This 1998 web catalog of Columbia Pacific University offers detailed information about the school’s educational philosophy, courses, credits for experience and learning contracts.

I’ve read the cpu website, and while intriguing, it doesn’t convince me.

Still, that CPU did credit people for doing basically their normal job, rather than for any actual academic work, seriously undermines their ‘degrees’, and that is what CPU was being ‘persecuted’ for.

Starting from the end, I find it quite arrogant that in your concluding sentence reality is assumed to be identical with your perception. You present falsities as established facts. For example, “If the case against CPU was baseless”, you write in “Fact 2″, “they should have won”. Nonsense. The real fact is that in the USA, and elsewhere, there are thousands of cases of miscarriage of justice. Please do your homework and read carefully the documents how CPU was closed on the basis of a fabricated “investigation”, www.cpuniv.us, published also on Wikipedia.

You also write that being educated on three continents “means nothing”. Are you telling me that experiencing first hand different life styles, being immersed in a variety of cultures, or learning fluently a number of languages, have no educational value? You must be kidding!

The difference between a thesis and a dissertation is that the latter is written for a higher university degree. Basically, a dissertation is a doctoral thesis. I began to write my dissertation in history at Concordia University in Montreal. Unfortunately, one day I dared to contradict my supervisor and supperted my argument with David Hackett Fischer’s book, Historians Fallacies. Now, minf you, traditional universities are medieval institutions and my supervisor was an academic dictator. It did not take much time and he gave me a proper demonstration of might is right: He kicked me out of the program. At CPU if you had a problem with a professor, the school would simply assign you another. A substantial gain of writing an interdisciplinary thesis at CPU turned to be that I was able to interact with many renowned scientists and scholars in conducting my research. Also I wrote the dissertation on a subject that really interested me.

While CPU was not regionally accredited, I would like to stress that it is absolutely incorrect to call CPU an “unaccredited” school. California State documents confirm that CPU’s approval was equivalent to regional accreditation in the USA. Thus CPU was a California State accredited university.

About what you call “Fact 5″: Thank you for giving me a lecture on how to spell ‘holistic’, but you forgot to mention that the Greek ‘holos’ means whole. Coined by Arthur Koestler, the concept of Holon is smultaneously a whole and a part. In the philosophy of history, holon is a historical configuration that makes other historical events inevitable.

Please, look up in a thesaurus that innuendos, aspersions, and undervaluations are synonymous with insults. One main difference is that insults are less sneaky and therefore more honest.

Paul Hartal

Fact 1: Approved != Accredited. My local college is ‘Approved’ and can teach subjects and hold exams. It is not ‘Accredited’ because it can’t actually metriculate the qualifications. I suspect that the State of California didn’t worry too much about the difference until quite late, and as retrospective legislation cannot apply, it couldn’t do anything about qualifications before the decision was applied.

Fact 2: If the case against CPU was baseless, they should have won. They lost. It’s all very well to cry ‘Foul’ and claim it’s part of some conspiracy, but such claims are, as yet, unproven and so are not themselves, facts.

Fact 3: This is not about attackingh distance learning. Far from it, I am very interested in the subject, as I am thinking of taking a post-graduate qualification by that very method. But I will probably choose a body like the Open University, or a similarly accredited university, because I want no doubt whatsoever about the rigorous nature of the adjudication. If you look at some of the ways in which people were awarded credits at CPU for basically doing what they already do and not for any academic study or research, then you should worry. I am sure your doctorate was completely legitimate, and down to your hard work and dedication, but it is devalued by the actions of others.

Fact 4: Your Eductaional CV – You get a million squids for point-scoring, but 0 for relevancy. You may have been educated on three continents, but frankly that means nothing. Overall it looks very impressive, and the only problem would be why you completed doctorate courses at Concordia and then wrote a dissertation for CPU – why not for Concordia? And why don’t you call it a ‘thesis’? I did not wish to call into question your individual qualifications, but why you may seek to defend the association that one of them has with CPU. It’s understandable that you would be defensive about having a CPU degree, and I don’t disagree that it is entirely possible that many were conferred in a proper manner. But it is also true that some were not, and entirely possible that many more weren’.t

Fact 5: It’s spelt ‘holistic’, by most people. That makes sense as the word derives from the Greek ‘holon’, rather than the english ‘whole’. Well that’s how Jan Smuts defined it.

If those facts insult you, Paul, all I can do is apolgise for the state of reality.

Would these be the creation scientists A.W. Jang and W.Weston?

see www.cpuniv.us/board_governors.htm

Please, do your homework on CPU and consult www.cpuniv.us, netnotes.altcpualumni.org, or www.altcpualumni.org, and put the record straight .

CPU was never a diploma mill but a pioneer of distance education. Its closure resulted from the dirty politics of higher education in California, not from genuine pedagogical considerations. CPU was supervised and accredited (“approved”) by the State of California. Degrees earned at CPU between 1978 and 1997 are legal and valid.

At present CPU is a federally recognized non-profit university registered in Delaware. The CPU Press just published a book by Dr. A. W. Jang and W. Weston, The La Brea Tar Pits.

Paul Hartal