The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 15

THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2000 www.smh.com.au 15 TO ck ner oryo rPM) jtaMl The Internet promises tertiary education for all. Instead, reports Ben Hills, many "virtual universities" are little A more than degree mills making millions of dollars the gullible mssarT i mi ith I a II i A IL. afc -4i Ks bK'-TTr Ian Mackechnie; below, chancellor Dr John Walsh; bottom, the university's coat of arms. Mam photographs by ben hills FEW minutes' stroll from the tawdry tourist strip of Burnt Pine, commercial capital of the tiny Australian territory of Norfolk Island, is a handsome colonial-style building, surrounded by verandas, with the island flag flying out front and a stand of trademark pines as a backdrop. This postcard scene is not another relic of the island's convict history, nor another store selling "duty free" perfume, porcelain figurines or Lego cheaper than in Denmark.

A sign proclaims that this is Greenwich University, Australia's newest and most controversial tertiary institution. It is in this improbable location, on a remote South Pacific island best known for its status as a tax haven and its reputation as a tranquil holiday resort, that a worldwide virtual campus is based which (if its vice-chancellor's estimate is correct) is bringing in about $10 million a year in tuition fees a sum as large as the Norfolk Island Government's entire budget The owners of this university-of-the-Internet, according to the island's corporate records, are its chancellor, Dr John Francis Patrick Cyril Colclough Walsh of Brannagh, a larger-than-life Irish-Australian character with claims to European nobility, and the email address bentleyC" and his partner, Pauline Butler, a former Victorian schoolteacher who doubles as the university's vice-president. With a full-time academic staff of only five plus an "adjunct faculty" of part-time dons around the world Greenwich claims to have enrolled about 1,000 postgraduate students, mainly from the United States, but also from Britain and Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and "China. A typical fee for one of its popular doctoral or master's courses business administration, psychology, health or divinity is $10,000 a year, says the newly appointed vice-chancellor, Dr Ian Mackechnie. Senator Kim Carr, the Opposition's higher education spokesman, has been hounding the Government for more than a year, claiming the university's establishment on Norfolk Island last year places Australia's academic reputation at risk.

"They the Government were asleep," he told Parliament, "while a laughable and shonky pack of shysters, posing as a university, somehow sneaked past them and established themselves as what many have called a legitimate Australian higher education institution." Walsh, however, vehemently denies that Greenwich is a "degree and maintains that its academic standards are higher than many of Australia's established universities. He has had statements defending his faculty placed on the Senate record, and challenged Carr to repeat his comments outside "coward's castle" so that he could sue for libel. If Mackechnie's figures are correct, Greenwich University has done remarkably well in the cutthroat competitive Internet university industry. An Associated Press survey last year estimated that there were already more than 1,000 of these "virtual universities" competing for a slice of the SUS200 million ($335 million) a year people are prepared to pay to put the cachet "doctor" in front of their names. Dr John Bear, a California-based academic and, coincidental', a former owner of Greenwich University has been investigating the credentials of "non-traditional" tertiary institutions for 25 years to compile a widely read annual guide to help would-be students sort out the good from the bad and the downright fraudulent He says the anonymity of cy berspace has provided ideal camouflage for hole-in-the-wall operators offering mailorder credentials, many operating from postal addresses in Caribbean island nations with no tertiary education regulation.

The target of one of his exposes, the Calgary College of Technology, which was offering an Internet doctorate for message posted on a specialist international bulletin-board (www.alt drew responses only from teachers who, unsurprisingly, spoke highly of the institution. Greenwich did, on request, provide a list of eight "distinguished alumni" from the thousands it claims have graduated over the years, but declined to give contact addresses or numbers. It proved impossible to find people such as "Don Jin Jeong, official with Korean Division of Correction" or "Daryl Gilliford, COE (sic) General Hospital The only graduate we could locate was Bradford Caffrey, an American practising as a barrister in Sydney, who obtained a bachelor of law degree from a La Salle College in the United States another non-accredited tertiary institution and a doctorate from the International Institute for Advanced Studies, as Greenwich was then named. When he applied for a NSW practising certificate in the late 1980s, however, he was disappointed to learn that he would have to complete a WORKING FOR further two years' study at an accredited NSW university. None of this amuses Senator Carr.

He has thundered repeatedly that the "backdoor listing" of institutions such as Greenwich threatens a major Australian export industry tertian education brings in S3. 1 billion a year in foreign exchange, behind only tourism, coal and wheat A subcommittee of the CommonwealthState Education Ministers" council has been re-examining Greenwich University's credentials for more than a year. But there is no indication of when it will report nor what will happen if that report is adverse Norfolk Island's Education Minister, George Smith, told the Herald this week that as far as he was concerned the university had already been approved, and would continue operating. In the meantime, those interested in Gaelic heraldry, reincarnation, tiny cows and other more conventional tertiary courses should take a look at Greenwich's Web site, conveniently called www.universitv.edu.nf YOUR FUTURE PUBLIC RESEARCH selling buildings on Norfolk. Left, vice-chancellor demise of his alma mater, Walsh had difficulty persuading some people to call him He was admitted as a barrister in 1982, and soon became an eyecatching figure on the Melbourne scene, driving around in a Rolls-Royce with what he claimed to be the Walsh of Brannagh heraldic crest, featuring red and golden lions, on the door.

He joined the Young Liberals, twice challenged unsuccessfully for Parliament, and once made minor headlines by declaring that politicians shouldn't be allowed in parliament unless they had an IQ of over 115 his own, he boasted, was 180. He also developed a keen interest in ancestry, claiming to trace his own back to the 12th century, and acquiring various titles such as Regent of the Royal House of Anjou, and Knight Grand Cross of the Sovereign Order of St John. He was also, says Bear, "absolutely obsessed" with pursuing the claims of a Pretender to the Russian throne. Bear had met Walsh on a lecture tour of Australia in the late 1980s, not long after he had taken over the International Institute from his old friend, the late Dr Alexander Niven. It had been founded in Missouri as an-unaccredited "distance institution in 1972, but at the time of Niven's death had dwindled to just 17 students.

Bear agreed to go into partnership with Walsh, shifting the institution from Missouri where the Department of Higher Education in Jefferson City had received a number of complaints to Hawaii, where its name was changed to Greenwich University in 1989, and it set up shop in a building on the waterfront in the town of Hilo. The two worked together for about 16 months, building up enrolments and expanding courses, and trying unsuccessfully to get the university accredited. Eventually, says Bear, Walsh bought him out "amicably" for and became the owner of the university. Bear was replaced as president of the university by Dr Stuart Johnson, an American geologist with a doctorate in education from the University of California, Los Angeles. Pauline Butler fired him, however, after they fell out over the university's continuing failure to get accreditation and Walsh's drive to raise student numbers at the expense of what Johnson saw as the quality of education.

"They were running the place like a shoe factory," Johnson told the Herald. "They were going to offer students half-price tuition if they brought in another student, things like that it recalls an Olympic torch that agreed to an interview with Steve Cannane, of 2JJJ, because Cannane is Pat Hills's grandson. "Pat thought it was funny," Cannane said. Larkin said: "Most of the students were a bit upset about the way the torch was being regarded as a bit of a god. "Peter Gralton now a dentist in Victoria and myself decided to take the micky out of it "I thought I ran pretty well.

It was staggering the noise, ticker tape and flash photography. All I could think was, what will I do when I get there?" The rector of St John's congratulated him next morning and he received a standing ovation when he entered an examination room. Peter Gralton told ABC Radio that the protest was prompted partly by the fact that the first torch relay was held in Nazi Berlin before the 1936 Olympic Games. Dr dubious qualifications to SUS275, was found to be operating from the same address as Spiro's Pizza Parlour Bear joked that the PhD stood for Pizza, Home Delivery. The most notorious virtual campus busted in recent years was "Acton University" which was found to have been run from a prison cell in Beaumont, Texas.

Bear says its operators had stashed away an extraordinary SUS40 million over the previous three years, money taken from hundreds of would-be graduates. And just last January, after a three-year marathon through the courts, the Marin County Superior Court in California ordered the closure of Columbia Pacific University, of Novato in that State, which was fined for "deceptive and unfair practices" and ordered to repay an estimated total of $US2 million to compensate every student it had enrolled since 1997. The university has appealed. Investigators such as George Brown, who runs a student-information Web site (www.virtualuniversities.net), have documented a dozen Internet universities of varying degrees of credibility operating out of Australia. Most are registered as businesses and none is accredited under the Australian Qualifications Framework, the government seal of approval.

One, St Clement's University, is registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands, says Carr. The university's Australian agent was tracked to licensed premises in Adelaide with a recorded message saying the caller had reached "Australian Tertiary Education Services and malt whisky wholesaler." So how, in this jungle, has Greenwich University managed to survive and prosper The answer is on its Web site. As well as the usual hype that it is "a leader in international education" and that it "combines the best of American curriculum with the British tutorial system and Australian competency standards" is the key claim that Greenwich is a "fully accredited How did this come about? In 1998 Walsh was able to persuade the nine-member Norfolk Island Legislative Assembly to pass an act authorising the establishment of the university with no objection raised by Commonwealth education authorities, the legislation was signed into law and on January 1 last year, Greenwich threw open its doors or, rather, its phone lines. Greenwich university's owner is a plump man aged about 60, rosy-cheeked and frequently photographed clad in academic robes. He claims to have been born in Greenwich, Eng- torch to Lord Mayor Pat Hills on the steps of Sydney Town Hall, on its way to Melbourne, was kitted out in white shorts and singlet, but spilt the burning underpants.

Larkin, wearing trousers, shirt and tie, stuffed the underpants back into the can. The first runner urged: "Run, you bastard!" Larkin ran through cheering crowds towards the Town Hall, by this time escorted by police, and up the steps. Larkin bowed before the Lord Mayor, who accepted the torch and launched into his welcome speech, before Marsden tapped him on the shoulder and said: "That's not fjetorch." By this time, Larkin had skipped down the steps and was heading for a tram to take him back to college. The hoax runner's identity was not widely known until relatively recently. Now a veterinary surgeon at Dural, Y- ml 11 nWmawinmim Jllllfll If 1 1 llif Working Research: History in the Public Arena Research in Humanities and Social Sciences has become a topic of debate.

On one hand is recognition that we need technical and social solutions. On the other is decreasing funding for projects that don't show a profit line. Politicians have been vocal in their denigration of contemporary humanities and social sciences, with attacks on 'black arm band history' a notable example. Presenter Associate Professor Heather Goodall will explore 4 examples of work where the challenge has been to consider the relationship between 'pure' and 'applied' research. 6pm July 2000 at Moot Court Quay Street, Haymarket.

Not merely cyber Greenwich University land, the son of an Irish engineer Bear remembers the evening a decade ago when, sitting on the balcony of a house in Hilo, Hawaii, Walsh hit on his birthplace as the new name for the university, which had previously been called the International Institute for Advanced Studies. Walsh grew up in Melbourne, attending St Joseph's Christian Brothers' College in North Melbourne and then working as an insurance underwriter before turning, late in life, to academia. He completed an arts degree at Melbourne University in 1980, a law degree two years later, and then a postgraduate diploma in criminology. However, his two most impressive degrees a PhD in international law, and an academic qualification he describes in his curriculum vitae as Juris Doctor came from the aforementioned Columbia Pacific University. Even before the ignominious Flaming fun Pat Hills with the fake torch in 1956.

abc tv image Larkin remains somewhat coy about his famous run. He will not be photographed, although he will talk about it and 11 1 hi i )t- i Mm would have destroyed the academic tone of the place." Bear says Walsh's decision, in the mid-1990s, to move the university to Norfolk Island was "a very clever strategic The State of Hawaii was legislating to allow accreditation only of universities with fewer than half their students learning by correspondence or Internet and Walsh "saw the writing on the Before moving to Norfolk Island, Walsh made approaches which were rebuffed to the Victorian Government. He also formed an alliance with Whiteclit fe College of the Arts in New Zealand, which was awarding Greenwich "degrees" to its students until this was stopped after a public controversy over the award of an honorary diploma to the-then New Zealand Education Minister, Lock-wood Smith. Walsh has established himself in a sprawling house at Watermill Valley on Norfolk Island, but locals say he is rarely there he and Butler spend their time travelling the world, and repeated requests from the Herald, in person and by telephone and email, for an interview were ignored until a brief and inconclusive conversation on Tuesday night. It was left to Mackechnie to defend the university's credentials.

He said it had been established by act of parliament as an autonomous, self-accrediting university "just like Melbourne or Monash" although he did concede that no professional organisation anywhere in the world accepted a Greenwich qualification "because we have never sought Certainly his faculty contains academics with qualifications not usually found in accredited higher education institutions. It includes, for example, a Dr Stanley Krippner, who is described as co-editor of a book on past lives and an expert on "anomalous healing, hallucinations and synthesia (hearing colours, tasting The chair of history, philosophy and education is held by Dr Carl Lindgren of Oxford (Mississippi), who read "metagogics" at university, is an expert on chivalric orders, and "a prayer knight of the international crusade for holy relics, and a lay associate of the Priesthood of Handmaidens of the Precious Blood, Cor Jesu The academic dean is an Australian veterinarian named Melanie Latter, whose PhD dissertation, we learn, was on the subject "Bovine dwarfism studies of a miniature Angus Attempts to contact students to see what they thought of Greenwich's courses were mainly unsuccessful. A was not all it seemed. John Lawler, who travelled in a car with the relay, said the bogus torch was taken to a Town Hall reception room but later came into his possession. He put it under his bed at his home in Kensington but his mother had thrown it out while tidying.

Marsden, who became a senior lecturer in geology at Melbourne University and is writing a history of the 1956 relay, organised the run voluntarily and with only a few months' notice. The runners were all athletes, most ran a mile and the relay from Cairns to Melbourne continued around the clock for 13 days. "It was an athletic event and the first time the relay was officially part of the Games program," Marsden said. "It was very much a people's event I'm glad the stunt came off. It was all done in good spirit" Larkin said If I was a student again, I'd be very tempted Admission is free but bookings are essential on 02 9514 1330 or e-mail Public.Lecturetauts.edu.au by Monday 3 July.

Light refreshements will be served. fiMkeftnaa Flaming undies! Now that was a relay The flame was not from Olympus, but it still fooled Sydney's Lord Mayor. Tony Stephens (Ftauro WW THEY don't make Olympic torch relays like they used to. Barry Larkin knows that better than nearly anyone. So does Marcus Marsden.

The two are old mates, although the friendship was tested in 1956, during the relay for the Melbourne Games. Marsden organised that relay. Larkin disorganised it for a few minutes, to the delight of many and the dismay of some. Barry Larkin was a Sydney University veterinary science student when, with a group of St John's College students, he decided to deflate the relay. The students nailed an old plum pudding can to a piece of wood, painted it silver, stuffed three pairs of kerosene-soaked army underpants into the can and set it alight They set off along York Street ahead of the official relay runner, J.

H. Dillon. The student chosen to present the.