http://www.oregonlive.com/news/orego...9747147420.xml

It may take hours, but you, too, can earn a degree
Sunday, July 04, 2004
BOULE L6 Boule: Telemarketers as 'admissions
counselors' L1 A funny thing happened after I wrote a
column two weeks ago about the proliferation of
unaccredited or fraudulent universities and diploma
mills: My e-mail inbox began to fill with
solicitations from "university" representatives
offering to sell me advanced degrees. "Obtaining a
PHD/MD/MBA/BA has never been so easy!" one trumpeted.
"No required tests, classes, books or interviews!"


Which is exactly the problem. Oregon is leading the
nation -- and perhaps the world -- in the fight
against "educational" institutions selling degrees
with little or no educational value to people who use
the diplomas to get jobs, promotions, prestige and
financial gain.

In May the administrator of Oregon's Office of Degree
Authorization, Alan Contreras, was a star witness at
hearings conducted by the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee in Washington, D.C. Senators and
investigators praised the work of Alan's office,
investigating an industry that experts claim will take
in more than $500 million this year.

After the column ran, I heard from readers who refuted
claims made by Alan and other witnesses at those
hearings. Every protest came from a current student or
degree recipient from an unaccredited school listed on
Oregon's state Web site
(www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html). In
Oregon, it's illegal to use one of these degrees on a
resume, job application or to incur professional gain.


I heard from a physician who obtained his M.D. from a
foreign school on the "illegal" list. He protested
that he'd had to study for his degree and had passed a
qualifying exam before practicing.

"We would not use the term 'diploma mill' to describe
some offshore medical schools because they actually
have classes and faculty," Alan responds. "The legal
definition of 'diploma mill' requires excessive use of
life experience credits or no involvement by qualified
faculty." But the law states that foreign institutions
must have the "equivalent of U.S. accreditation."
Many, especially those based in the Caribbean, don't.

But Alan acknowledges that foreign medical and
veterinary schools are "a gray area." He will soon
meet with professional licensing boards to work out
standards.

Institutions whose degrees have been declared illegal
in Oregon run along a continuum, from blatant
check-for-degree swap houses to institutions that
require some work but not enough to make them
comparable to accredited universities.

The most correspondence I got came from folks
associated with a for-profit entity I had mentioned,
Kennedy-Western University.

Alan researched Kennedy-Western and came to the
conclusion it is illegal for Oregonians to use degrees
from that institution. This has made a lot of people
angry, many of whom paid their money to KWU and have
the diplomas to prove it.

"I am a student enrolled at Kennedy-Western
University," wrote one man. "I take offense. Where
does the state of Oregon, or any other state, have the
right to pass laws that dictate whether a degree is
valid or not? This seems unconstitutional." He
concludes, "As a student of Kennedy-Western, your
degree is earned through many hours of hard study."

Exactly. Many hours, not many years. In fact,
Kennedy-Western makes an interesting case study of the
murky field of online, for-profit education. It has no
campus. To get degrees, students do no coursework;
instead they read a textbook and take an open-book
exam in each course and finally submit a research
paper, thesis or dissertation.

In a phone interview this week from California,
Kennedy-Western's director of corporation
communications, David Gering, explained that
institutions such as Kennedy-Western are misunderstood
because they use new technology and a new concept:
distance learning. "A lot of online higher education
opportunities are credible, academically rigorous and
provide people what they need in their careers," he
says.

In Washington, D.C., in May a former employee of
Kennedy-Western testified that its "admissions
counselors" were actually telemarketers, paid a
commission for students who enrolled. "I was required
to call between 100 and 125 prospective students per
day," he testified. "Much of our sales pitch was not
true. . . . I never heard of an applicant being
rejected."

David acknowledges admissions counselors are paid
commissions for students enrolled. "They have to be
motivated," he says. "In a for-profit environment,
that's how you motivate people. It doesn't detract
from the academic integrity of the degree programs we
offer."

Let's take a look at the programs. David acknowledges
that students are given credits for life experience
and select their own courses. That's an advantage, he
says. "It's more focused and targeted to the needs of
students."

However, a government investigator testified in
Washington, D.C., that she was accepted into KWU's
masters program in environmental engineering and was
given half the necessary credits for life experience,
after never having had any engineering training or
exposure. She claimed she had easily passed the
open-book tests but withdrew before getting her M.A.,
"as we had a good sense of Kennedy-Western's academic
program. With just 16 hours of study, I completed 40
percent of the requirements for a masters degree," she
testified.

David says the tests are rigorous and cannot be passed
unless students have put in long hours of study.

It's important to remember that Kennedy-Western is
only one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
unaccredited institutions offering degrees whose value
is being questioned in Oregon and elsewhere. All claim
to be legitimate. In some cases, Oregon has
investigated and agrees. (A list of legal unaccredited
schools is on the Web site.)

But far more have been designated illegal providers of
degrees. In a few cases, owners have gone to jail on
fraud-related charges.

With these businesses proliferating and going
unchallenged in so many places, we have reason to be
proud that Oregon has a law respected across the
nation. But to preserve the integrity of educational
claims in our state, the Legislature would have to
restore funding for the Office of Degree Authorization
that was cut in the last session.

Why is that important? Ask the educator who wrote me
this week from Texas, saying a high school principal
in his district had been hired because of a purchased
Ph.D. that would be illegal in Oregon. "He is
currently under consideration for a higher position,"
this man wrote. "The state and system pay a huge
additional salary for this degree. . . . It just irks
me that people claim degrees who have not really had
to work for them."

Margie Boule: 503-221-8450; marboule@aol.com


http://www.oregonlive.com/news/orego...0173291400.xml

These folks should feel sheepish about getting
fraudulent sheepskins
Sunday, June 20, 2004
BOULE L8 Boule: People often will turn in co-workers
L1 T hree senior officials with security clearance at
the National Nuclear Security Administration in
Washington, D.C., whose job it is to oversee nuclear
weapons safety, bought college degrees from bogus
universities.


U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Abell
bought a master's degree from a fraudulent university
shut down by the state of Louisiana. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense Patricia Walker bought a
bachelor's degree from Pacific Western University, a
diploma mill.

The list goes on and on: A deputy chief at the office
of Homeland Security purchased a doctorate from a
"university" based in a former motel in Wyoming. And
high-level employees with bogus degrees are littered
throughout the Small Business Administration, the
Pentagon, and departments of Education, Health and
Human Services, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.

All this came to light in testimony before the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C.,
last month.

And when federal investigators are looking for
authoritative information on bogus institutions of
learning, where do they turn?

When a Senate committee in Washington, D.C., is
investigating illegitimate diplomas acquired by
writing checks instead of putting in years of study,
who do they bring to the capital to testify?

They turn to a tiny 21/2-person office in Salem,
Oregon. And they fly state employee Alan Contreras,
who runs Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization, to
the nation's capital to describe a giant fraud being
perpetrated today: the sale of academic degrees from
illegitimate colleges and universities.

It turns out Oregon is leading the nation in the fight
against fake academic credentials. That is, if you can
call it a "fight." Oregon was the first and remains
one of very few states where it is illegal to use a
bogus degree. "We make a distinction between buying
and owning it, which is not illegal," Alan explains,
"and 'using' it as a credential for a purpose such as
employment, candidacy for office or enhancing one's
professional reputation."

Alan's rule of thumb: In Oregon, "you can own as many
as you want, as long as you keep them under your bed."


There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of
Oregonians who are breaking the law by displaying on
their walls legitimate-looking diplomas from
tweedy-sounding places like Oxford International
University, or by listing bought-and-paid-for degrees
on resumes, job applications, voters' pamphlets and
professional Web sites.

There must be even more Oregonians who were overlooked
for better jobs or denied raises because people with
fake degrees got the positions or the money.

Alan wants to stop that kind of fraud in Oregon. He
spends most of his time evaluating colleges that want
to operate in Oregon. But when he's not doing that,
he's researching reports of Oregonians trying to pass
off illegitimate degrees.

"People call us and rat each other out," Alan says. He
can understand the whistle-blowers. "People are angry.
They worked hard for their degrees and got passed over
for somebody who bought their degree last week.

"Someone called yesterday and said, 'My co-worker is
using a fake master's degree and a fake Ph.D. Is there
anything I can do?' "

In Oregon, the answer is yes. Check out the official
Web site at www.osac.state.or.us/oda/. It has a long
list of "schools" Alan has researched and determined
to be diploma mills or questionable academic
institutions. Give Alan's office the suspected
offender's name, address and the institution in
question, "and we send a letter saying, 'If you have
this kind of degree, you can't use it.' "

Letter recipients must provide proof of the legitimacy
of their degrees. If they don't, or if Alan researches
the college and it doesn't measure up, they have to
stop using the degree or face legal penalties
including possible criminal charges. Using a degree
illegally in Oregon is a Class B misdemeanor
punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to a year
in jail . . . for each offense.

That's not the case in most states, which may be why
these institutions of lower learning are
proliferating. John Bear, a former FBI consultant,
estimates the diploma-mill industry takes in more than
$500 million a year nationwide, up from about $200
million two years ago.

Alan blames the Internet. "Anybody can set up a Web
site that looks like a real university," Alan says.
Even people looking for legitimate mail-order or
Web-based degrees can be fooled.

Alan says, "It's hard to figure out who their faculty
really are, hard to figure out where they are
physically located. For example, Kennedy Western
University has a small office in Wyoming, the only
place it has a license to issue degrees. But it has a
staff of 80 or 90 people in California, most of whom
are telemarketers."

And the Internet has made the policing problem a
global challenge. "One of the biggest operations,"
Alan says, "is owned by an American in Boston. He runs
it out of Romania, has a bank account on Cyprus, and
the degrees are printed and mailed from Jerusalem."
The company uses "about 20 different names," including
Harrington University.

Alan has labeled Kennedy Western and Harrington
"diploma mills" on his office's Web site, which lists
many other "Illegal Degrees in Oregon."

His list is growing, but not as fast as it should be.
Until this year Alan's office checked degree
credentials of applicants for jobs with the state.
That's how it discovered a discrepancy in the
application of a finalist for head of DEQ. "We found
out he had a bogus bachelor's degree about five hours
before he was to interview with Governor Kitzhaber,"
Alan says.

It probably wouldn't happen today. In the last session
Oregon's legislature cut funding for evaluations by
Alan's office. Now even state agencies have to pay his
office to check degree authenticity. "Mostly they're
not doing it," he says. In the past Alan also checked
political candidates' degree claims. Today there's no
budget for that, either.

Which is a shame. At the very time Oregon is cutting
funding, other states are passing laws and paying more
attention. Using the list Alan created, the state of
Georgia recently discovered 11 public school teachers
with bogus degrees.

At the Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., last month,
Committee Chairwoman Susan *******, R-Maine, called
these kinds of discoveries "the tip of the iceberg,"
and praised work done by the state of Oregon to expose
fraudulent universities.

"It was nice to be recognized back in D.C. and have
Republican and Democratic senators both saying the
state of Oregon is doing good things," Alan says. "In
this age" of political bickering and budget cuts,
"it's good to have that kind of support."

Margie Boule: 503-221-8450; marboule@aol.com

NOTE FROM Az Skeptic Here is Alan's presentation


http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/i...&WitnessID=631

Statement of Alan Contreras
Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
"Bogus Degrees and Unmet Expectations: Are Taxpayer
Dollars Subsidizing Diploma Mills? (Day 2)"
May, 12 2004


I appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts
with the Committee regarding the problem of diploma
mill degrees and the Oregon legislature’s innovative
and nationally known response to the problem.







What is a diploma mill?







There is no universal legal definition of what a
diploma mill is. A dictionary definition is a good
place to start:







Diploma mill: An institution of higher education
operating without supervision of a state or
professional agency and granting diplomas which are
either fraudulent or because of the lack of proper
standards worthless. — Webster’s Third New
International Dictionary







In essence, diploma mills (or degree mills) are
substandard or fraudulent “colleges” that offer
potential students degrees with little or no serious
work. Some are simple frauds: a mailbox to which
people send money in exchange for paper that purports
to be a college degree. Others require some nominal
work from the student but do not require sufficient
college-level course work that is normally required
for a degree.







It is important to remember that a diploma mill is a
type of degree supplier, not a type of educational
delivery system. Many legitimate schools use distance
learning, which is what most diploma mills claim to
do. Likewise diploma mill and proprietary institution
are not the same thing: many for-profit institutions
are legitimate accredited schools.







The major driving force in the proliferation of
diploma mills has been the advent of web-based
suppliers and bulk e-mail “spam” advertising of
“easy” degrees. This allows the actual owners of the
scams to remain largely invisible or operate from
offshore while bilking and defrauding U.S. citizens.







Why does anyone care that diploma mill degrees get
used?







“Mail drop” degree mills are simply fraud, a way for
unscrupulous hucksters to make money while providing
no service. More substantive degree mills devalue
college degrees by making them available without
college-level work. This makes all degrees suspect and
confuses employers and professional licensing boards
that need to know whether a person has an appropriate
educational background. We care about the use of these
degrees for the following principal reasons.







· Public safety. Society relies on degrees as
a proxy for a certain level of training in sensitive
occupations. Police, other public safety workers,
engineers and other professionals are hired and
promoted partly because of college degrees.







· National security. When a person working in
national security (e.g., border patrol, military,
coast guard) is using a fake degree, that person is
not only operating with less than the expected
credential but is subject to blackmail, since use of
bogus degrees is illegal in some states and a
professional embarrassment in most cases.







· Quality of service. Do we really want our
children taught by people with degrees bought online
from a diploma mill, as recently exposed in Georgia?







· Waste of resources. When the government
helps an employee get a degree or gives that person a
raise based on the degree, taxpayers deserve something
in the way of improved or superior performance in
exchange for their investment.







· Devaluation of education. If people can
simply buy degrees over the internet, then what is
education worth? The actual value of education
becomes diluted and distance education gets a bad
name. This reputational damage is mainly to legitimate
nontraditional schools (e.g., University of Phoenix,
Thomas Edison, Capella, Charter Oak), not to
traditional colleges.







· Equity. If one federal employee worked long
and hard for a masters degree and another gets the
same pay and promotion for one they bought last week
over the internet, there is a fundamental fairness
issue.







Are all unaccredited colleges degree mills?







Not all unaccredited colleges are necessarily degree
mills in the traditional sense of the term. Some
unaccredited colleges provide legitimate academic
work. However, unless these colleges are approved by
ODA, degrees from them cannot be used in Oregon. The
reason is that state laws under which such
institutions are approved vary markedly from state to
state. Some states have high standards, some states
have lax standards, no standards or no enforcement
capability.







Commonest professions in which diploma mill degrees
are used







· K-12 education (teachers and administrators)



· Police, corrections, fire and emergency
employees



· Counselors



· Public administrators of many kinds



· Medical administrators



· Alternative medicine providers



· Persons whose income comes in significant
part from serving as expert witnesses



· Midlevel managers in business







(My colleagues in Connecticut, Texas, Vermont, New
Mexico, New Jersey, North Dakota and California
contributed their thoughts to this list of commonest
professions.)







Oregon’s response







Most of the language in the current statute was
established in 1997, with some revisions in 2001 and
2003. Oregon law states that in order to be legal for
use in Oregon, a degree must be from a school that
has:







· Accreditation recognized by the United States
Department of Education, or



· The foreign equivalent of such accreditation
as determined by our office, or



· Direct approval by our office using our own
standards







Oregon law is designed to protect Oregon citizens,
consumers and employers by ensuring that people who
use degrees as credentials actually have them from
schools that have recognizable academic standards.
The law allows us to require users of fake or
substandard degrees to cease using them. Examples of
recent cases in which we have required users to stop
include:







· College professors



· A senior police captain



· A finalist for a senior state regulatory
position related to public health



· A prison psychologist



· A county tax official



· A nursing instructor



· K-12 teachers







All employment is covered, but the law is not limited
to employment. It covers any “academic or
professional” use of a degree (stated in rule). For
example, the Oregon Secretary of State sometimes asks
ODA to evaluate claims of educational credentials made
by candidates for public office.







Also, the law covers any such use within Oregon. The
employer could be an out-of-state entity. For
example, if a federal employee based in another state
or an employee of Boeing in Seattle were to do work
within Oregon (for example on a government contract or
in a training), that employee could not refer to
herself as “Dr.” with an unaccredited doctorate
without violating the law. The location of the
employer is not relevant, the location of the claim as
a credential by the user matters. Therefore in theory
an Oregon resident who only claims such a degree while
working on site in Idaho is not in violation.







What the federal government should do







The U.S. government should develop and impose
standards for the use as credentials of degrees by
federal employees (and the related issue of which
degrees, if any, the federal government should help
pay for). The U.S. Department of Education or OPM
should establish standards for use of degrees as
credentials for employment or promotion that require
degrees to be from schools that meet one of the
following three standards:







1. Are from a U.S. institution accredited by a
federally recognized accreditor.







2. Are from a U.S. institution found by the U.S.
Department of Education to have academic standards
comparable to those at an accredited U.S. institution,
using published standards developed through an open
rulemaking process, with all application and
evaluative documents being public records.







3. Are from a foreign institution found by the U.S.
Department of Education to have academic standards
comparable to those at an accredited U.S. institution,
using published standards developed through an open
rulemaking process, with all application and
evaluative documents being public records.







In addition the federal government should revise and
improve the standards used to allow foreign schools to
qualify for Title IV programs, in order to avoid
fiascos such as the Berne University situation or the
“Susan *******, PhD, MD, JD, WCTU, SPCA, Admiral of
the Fleet” situation. Current standards and
procedures are obviously insufficient.







Standards for the evaluation of unaccredited degree
suppliers







Oregon applies five standards to unaccredited degree
suppliers in the U.S. whose graduates want their
degrees validated for use in Oregon. In condensed
form, these are the standards that we consider key to
a determination of degree legitimacy:







1. Faculty qualifications. Do the faculty teaching
in the program have degrees (generally graduate
degrees) in the field in which they are teaching?







2. Program length. Does the program contain
sufficient student work to be comparable to similar
degree programs at accredited colleges? The main
issue here is to avoid programs that issue degrees
based on a few weeks’ work (or non-work).







3. Content of curriculum. Does the program contain
college-level work in subjects appropriate for the
degree in question?







4. Requirements for the award of credit. Does the
program require sufficient student effort for the
award of credit using U.S. norms for credit? The
Oregon norm, similar to others, is that a credit hour
should be awarded for at least 30 semester hours (45
quarter hours) of student effort, including in-class,
lab, homework and other forms of research and
preparation.







5. Admissions standards. Does the program admit
students who are qualified to enter it in terms or
prior preparation? This is of concern mainly for
graduate programs, for which a bachelor’s degree is
the norm and alternatives need to be carefully
reviewed.







In the case of foreign suppliers, these additional
standards should be used:







6. Does the provider have demonstrable approval from
the host nation’s education approval body? A business
license or mere statement of approval from a
government official is not sufficient to meet this
standard, owing to problems with fraud. It is
necessary to examine the actual documentation showing
how, by whom, and against what standards the entity
was evaluated.







7. Does the approval body use standards that are
reasonably comparable to those that a U.S. accreditor
would use? Standards need not be identical but should
cover the same general subjects listed above in 1-5 in
a comprehensible way.







8. Are degrees from the supplier legal for general
and professional use within the host country? This is
a key issue. If a host country does not allow degrees
from the supplier to be used within the host country,
the supplier is probably a diploma mill and its
degrees should be treated as substandard unless proven
otherwise.







Thank you for the opportunity to discuss some of these
issues with the committee. Please do not hesitate to
ask if you would like further information.

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

The main applicability of this issue on this particular forum is for those intending to attend Medical University of Americas, which is banned in Oregon and on this list, though I don't see why since after exhaustive research, I personally feel the school is at least ten times more credible than many of its counterparts in the Carib which aren't listed.

My guess is that the lightweight Carib. schools will join the list when discussions are held with the Medical Board.

az skeptic

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

definition of light weight Carib. med schools

those that lack intrastructure
those that have distance learning as the main part of their program
those that have few grads ever licensing

__________________
Moderator - State Licensing Forum

Still skeptical after all these years.
This is it. There are no hidden meanings.WYSIWYG

http://www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com

http://www.chiropractormds.homestead.com/index.html

Oregon, in it's infinite wisdom, does approve degrees from Bob Jones University.

Anyway, it seems that a major hurdle for foreign schools is that, according to this Oregon Office of Authorization, graduates of foreign medical schools must be able to practice medicine in the country the medical school is located in before Oregon will recognize their degrees.

__________________
Saba Forum Moderator
Saba University School of Medicine, MSIV
Interests: Pediatrics, Psychiatry

I don't see the problem with anyone having their education through distance learning. And, I know that 99% of people on this forum disagree. That's ok. That's how you feel. If given the choice of having to sit in a classroom and listen to a lecture and staying at home and putting in the same amount of time that a student puts in sitting in a classroom, I rather sit at home and I learn much better that way also.

What I do see the problem as is people and business owner who buy/sell degree's over the internet or through the mail. Of course this is unfair and fraud if I sent in X amount of money with only hours of study time compared to attending a university 4 hours of the day and putting in 4 hours of study time over a 4yr period of time. The issue here is not the way that your learning the material but how you go about getting the degree at the end and then using the title in comparison to someone who studied for the amount of time the degree calls for.

As the article pointed out, there are legit distance learning program. There are also legit accelerated program or more commonly known programs as degree compeletion programs. An RN can attend a community college for 2yrs and go to work as an RN and attend classes in a degree completion program for another 2yrs that except his/her credits from the community college RN program while working and recieve a BSN.

There are physicial univeristies which allow someone to continue to work and get their master's degree while doing coursework over the internet. Nova University is one of these universities. If I was working and the person next to me had a degree which they recieved through distant education and I recieved the same degree through attending a university, I wouldn't feel that my degree is worth more than that person next to me. If we both studied the same thing but went about learning it in different ways, then it would only be through my ignorance or jealously for me to call that person's degree a fraud or say that that person is unqualified to fill the job.

You may think what you want to think about distant learning programs, the government may work to shut down all distant learning programs as being fraud, but that ok too. Because sooner or later, technology will catch up and you'll have to face it or deny it. Things are becoming much more simpler for us not just in the way we learn things but also in the way we do things. However, until there are more and more people (not just physician's) who have gone through distance learning programs and proven them wrong, the majority of people will fight against it as being incompetent to a student learning from sitting in lectures. These same lectures can be put on powerpoint and pulled up on the computer at any location with an access code and a computer. Technology is here to stay and if people can't except this, then that's there problem. Just think, if it were not for technology, you wouldn't be sitting here reading and posting on the forum, you would be writing letters back and forth or perhaps using this time to study.

I think this is a great idea. If a school is in a country, then it should have that countries approval. Without that countries approval then the student would not be able to be licensed in that country nor should they be able to licensed in this country.

I think an even better way is to have a national exam that foriegn students must pass acceptable in all 50 states.

What concern's me the most is the knowledge base you are getting, not how pretty and luxurious the campus is. The issue comes down to how do we prove that someone has the knowledge to become a US physician. I think they only way to do this is to set up some kind of national test and have a 1-2yr protor (hope I spelled that right) setting which every FMG/IMG must work under a licensed physician having that physician sign off on all charts along with the requirement for that FMG/IMG to be eligible to become licensed in the country which they graduated. Perhaps have a requirement which an FMG/IMG must have a year of work experience in that country from which they graduated outside of residency. This would assure that the physician has had a least a year's training beyond medical school and residency, must pass a US national exam and must have worked with a protor before becoming a physician.

This would eliminate the "My school is better than your school" debate and it would keep many of the money hungry business people from opening up medical school's on foriegn land when over half the enrollment isn't even from that country and doesn't have that government approval.

I think that I should write this up in a nice letter, present it to the boards. If only I had the time and money to get a grass root non-profit agency going on this issue.

umm...isn't this what the usmle and residency are??

as far as internet degrees, great, when technology demands that education go this route...the point is that carib schools are not in a position to be experimental. no matter how great an idea it is as a method of educaion, it is NOT a great idea to give the states any reason not to license you.

You must not have read completely what I said. I think I did mentiont that the proctorship would be beyond residency and no it would not be the same as residency.

Yes the USMLE is supposed to be used for this purpose, however, it's obvious that it is not acceptable to all 50 states as a judgement of determining if one has the knoweldge and skills needed to be a physician in the US.

Carribean medical schools were experimental when they first opened the doors on the first school. Before you start to flame me, here's what I mean. Before the Carribean medical school's, there were three options for a person to become a physician. 1.) Go the US MD route 2.) Go to a Foriegn medical school such as in China, Africa, India or other country or 3.) Go the D.O. route. Once someone came up with the idea to open a medical school in the Carribean for the sole purpose of training those who are US citizens who want to become US physicians but don't want to go the three routes already present, it became experimental right there providing a 4th way to become a physician. It was experimental in such that anyone who thought to go to the carribean to become a doctor was shunned just as the those who choose to do their basic science online are today. Medical boards went as far as trying to stop Carribean medical students and graduates from becoming licensed, doing rotations or residency. Same as they are doing now with the Basic science online medical schools. Do you see where I'm going with this? In the beginning, anyone who went to the Carribeans, gave the licensing boards a reason to not license them. Thus, it was experimental from the start.

D.O.'s had a very simular experience as well in the beginning. The Allopathic community fought very hard to keep D.O's from having the same rights as they did. Boy has time changed. Now what's the saying, first comes the MD, then come the DO, then comes the IMG, then comes the Carribean IMG, followed by others. Don't take my word for it. All you have to do is do a search on MD vs. DO/ DO vs Carribean/ Carribean vs. others on student doctor network and other sites. Everyone wants to be the best when in fact it's not even about that in the end. Because what do you call the person in your class who graduates last.....DOCTOR. What do you call a Nureosurgeon vs. the family doctor who work on in a rural area with only a population of 2,000.....DOCTOR. What do you call a person who went to a Carribean medical school vs. a US medical school vs. an International medical school....DOCTOR.

We can go back and forth with this for days....I rather not. Because in the end, I'm still going to be a doctor no matter if one agrees with my choice in medical school or not. No matter if 40 states ban my school...there's still 10 states which I can apply. If I get licensed in just one....then it's well worth the money I'm spending on medical school no matter if it does not meet the standards of anyone else but that 1 state.

That's how I feel.

Good luck