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| Press Release
October 23, 2007 |
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Response to Channel 11 Newscast of October 22, 2007
Richmond, October 23, 2007: Though
Last night KHOU-TV made several false and misleading
statements concerning the doctoral degree I received
from California Coast University in 2004. The degree was
described as “fake”. “phony”, “illegal” and the product
of a degree mill. The degree is neither fake nor phony,
nor is California Coast a degree mill. However, in light
of a state law which allows the Higher Education
Coordinating Board to declare California Coast degrees
illegal for certain specified purposes I have removed
all reference to my degree from that school from my
educational information.
While the comparable quality of any school’s programs
may be subject to reasonable debate, I believe it is
false and patently unfair to describe California Coast
University as a degree mill. They are accredited for
Bachelor and Masters Degrees by the Distance Education
Training Council (DETC), recognized by the Council for
Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and by the US
Department of Education. Now that the DETC is authorized
by the federal government to accredit professional
doctoral programs, I would anticipate that the school
will seek accreditation for those degree programs in the
near future.
As for my own formal education credentials I will
continue to list my Master of Business Administration
Degree from Pepperdine University (1981), my completion
of the Advanced Management Program of the University of
Texas Graduate School of Business (1979) and my
Associate in Arts Degree from South Texas Junior College
(1968).
As I told the KHOU reporter, I did not seek the doctoral
degree to impress anyone but me. I sought an academic
challenge in 1999 and I completed the work and received
the degree in 2004. I am proud of the effort I made
through California Coast and I regret the embarrassing
misinformation and slanderous comments directed at that
school and its students and graduates as a result of my
academic effort.
Robert Hebert
Fort Bend County Judge”
[this
document in PDF]
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