American University of Hawaii, Exposed

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Public Affairs declared that Iran would not recognize any degrees obtained from the American University of Hawaii. This self-purported "global university" has been granting fake academic credentials to Iranians wishing to enter the private and public sectors, without having to actually go to school and earn the necessary qualifications.

The scandal has been going on for about seven years, now, with officials turning a blind eye. This is probably because a significant number (which hasn't yet been specified) of public servants have purchased these undergraduate, graduate, and/or post-graduate titles in order to satisfy the higher education minimum requirement for their positions. People from lower government positions all the way up to the status of deputy ministers have ordered the forged scholarly records. All they had to do was pay about $10,000 to the American University of Hawaii, pick a major, and wait with gleeful anticipation for their graduation ceremony--err, I mean, for their "diploma" to come in the mail.

Of course, these crackerjack degrees were also bought by spoiled rich kids who cannot cut it in any university course, but want to flaunt an education from "abroad". They also needed that appearance of credibility to be able to work in their father's mega construction firm; nepotism disguised as internationally seasoned civil engineer graduate.

Check out the "university's" Iranian office; if this website serves as any indication of the organization's reach and performance, then we can gather that this charade was a complex, tightly structured entity that operated with the efficiency and effectiveness of a multinational corporation. These people are pros!

And the language surrounding AUH's objectives and philosophy are romanticized to what some of us raised in various cultures would scoff at, while pointing out the melodramatic appeal to pity. Here's a sample I couldn't resist:

At this University we have no students; we are here to help learners, regardless of age, origin, color, belief, or creed, achieve a life-long goal toward self-reliance and for serving humanity at large. We have no Main Campus with parklands, marble halls, security guards, playing fields or football and hockey teams with a group of coaches that cost the students millions of dollars a year. The American University of Hawaii’s parklands are the rainforests of the world that have to be preserved from ignorant and greedy destruction. Our playing fields are the back streets of cosmopolitan slums, where we try to replace the syringes of death drugs with life-giving microscopes. Our security guards are our mentors, who bring years of education and experience at a meager charge to help the next generation of guardians of human moral and cultural values in the villages of Africa, Asia and South America.

(Cue tears and violin).

The Ahmadinejad administration has declared this institution of degree peddling illegal, cutting off its successful seven-year stint as a pseudo-scholarly organization. This is another example of the president's continuous efforts to weed out corruption and undue advantage within the government, piece by piece. In relation, the state of Hawaii has pursued its own legal action against smooth criminal Hassan Safavi, the leader of this scam (and an Iranian from the U.S.).