Phony Dr.Superintendent H. James Wasser, robs taxpayers

N.J. educators free to use diploma mills
Taxpayers foot the bill for tuition
By ALAN GUENTHER • STAFF WRITER • August 17, 2008


Psst . . . Wanna buy a degree from a diploma mill and stick taxpayers with the bill?

If you're a public school educator, New Jersey won't stop you.

State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said she is powerless to prevent local school boards from handing out tax money to administrators who boost their pay by obtaining degrees with little or no academic value.

When it issued a nine-page report last week, the department entered a growing national controversy about the value of online degrees. But instead of announcing tough new standards, the department made only a few suggestions.

"I feel sorry for New Jersey. Here they had an opportunity to step up to the plate, and they opted not to," said former FBI agent Allen Ezell, who investigated diploma mill fraud for 11 years, then wrote three books on the subject. "I would have thought New Jersey would have had a little more brass than that."

Freehold Regional High School District became the epicenter of the diploma mill controversy in New Jersey when the superintendent and two top administrators obtained degrees from an online school that has been deemed an "apparent diploma mill" by Alabama officials.

After completing an investigation into the administrators' degrees, the education department's report stated there was "no sustainable evidence" that the administrators "possessed the prerequisite intent to deceive when they obtained the degrees" from Breyer State University, which has been chased out of two states and an African country.

The education department report suggested — but did not require — that high school administrators, in the future, earn college degrees from reputable, accredited schools.

None of the three administrators investigated — Superintendent H. James Wasser, Assistant Superintendent Donna Evangelista and recently retired Assistant Superintendent Frank Tanzini — was required to pay back the $10,750 they received in taxpayer money to obtain degrees from Breyer State.

The board gave raises — $2,500 each per year — for their advanced degrees.

Breyer has been booted out of Idaho, Alabama and the African nation of Liberia.

"Breyer State is a diploma mill. There's no question about it," said Alan Contreras of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization. "It's obviously a waste of taxpayers' money."

But Education Commissioner Davy said local school boards must write contracts and pay benefits that make sense for taxpayers.

"It is wrong for people to use those diploma mill degrees to increase their salaries," she said. "But I don't have the authority to stop them."

More of the same

On the same day New Jersey issued its report, the Asbury Park Press discovered three more educators who earned what experts say are bogus degrees.

Freehold Regional employees Cheryl Lanza, an English teacher, and Lorraine Taddei-Graef, a learning disabilities teacher consultant, both obtained degrees from Breyer State. Neither could be reached for comment.

Freehold taxpayers reimbursed Lanza $2,050 for her "doctorate of philosophy in education." Taddei-Graef was not reimbursed, according to school district records.

Meanwhile, in the Asbury Park school district, Acting School Superintendent James T. Parham said he paid about $3,000 to receive a "Master of Arts" with a major in special education from Almeda University in Idaho.

Parham said his degree was based on his life experience, and that it took him about a month to put his resume together to get the diploma.

Asked if he received his Almeda degree in return for merely submitting his resume, Parham said, "I also had to do a paper."

How long was the paper?

"The paper must have been about two, maybe three pages," he said.

Parham said the Asbury Park school district did not reimburse him for the master's degree, which he received on Aug. 6, 2006.

Asked why he would pay for the degree, Parham said he thought it "might look good" on his resume, and that "it might add something."

Seven months after receiving the degree, Parham was appointed by the school board at a salary of $110,620 to take the job held by suspended Superintendent Antonio Lewis, who is under criminal investigation by the state Attorney General's Office.

Parham, who was a vice principal in the district, said his Almeda degree did not help him become acting superintendent.

A degree in surgery

Ezell, the former FBI agent, said Almeda's degrees are "a blatant fraud."

With an estimated 4 million students expected to take at least one online college course this fall, national experts like Ezell, University of Illinois professor George Gollin and Contreras say that taxpayers — and students — need to be vigilant against schools offering big credentials for only a little work.

Gollin, a national expert on bogus online degrees, once submitted his resume to a diploma mill and received a master's degree in public administration. Later, he told the school he changed his mind and said he wanted a doctorate degree in thoracic surgery. Once he sent in the money, the school agreed.

Gollin, a physics professor, has never operated on anyone.

He found it surprising that a school superintendent, who is supposed to set the highest academic standards, would purchase a questionable degree, Gollin said.

"We're trying to deal with truth in analysis when we provide education," he said. "To have a superintendent of schools going around, buying false credentials in order to fool people into thinking he has expertise . . . that's just a sign of poor integrity that is astonishing to me."

In his doctoral dissertation, Wasser stated he was mentored by Dominick L. Flarey, the former president of Breyer State.

After investigating the school, Alabama canceled its license and forced the school to leave the state.

So did Idaho. The school currently operates out of a post office box in Los Angeles.

"That's their opinion"

In an e-mail, Flarey said he was no longer president and would not discuss the institution or the degrees awarded to Freehold administrators.

"I have nothing at all to do with the administration of the school. I only teach some courses," he said. Breyer State last week did not list a president on its Web site.

Responding to criticism of Breyer by Ezell, Gollin and Contreras, Wasser said: "That's their opinion."

Wasser staunchly defended the work he did for his degree.

"I did it. I would do it again," said Wasser. "The only thing I would probably do differently, is now that I am aware of this word "accreditation,' I would probably thoroughly research that."

Wasser said he worked for more than a year on his doctoral dissertation and is proud of the final product.

"I am not here to defend Breyer State. If you want to do that, that's your business, or the business of the FBI, the CIA, whoever wants to do it. . . . I can only defend my education and my dissertation."

He said he could have charged taxpayers more.

"In the future, in a few years, what are people going to say about the degrees people earn online? Because online education is the wave of the future now. It's not attending class and sitting in a classroom, which I could have done.

"I could have left my job at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. . . . I could have done that. I chose not to. I could have cost the taxpayers a tremendous amount of money," Wasser said.

In Asbury Park, Parham accessed Almeda University's Web site while he was being interviewed in his office and pointed to an accrediting agency Almeda says has sanctioned its online education program.

But Gollin, who has been calling attention to diploma mills for years, said the bogus schools also often create phony accreditation agencies that try to give a veneer of acceptability to the academically indefensible.

Ezell said only degrees accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation have value and are officially recognized by the federal government. The list of accreditation agencies is available at www.CHEA.org.

"A 10-year-old knows how to use Google," Ezell said. "It's nothing complex. It's all right there."