The Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation was a

diploma mill A diploma mill or degree mill is a business that sells illegitimate diplomas or academic degrees, respectively. The term ''diploma mill'' is also used pejoratively to describe any educational institution with low standards for admission and gradua ...

run in the 1990s and based in

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

Diploma mill

According to John Bear, author of ''Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning'', in 1998 the Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation ran an advertisement in ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'' for

distance education Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance; today, it usually involves online ...

courses. Bear responded to the ad and the foundation sent a 20-page course catalog covering the following schools: *Thomas Jefferson University of Virginia *University of Williamsburg *Dartmoor University *Presidential American University *Cambridge University in America According to Bear, the catalog made no distinction among these schools other than listing their different names. The catalog offered degrees at all levels by "professional assessment of career achievements" and claimed to have accreditation from the "College for Professional Assessment", an agency Bear had yet to come across (see

List of recognized accreditation associations of higher learning This is a list of recognized higher education related accreditation organizations. The list includes agencies and organizations that play a role in higher education accreditation and are recognized by applicable governmental authorities. Internat ...

). The Foundation gave the address of a

Sioux Falls, South Dakota Sioux Falls ( ) is the List of cities in South Dakota, most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the List of United States cities by population, 117th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha Coun ...

law office as the location of its campus, something over which a lawyer at that office expressed "outrage". According to Bear, this lawyer had filed the incorporation documents for Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation, as well as for other schools later determined to be diploma mills, including

Monticello University Monticello University was an unaccredited diploma mill, incorporated in Hawaii and South Dakota but based in Kansas, whose operator Leslie Edwin Snell (aka Dax Snell) was found guilty in 2000 of issuing invalid degrees, and which Kansas has accused ...

(aka "Thomas Jefferson University"), a school begun by Les Snell. Monticello University was "an unauthorized foreign non-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of South Dakota" that, along with several other of Snell's schools, was shut down by the government in 1999.

References

{{Authority control Unaccredited institutions of higher learning in the United States Distance education institutions based in the United States Fraud in the United States