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Sunday, August 27, 2006

What's More Embarrassing --
Graduating from a Diploma Mill,
Or Having the Diploma Mill
Fail to Find
Your Records?



'More doubts have emerged over Marcus Einfeld's academic record, with the San Diego-based Pacific Western University unable to find any record of the former Federal Court judge as a graduate or student.

...More questions now exist over Mr Einfeld's relationship with Pacific Western University. His extensive Who's Who entry says he obtained a PhD from there in 1993.

The doctorate has been pilloried because of Pacific Western's reputation as a "diploma mill" where, for the right price, academic credits are awarded for "life experience" without any study being done.

But the absence of any records linking Mr Einfeld to the university raises the possibility that his Who's Who entry contains false information.

"We've had an extensive search but we can't find any record of Mr Einfeld as either a graduate or a student," Pacific Western president Ronald Detrick said. "We inherited the files and I can't vouch for them being complete. But when we get requests, we generally find the records."

Mr Einfeld also claims to hold a doctorate of laws from Century University in New Mexico. A spokeswoman for the online university would say only that Mr Einfeld had been registered as a student.

In 2004, Pacific Western University was named in Congress as one the worst "diploma mills" in the US.'




Could our Mr. Einfeld have lied about graduating from a diploma mill? I'm an old hand at diploma mills, and this is a new one on me. If you're going to lie about having graduated from a university, why lie about graduating from a bogus one? Why not say you graduated from Oxford? The mystery deepens.