OTTERBEIN TIED TO FIRM SUSPECTED AS DIPLOMA MILL
Oklahoma school voided credit for students enrolled by company

Published: Sunday, July 10, 2005
NEWS 01A
By Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

For four years, Otterbein College granted academic credit to students of a Florida company suspected of being a diploma mill.

Now the Miami company is under investigation by Florida officials and the FBI, and hundreds of Florida teachers' certificates might be ruled invalid. Otterbein officials say they're studying the situation and expect to complete their review in 30 days. President Brent DeVore was out of the country.

A similar arrangement in Oklahoma led to cancellation of hundreds of students' college credits and resignation of the school's president.

Eastern Oklahoma State College, in Wilburton, and Otterbein are accused of lending their credibility to Move On Toward Education and Training, a company that claimed it delivered college-level courses.

Otterbein was involved from 1999 through 2002, Eastern Oklahoma from 2002 through 2003. Other schools apparently partnered with the company, also known as MOTET, for a number of years before that.

An Oklahoma Board of Regents investigation found that the Eastern Oklahoma alliance worked like this:

• MOTET offered courses in Florida to certify Miami school teachers to handle additional subjects.
• Eastern Oklahoma gave students academic credit for the courses even though Oklahoma had no oversight over the MOTET classes or instructors.
• Eastern Oklahoma and MOTET each got a share of the tuition that students paid.

"That's what we call a diploma mill,'' said Gina Wekke, senior coordinator for academic affairs for the Oklahoma regents. "It wasn't a real difficult leap to put the evidence together.''

Otterbein's arrangement with MOTET was similar.

The Westerville college issued credits for MOTET-taught classes that included Physical Education in Elementary Schools, English in Secondary Schools, Methods of Teaching Science, and a class for teaching exceptional children, spokeswoman Jennifer Pearce said in May.

After The Dispatch asked questions about the MOTET agreement, Otterbein began an internal investigation. Since then, the school has refused to answer questions, including how many students were involved or how much money the school received.

At Eastern Oklahoma, 190 students received 1,500 credit hours through MOTET and paid the college at least $115,000, Wekke found.

The arrangement violated a number of Oklahoma regents' policies. The MOTET courses and fee structure had not been approved by the regents, and Eastern Oklahoma did not oversee the instructors.

Also, the number of hours students were in class fell short of what Oklahoma requires per credit hour.

In fact, Wekke found that MOTET students did not have regularly scheduled classes. William McCoggle, the Miami teacher in charge of MOTET, could not provide documentation that classes ever met.

As a result of Wekke's investigation, nearly 200 students lost the credits they had received through Eastern Oklahoma. The state forced Eastern Oklahoma to refund the students' money.

The school's president, William Campion, who had negotiated the MOTET agreement, resigned.

Degree mills booming

Colleges make agreements with companies such as MOTET because they're lucrative, said John Bear, co-author of the book Degree Mills: The Billion Dollar Industry That Has Sold More Than a Million Fake Degrees. "There's such big money in this,'' said Bear, of El Cerrito, Calif. The colleges get a cut of the student tuition but don't have to provide classrooms, instructors or equipment, he said.

Although many agreements between colleges and schools are legitimate ways for students to get academic credit, Bear said the MOTET arrangements are questionable.

Degrees or college credits should be based on two things: student work and proper oversight of courses, he said.

"They were not doing the necessary oversight. That really is unconscionable,'' he said.

Otterbein's investigation into its relationship with MOTET is complicated by the fact that Daniel Thompson, the administrator who worked with MOTET, died in March.

Thompson was associate dean of academics when he died; he had been Otterbein's registrar.

MOTET's McCoggle, reached at his home in Miami, said Thompson negotiated the Otterbein contract with his company.

"If Dan is dead, then the program is dead at Otterbein,'' McCoggle said shortly before breaking off the interview.

The credits that students received from Otterbein also might be dead. Rudolph F. Crew, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, ordered principals to reassign 14 teachers in April because they had been certified to teach their courses based on MOTET training.

In a memo to the school board, Crew said the reassignments are "pending the outcome of an ongoing criminal investigation'' and were being done "to ensure the safety of our students and the integrity of the classes we offer.''

At least 12 of those reassigned had been teaching driver's education. At least one, Peter Hertler, got credits to teach the course from Otterbein. Hertler, a physical-education teacher at Miami Killian Senior High School in the Miami-Dade system, said his principal asked him to get certified to teach driver's education about five years ago. Hertler was told he could take the nine-credit-hour course through the University of Florida in Gainesville, which was five hours away, or through MOTET.

He chose MOTET and began taking classes in the summer of either 1999 or 2000. That same summer he taught a driver's education class through the district.

McCoggle was Hertler's instructor for the MOTET course, which was held at a nearby Miami-Dade high school.

"It was over a number of weeks,'' Hertler said. "The schedule was, I remember, the Saturday mornings. They were pretty regular. And I went over at night a few times. And did some stuff on the computer at home.''

McCoggle also counted some of Hertler's teaching time that summer toward course hours, Hertler said.

Fred Thomas, who has taught public-school teachers how to teach driver's education for 40 years, said 120 hours of in-class time are required to be certified to teach the course. Thomas' classes at the University of Florida run eight hours a day, five days a week, for three weeks.

Thomas said one student taking the class this summer is a Miami-Dade teacher who found out his certification to teach driver's education is invalid. That teacher refused to talk to The Dispatch.

Students may suffer, too.

Rich Striker, a Florida driver's education teacher and former president of the Florida Association of Driver Traffic Safety Education, described the situation as "a big can of worms'' that has yet to pop open.

"Everyone's been hush-hush,'' said Striker. He said he's heard from other driver's-education teachers that the MOTET classes were a cheap, quick way to get certification with little or no class work.

Since high-school driver's-education teachers also give students their written and road tests for licensing, he questions whether the licenses of students taught and tested by MOTET-trained teachers are valid.

Frank Penela, spokesman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said he could not say if that was true or not.

But he said the department "would be concerned about anybody who's improperly teaching driving skills.''

Joseph Garcia, spokesman for Miami-Dade schools, said the scope of the situation is large.

"We've been led to believe recently by the state attorney's office here that there are many more teachers involved, and in courses other than driver's education,'' he said. The school district's inspector general also is investigating.

Garcia said the superintendent would take action against those at fault. "We're not going to tolerate being defrauded,'' he said.

McCoggle, meanwhile, is still employed as a physical-education teacher at Miami Palmetto Senior High, Garcia said. He's worked in the district for 22 years.

McCoggle would not comment further about MOTET. He said his attorney could answer questions, but he would not give his attorney's name. "I'm under investigation for another situation so I can't talk,'' McCoggle said.

As of late June, Otterbein had not been contacted by the FBI or Florida officials about MOTET. The Ohio Board of Regents was investigating whether it had been notified of Otterbein's arrangement with MOTET.

Rick Dorman, Otterbein's vice president for institutional advancement, didn't know how long the school's investigation would take.

"Pending our internal review, we're not ready to comment at this time,'' he said.

kgray@dispatch.com


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