Hyderabad: The term ‘US education’ usually conjures up images of extremely sophisticated infrastructure, quality education and a window to a world of opportunities. But the scenario at some of the educational institutions there are often hopelessly bad. In fact, it’s so bad that they are known as Visa Mills, education being second priority.
Some of these US colleges are smaller than the usual engineering colleges in India, and lack instructional education. U. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, CEO of Gurukul Overseas, a US-based education consultancy, has asked Indian students to first check an institution’s credentials before the paperwork.
“In 2015, we saw how some Indians were denied entry even after they had taken admission in some of these institutions. Some US colleges don’t even have proper infrastructure or faculty,” Reddy added.
The US Education Department has identified significant areas of concern including insufficient institutional monitoring and lax enforcement of the agency’s accrediting standards. All these indicate that some of the ACICS-accredited institutions were just visa mills for foreigners.
David North, from the Center for Immigration Studies described the revoking of authority of the ASICS as a ‘Federal Agency crackdown on Crappy Colleges’. “Many ACICS-accredited institutions had been gobbling up federal grants to low-income students, who often received third- rate education. A smaller number of the entities played the visa mill role,” read his post on www.cis.org.
Serial culprits
The universities and colleges which lost their accreditation include Stratford University, Silicon Valley University and North-western Polytechnic University, which were in the news in 2015 and 2016 after Indian students were deported
