For Diploma Mill PhD
Senator Ron Sharp was called out on September 6th 2019 by OCPA for having a fraudulent PhD from a diploma mill. Amazingly enough (Sarcasm warning) this didn't get picked up by the mainstream press in Oklahoma and came to our attention after someone tweeted about the scandal.
Going back through the Oklahoma Senate bio page for Ron Sharp it appears that up till January 2018 Sharp was making the claim of holding a doctorate in education on his official senate page. In late 2017 Sharp was claiming his PhD came from the University of Kensington/University of California, sometimes with an additional blurb stating it was some sort of vocational or post secondary system. In fact, the University of California has only nine campuses and the University of Kensington was a diploma mill that operated out of a lawyer's back room office till 1996 when the L.A. Times uncovered the scam. At one point Sharp had dropped the Kensington part and was just stating the University of California. His current bio appears to be the same that appeared in January of 2018, very sparse, no mention of degrees. Sharp must have been spooked enough to remove the references to his education.
Kensington University was a well known diploma mill by the time Sharp received his “PhD”.
Stories about the place say that Kim il Sung, the North Korean Dictator was especially proud of his Kensington University diploma, it in fact is displayed in Sung's mausoleum to this very day. The “university” was founded in 1976 by attorney Alfred Calabro in Glendale California as a correspondence school, yep, they mailed assignments and the like back and forth, no online available at that time. The university took up a back office in Calabro's law office and they handed out bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees until the State of California shut them down by requiring actual accreditation. In 1989 the California Council for Private Post-secondary and Vocational Education was formed specifically to reign in these diploma mills that were churning out fake PhD, in fact Sharp received his PhD a month after the Council was formed.
By 1994 the Council got around to doing its first review of Kensington and found deficiencies. A long legal battle resulted in the Council ordering the “university” to be shut down. The Council found that no real work was done and academic credit was given for “life experiences”, while articles and books were read by the students and reports were turned in via U.S. Mail for about three months before the PhD was awarded. By 1996 the cost for a fake PhD was around $4500. The operation was moved to Hawaii in 1996 but was shut down by court order in 2003.
Kensington awarded around 7000 fake diplomas in the twenty years it escaped scrutiny. A woman serving as Lt. Governor for Florida was busted using an MBS degree from Kensington. One member of the National Commission on Presidential Scholars resigned after being caught with a fake Kensington degree. Both parties claimed to believe that the degrees were legitimate as does Sharp according to his letter to OCPA. Texas however has a different view on Kensington, it is considered misdemeanor fraud to use a degree from Kensington in order to obtain employment, a license to practice, or to increase compensation, or to gain a position in government even if there is no compensation involved. Flat out fraud in Texas punishable by six months in jail and a $2000 fine.
Sharp pushed back against the OCPA article by providing letters received from Oklahoma and California officials while bleating that Kensington was allowed to give out doctorates “at the time” he received his PhD.
In short, Sharp claims there was a loophole and he used it so go suck eggs.
Sharp's other arguments attempt to confuse Epic Charter Schools, stating that with Epic it is kids underage and that the state is paying for the cost while he was an adult and paying for the diploma mill PhD with his own money. Meanwhile the Council found that “Among the council’s findings, the group concluded that Kensington awarded degrees for substandard work and without completion of required courses, and that faculty members were sometimes not qualified to teach the courses they led.”
Sharp faced questions about his diploma mill PhD as did his opponent that basically attended bible school classes to earn his degree. Sharp's main defense continues to be that the diploma mill was recognized by the state “at that time”
Unlike Sharp's fraudulent PhD, the students at Epic are tested and scored after turning in their work on schedule. Senator Ron Sharp seems to be quite the fraud to question an accredited online and blended school system by comparing it to a diploma mill ran out of a back office before being shut down by state regulators. Sharp knew that he didn't attend a college and earn a PhD yet he used it to increase his salary and retirement as well as claim superiority over political opponents and credibility.
Senator Ron Sharp lied about what the State Department of Education told him about Epic and what the State Virtual Charter School commission told him about Epic. How fitting that we find out that Sharp himself has misrepresented himself by faking academic credentials.
