Criticism and Controversy
Quackwatch lists Bircham as a questionable non-accredited school. In 2003, South Florida's CityLink magazine reported that Oregon education officials said that Bircham was "totally bogus". The article quoted former FBI agent Allen Ezell, who investigated diploma mills as part of Operation Dipscam, as describing some of Bircham's promotional claims as "pure hokum".
In July 2007 a Mexican newspaper reported that the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) of Mexico had issued a warning against Bircham International and ten other foreign institutions. The warning identified the schools as having committed academic fraud.
In April 2008 the Nairobi Business Daily reported that Bircham International University was operating in Kenya without authorization, "wooing unsuspecting students to its distance learning classes". An official of Kenya's Commission for Higher Education was quoted as warning that BIU degree certificates would not be recognised. In March 2010 the same newspaper published a correction, stating that the April 2008 story had been provided by a person "who at the time of publication had a partnership dispute with Bircham over rights to represent the university in Kenya". The correction stated that BIU "is a Spanish institution of distance learning and is in good standing with Spanish authorities that offers alternatives to formal adult higher education specifically aimed at adult working professionals" and that its programmes "can be legalized and validated by the Embassy of Kenya in the USA or Spain despite the institution not being registered by the Commission for Higher Education in Kenya".
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