Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation

The Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation (aka TJED) was a diploma mill run in the 1990s and based in South Dakota. An unrelated, charitable foundation with the same name operates a charter school in North Carolina.

Diploma mill

According to John Bear, author of "Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning", in 1998 the Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation (TJED) ran an advertisement in "USA Today" for distance education 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 [Note that fictional character Captain Marvel's alter ego, Roger Winkle, is a professor at a "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 accreditation from the "College for Professional Assessment", an agency Bear had yet to come acrosscite book |last=Bear |first=John |authorlink= |coauthors=Bear, Mariah P. |editor= |others= |title=Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning |origdate= |origyear= |origmonth= |url=http://www.google.com/books?id=k67XC_7y5xEC&pg=PA333&dq=%22Thomas+Jefferson+Education%22&ei=v2CGSIeFKo6UiAHnmNDcAw&sig=ACfU3U3aUq6lO97T8f6fFONKJSb7z9z1yA |format= |accessdate= |accessyear= |accessmonth= |edition= |series= |volume= |date= |year=2003 |month= |publisher=Ten Speed Press |location= |language= |isbn=1580084311 |oclc= |doi= |id= |pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |quote= ] (see List of recognized accreditation associations of higher learning).

TJED gave the address of a Sioux Falls, South Dakota 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 TJED, as well as for other schools later determined to be diploma mills, including "Monticello University" (aka "Thomas Jefferson University"), a school begun by Les Snell. Monticello 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. [cite web |url=http://www.koreanwar.org/kwva/kansas_v_snell_johnson_county_9cv10402.pdf |title=State of Kansas v. Snell et al |accessdate=2008-07-23 |accessmonthday= |accessdaymonth= |accessyear= |author= |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work= |publisher= |pages= |language= |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

Unrelated charter school

An unrelated North Carolina-based charitable foundation called the Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation serves as the parent of Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, a charter school in Mooresboro, North Carolina. [cite web |url=http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organization.asp?tn=413937 |title=Thomas Jefferson Education Foundation: Tax Exempt/NonProfit Organization Information |accessdate=2008-07-23 |accessmonthday= |accessdaymonth= |accessyear= |author= |last= |first= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format= |work= |publisher=www.taxexemptworld.com |pages= |language= |doi= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

See also

* "A Thomas Jefferson Education", a book by George Wythe College president Oliver DeMille, not known to be related to this foundation.

References