Blacklisted Universities in the US And Ways To Identify.
Many students dream of higher education in the United States. To achieve their dream of getting admissions to good universities they are already preparing themselves with GRE, IELTS TOFEL, etc, leaving their native country and traveling miles to get admitted. But what if they had not done proper research and applied in blacklisted universities.
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What do you mean by the blacklisted universities?
In simple terms, it means fake universities. It means these universities are being operated illegally and such schools have no accreditation, are accepting low profile students and admitting foreign students mainly just for earning cash.
So what are ways that you can understand that a university is genuine?
Basically, there are three main ways to understand that a university is real and legal. The three key points are:
- Accreditation is a must for all legitimate college
- The operational campus must be there in college
- Faculty details if not provided by the college should not be trusted
The thing that might cause a headache to the students if they want to study abroad is identifying fake universities. It is important that students do good research on universities that they want to study, in order to avoid being enrolled in fake universities. International students must make sure that the educational institution is a genuine one unless they want to face expulsion.
At the start of 2019, around 129 Indian students were detained in the USA and were deported back to India as they faced complications from student visa fraud. The reason: well, they enrolled themselves in blacklisted universities.
List of some of the blacklisted universities in America out of the many
| Name of university | Location |
| American Global International University | Florida |
| American Global University School of Medicine | Ohio |
| American International University of Management and Technology | Hawaii |
| American Management University | California |
| Cal Southern University | Texas |
| Bettis Christian University | Arkansas |
| Chadwick University | Alabama |
| Dorcas University | Hawaii |
| Frederick Taylor University | California |
| Honolulu university | Hawaii |
| Kentucky Christian University | Kentucky |
| Madison University | Mississippi |
| Pacific International University | Missouri |
| Suffield University | Connecticut |
| Washington International University | Pennsylvania |
| International University for Graduate Studies | St. Kitts and Nevis |
| Georgia Christian University | Georgia |
| LaSalle University | Louisiana |
| Cambridge State University | Mississippi |
| University of Beverly Hills | California |
| Tennessee Christian University | Tennessee |
| American Central University | Wyoming |
| American Century University | New Mexico |
So how do you protect yourself so that you don’t get into trouble applying in blacklisted universities?
The key ways to identify fake college or university:
1. Academic requirements
Most of the universities in America are competitive in nature. They have got acceptance rates and accept students based on their past academic records, GRE and TOFEL requirements. Some universities have also got admission tests. If a university accepts students with no or hardly any academic requirement than that institution is probably a blacklisted one. For example, if you get enrolled based on low scores or without appearing for GRE or TOFEL then you might be a risk. Be very careful of such universities as you may get a student visa if you are an international student but one fine day your university may get raided and you may be deported back to your country.
2. Accreditation
For a university to be genuine, accreditation is a must for every educational institute and its program. Accreditation of colleges and universities can be done by many organizations. At present in the USA, there are approximately 60 organizations that can do the accreditation.
To check whether the college or university has received its certification from a well-known agency or not you can verify the accreditation mentioned on the college or university website in linkage with the US Department of Education website.
In addition, to find out more you can check your school’s name on the accreditation institute’s website to see if it is listed there or not and more information about accreditation can be read in the US Department of Education.
3. Services provided to students
Any sort of financial assistance or scholarships aided by the government cannot be offered to students by an educational institution if the school is not accreditated. If a university selects you purely through work experience then you should avoid that school.
A university is not a certified one if attending classes by the student is not required. A university is illegitimate if it does not have proper facilities offered to students such as the library, career services or tutoring.
4. Address of the educational institute
Verifying campus address and the campus is necessary when you search for a new college or university. Check also for the faculties, classes and the institution’s facilities. Often scammers deceive people by putting attractive pictures of the campus on the website. So check if the property belongs really to the school.
One way to cross-check the address given on the website is to search it in Google maps.
One of the most heard about the scam that took place in the United States was regarding a fake university named the University of Farmington. They had no official address in Google maps apart from just P.O. Box number, no teachers, no classes and had fake accreditation. Their main aim was to enroll foreign students mainly Indians. In the 4 years of operation, the school finally got closed in 2019.
5. Faculty
The genuinely of a university can also be determined by its teaching staff. Real ones do mention details about the faculty and incase the university that is interested in applying does not any details about its faculty then it’s time to be careful about that university.
You may want to cross-check in LinkedIn regarding the faculty’s name for a relatively new university for surety.
6. Well defined curriculum
A university that offers course completion in less than the average time it would have taken to complete the course is most likely a fake one. For instance, if a university offers a graduation degree of one year than it is a hoax.
A well-defined curriculum with what the students are expected to learn and gain should be outlined by the universities.
7. Alumni’s feedback
Maximum universities in the United States have alumni’s feedback regarding their experiences in terms of education, faculties, campus life, facilities, peers etc. These responses can be found on the school’s website. If you don’t find any such information on the institution’s website then consider it to be fake.
Conclusion
To sum up you should be very careful and find out the details very thoroughly before applying to US universities for higher education. Avoid universities that you find suspicious if any one of the reasons matches. You may get the student visa but if your university gets raided by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then you will be deported back to your country. Not just this, your time, money and energy gets wasted by being unaware and applying in the blacklisted universities.
