an apostille service. We have no idea upon what basis a dubious Liberian postsecondary accreditor is using a Washington, D.C. seal to approve individual degrees. Inquiries about NBOE's apostille services in March 2003 were redirected to an entity called Interfaith Education Ministries (http://www.interfaithedu.org/Members.htm), which purports to be an accreditor but in fact only lists diploma mills and substandard providers on its list of accredited schools.

In its spare time, the NBOE offers a transcript service for existing schools. Legitimate accreditors do not issue transcripts-colleges do. For which schools is the NBOE issuing transcripts, besides St. Regis, which it owns outright? Who knows? In order for Oregon to determine whether the NBOE would be considered a legitimate accreditor, we would need to know the following information in order to begin an evaluation: who operates the National Board of Education, including owners, board members and shareholders, and their addresses; where the NBOE's office and corporate assets are actually located; the names and addresses of any person employed by the NBOE in the United States; the process through which it obtained approval from the government of Liberia to accredit colleges; and a complete list of the colleges that it accredits and what they did to obtain accreditation. None of this information is available from the NBOE web site nor was it provided by the Liberian embassy in Washington when they wrote to us.

The relationship between the NBOE, the Liberian government, and certain diploma mills is so convoluted that even Liberian officials get confused. In a letter sent to the ODA by its embassy in the United States, Liberia's first secretary and consul stated that Liberia "will not verify the accreditation" of Adam Smith University, even though it was recently listed as an NBOE-accredited school.

On its website in March 2003, Adam Smith University, a diploma mill with a long and unattractive history spent among several U.S. states and territories, states the following: "Adam Smith University is accredited by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Liberia." This site also states: "Degrees are conferred from a charter issued in the United States of America by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands or from Liberia or the British Virgin Islands if a student prefers one of these jurisdictions." It offers the following address, among others: "Adam Smith University Liberia, Inc., Ground Floor Girls Hostel, Methodist Compound, 13th Street, Sinkor, P.O. Box 6046, Monrovia, Liberia/West Africa, Cell Phone: 0113774706516143, Fax: 231227869, email: Vblama@yahoo.com."

How should the State of Oregon evaluate this garish, unwholesome collage of facts about a "government-approved" foreign accreditor and its progeny? Even if we could locate the NBOE, little about it seems Liberian, national, boardlike, or educational to the ODA, though we'll provisionally concede the "Inc." If the Liberian government did not approve all of these entities we would have expected it to have taken legal action to compel their removal.

In the continued presence of filiative statements in multiple international venues, it is not unreasonable for the State of Oregon to assume that some formal oversight relationship exists between the entities and the government of Liberia. This in turn suggests that the Liberian government has no meaningful postsecondary oversight in place or that a network of its officials is freelancing. Neither possibility lends confidence to the idea that, once a national government approves an accreditor or a school, other nations and employers must recognize degrees issued under such an imprimatur as inherently valid.

The State of Oregon has concluded that the NBOE is not a legitimate accrediting body--based on the many obscure statements made on its website, the absence of a list of its accredited schools, its apostille service in the shape of a spigot, its clear connection to known diploma mills, and the absence of any but the most tenuous connection to Liberia.

It is possible that the government of Liberia has been deceived regarding the true nature of the NBOE and its subsidiary entities. We have asked the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia to investigate this situation. It is somewhat impractical for a single U.S. state to investigate sharp practices on other continents, but there is no other government entity in the United States, including the U.S. Department of Education, that appears willing to act against the Jolly Rogers sailing under such obvious flags of educational convenience.