… there’s Evergreen State College in Washington, which seems to have let one of its professors run an abroad program pretty much all by himself. Which meant that he just collected money from students and put it in his personal bank account. Link (Can’t figure out how to do links properly here at the hotel):
http://www.theolympian.com/2010/03/26/1185197/ethics-probe-begun-for-ex-prof.html#ixzz0kEro8YqL
The college auditor reported in February 2009 that [Jorge] Gilbert had not accounted for at least $50,000 in student payments that he collected between 2003 and 2008 for an international program in Chile. The audit also found that he misrepresented the college by signing contracts with a Chilean company partly owned by his family.
Students who took part in Gilbert’s Chile program in 2008 reported that they deposited the approximately $3,000 for their trip into an account at West Coast Bank, for which Gilbert was the sole signer. The money did not include quarterly tuition.
The college began its investigation of the Chile program after some of the students on the 2008 trip did not get the airline tickets that they thought they had purchased. Gilbert had arranged for the students’ tickets through a travel agency that went bankrupt.
April 5th, 2010 at 4:35PM
Less extreme variations of this racket are not uncommon. Even legitimate study abroad programs use student fees to pay for faculty dinners in expensive restaurants while abroad (“It’s on the program, so order whatever you want!”) Often an added insult will be the paternalistic practice of having students pay in advance out of pocket for the study abroad program and then giving back to the students a meager “allowance” each week which these students are supposed to treat as if it were a gift from the program director who has already skimmed money off the top to wine and dine his friends.
April 7th, 2012 at 6:25AM
[…] goes on, with the former Evergreen State University professor skipping out on his big ethics fine from the state of Washington. He stole lots of money […]