Sequoia University was an unaccredited higher education institution in Los Angeles, California, which acquired a reputation as a prolific "degree mill" selling degree certificates. Although it was shut down in 1984 by a court order, it is most notable today as the institution from which L. Ron Hubbard obtained an honorary "Doctorate of Philosophy" in the 1950s.
In 2009, Britain released documents from a California agency stating that Sequoia was never approved nor recognized as a school. British State papers then revealed that in fact Sequoia University was personally owned by Hubbard and that Hubbard had therefore awarded himself his "Ph.D"
Read more about Sequoia University: Ownership and Operations
Famous quotes containing the word university:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)