A court in Hawaii last month ruled that the American University of Hawaii, which operates a branch in Phnom Penh, cannot offer degrees or accept tuition, leaving the legitimacy of the degrees of hundreds of Cambodian students in question, school and legal officials said.
The civil court ruled on April 26 that AUH cannot offer legal degrees because it is not accredited by the state of Hawaii and does not comply with a state law that requires the university to operate a Hawaiian campus with 25 students, said Jeffrey Brunton, a lawyer who argued the case for Hawaii’s consumer protection office.
The ruling opens the way for Cambodian students to make complaints and ask for compensation from the university, Brunton wrote Thursday in an e-mail.
“AUH’s foreign affiliates were claiming that the lawsuit only applied to the Hawaii office, not their operations,” Brunton wrote. “The court held otherwise.”
Ray Christl, dean of the academic affairs at the university’s Cambodian office, defended his local AUH program in an interview this week, saying “Many universities in Cambodia are not licensed here.”
He said: “When you’re an international institution, you don’t have to follow the local requirements.”
Christl said, however, that AUH would no longer be allowed to offer degrees here because of to the Hawaiian court’s decision.
Established in Cambodia as a franchise two years ago, AUH does not have a local license and is contracted to offer programs by a licensed local school, called the Singapore International Teaching Consultancy International Institute, Christl said.
Some 350 students are enrolled in AUH Cambodia’s bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs, Christl said.
Since the court ruling, officials at AUH’s Cambodian office said they are hoping to continue operating at the SITC school, but under a different franchise, stripping themselves of the AUH name.
“The franchise is rotten,” Christl said Monday. But, he said, if the office can successfully switch franchises, “The degrees that we eventually give these kids are going to be a legally recognized degrees.”
Richard Minatoya, a lawyer representing AUH’s main office, declined to respond to questions e-mailed to him this week.
“I have no comment at this time,” he wrote.
For those students who have already taken AUH programs or are currently enrolled, the Hawaiian court ruling means they can file complaints with Hawaii’s consumer protection office to ask for a refund of their tuition, Brunton said.
And George Cooper, a legal expert in Cambodia, said Cambodian courts could take action with a criminal fraud charge, which students could join to try to recoup costs.
Hawaiian law requires AUH to disclose its unaccredited status in advertisements, Brunton wrote.
“The ads must disclose that AUH is unaccredited, and they cannot claim or imply that AUH is licensed, approved or regulated by the state,” Brunton wrote. Failure to do so violates Hawaiian law, he said earlier.
Recent advertisements for AUH Cambodia have not stated the university is unaccredited.
But AUH printed recognition documents—“Certificates of Recognition…from the Senate & the House of Representatives of the State of Hawaii”—as a part of an advertisement printed Nov 14 in The Cambodia Daily.
Cooper said those documents resembled “congratulatory notices,” frequently awarded to individuals or institutions in the US.
“They have no legal force at all,” he said. “It could not have been a flimsier basis for some sort of ‘recognition.’”
A suit in Cambodia is unlikely, Cooper said, but he added that they could win “especially if some of these students have some fathers who have high positions.”
AUH master’s student Py Borapyn, 26, laughed when asked Thursday if he would try to recoup the $2,100 he has paid in tuition. “How can I do it?” he asked.
Students have already been feeling the fallout since questions were raised last year about the school’s credentials, Christl said. Some have had trouble transferring their AUH classes to other local universities.
The ruling could affect employers’ views of an AUH education, Ban Vibol, 22, an AUH student studying for his bachelor’s degree, said Sunday. But he stood by his school.
“I still have no doubt about the university,” he said. “They always show legal papers to me.”
The university’s unlicensed status is leaving some in the government wondering how AUH was able to operate at all.
“The strange thing to me is why the Ministry of Education allows them to operate like this,” said Chet Chealy, deputy secretary-general of the Accreditation Committee of Cambodia, which is developing criteria to assess the quality of local degrees.
Ministry of Education Secretary of State Pok Than said he was unsure how AUH operates or how the ministry will respond the court ruling. He said Monday he will form a committee “to take care of that.”
Typically the Ministry of Education licenses schools that show documentation of international recognition, but officials don’t independently verify the status, he said Monday.
“A lot of the time we don’t have resources to look at that,” he said.
Accreditation can be verified through a country’s embassy, Chet Chealy said.
But US Embassy spokeswoman Heide Bronke said the embassy is not a “regulating body” with power to assess schools claiming US recognition. If AUH officials are unable to find a new accredited franchise to accept its students’ classes by graduation in July, it will have to offer the students a degree through the SITC school, Christl said.
AUH has something else local programs don’t, Christl said, the “American” name.
“The Khmers, they were looking for a bright spot on the world,” he said.
Like other students, Py Borapyn was bewildered by the judgment against a university, he said, attracted him with its claims of international recognition.
“So the certificate of AUH is useless,” he said. “So my time has been spent for nothing. My money is useless.”
