History and Locations
The school was founded in the mid-1990s and, as of 1998, was incorporated in Hawaii and the British Virgin Islands, although it was based in Pennsylvania and owned by Yil Karademir, of Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, who ran the university with his wife. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hawaii location was meant for forwarding mail and telephone calls to the school's location on the mainland. As of 1998 a building pictured on WIU's website was "where the head of Washington University receives mail and messages", but a two-story house on a residential street in Bryn Mawr was the school's registrar's office where a staff of four took calls from students. Karademir explained to the Inquirer that we "We are entrepreneurs, we are not educators."
Before 1998, the institution now called "Washington International University" used the name "Washington University," but Karademir added "International" to the name in June 1998 as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by Washington University in St. Louis. Lawyers from the latter institution had accused Washington International of being "nothing more than a diploma mill", but Mr. Karademir of Washington International University disputed this characterization.
The institution's incorporation in Hawaii was dissolved March 1, 2000. Earlier, the state of Hawaii had brought legal action against the school, alleging that it had deceived consumers by failing to disclose its lack of accreditation. The parties settled the case in 1999; one of the requirements of the settlement was that Washington International dissolve its Hawaii corporation and not promote itself as being incorporated in or registered by the state of Hawaii.
According to Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning, Washington International started listing a South Dakota mailing address in mid-2000. In 2002 the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota reported that the school had a "small, broom closet-sized office" in that city but no employees. The school used a local secretarial service to answer the telephone and forward mail, and a local lawyer as an agent. For some period thereafter, completed applications to the institution were requested to be forwarded the Student Communication Center in Pennsylvania. Similarly, as of February 2008, the university asks prospective students to forward completed application forms to the Washington Educational Organization in Wilmington, Delaware, and the form states that it is incorporated in British Virgin Islands.
Read more about this topic: Washington International University
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