… and who can be surprised that they crop up in Michele Bachmann’s business?
[Marcus Bachmann’s] Ph.D. comes from the Union Institute, a Cincinnati-based correspondence school; in 2002, it was cited by the Ohio Board of Regents, which said, “Expectations for student scholarship at the doctoral level were not as rigorous as is common for doctoral work.”
As Politico has reported, he’s not licensed with any of the boards that certify mental-health professionals in Minnesota, one of the few states that allows unlicensed people to practice mental-health care. [Another therapist on staff has an M.A. that] comes from Argosy University, a for-profit diploma mill.
July 16th, 2011 at 12:54PM
So much for close reading of a text: the headline itself indicates it is her husband’s business that is involved in this tidy piece of muckracking. Michele Bachmann is a tax lawyer by training, I believe.
July 16th, 2011 at 4:51PM
Shane: My understanding is that it is a business co-owned by Bachmann and her husband. I’m happy to be corrected. But here’s a source:
He built the counseling business they now own together.
July 17th, 2011 at 12:41AM
So what’s the problem? He’s not a pointy headed intellectual?
And what’s wrong with a wife owning part of her husband’s legal business? She’s supposed to divorce him because his PhD coursework wasn’t rigorous enough?
Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t remember you covering Michelle Obama’s job with the U of Chicago after she flunked the Illinois Bar. Maybe Mrs. Obama’s job might have be off limits because she wasn’t running for president. But then neither is Dr. Bachmann.
July 17th, 2011 at 4:03AM
AYY: It’s perfectly fair game to point out that a candidate has a business in which employees are misrepresenting themselves as actual PhDs when in fact they have fraudulent degrees. As to Bachmann’s husband’s borderline degree — again, there are legitimate ethical questions here in terms of his qualifications for dispensing counseling advice. All of it goes to her sense of business ethics, and all of it will certainly be written about and discussed in the course of her campaign.
It will, of course, be overshadowed by controversies involving the candidate’s comments about gays (also her husband’s comments), and whether the clinic practices reparative therapy.
July 18th, 2011 at 5:42AM
I used to serve on the faculty of the Union Institute. It is a non-residential Ph.D. program for adults, with North Central accreditation. It was not a diploma mill: students did course work, residential seminars, and wrote dissertations. While there was sloppy work that got through the system (a faculty committee had made such an argument a few years before the Ohio Board of Regents went after Union) the Ohio Board of Regents report exaggerated the extent of the problem.
I don’t know the Minnesota regulations, but often you can call yourself a “psychologist” or “counselor” without being licensed. Licensure rules vary enormously. This is a warning to check the qualifications of mental health practitioners — though even those who are properly licensed may be incompetent.
July 18th, 2011 at 7:06AM
Susan: Thanks very much for those details. I was careful in the post not to call Union a diploma mill. Argosy certainly is, and I called it that.
Whatever the crazy regs in Minnesota for licensing of – as you rightly put it – “psychologist” or “counselor” – the story in this case is about Michele Bachmann’s co-ownership of a shoddy enterprise.