While reading a security article about a cross site scripting vulnerability on Twitter (which has since been fixed; no need to worry about that), I saw an ad for the “University of San Francisco Online” (URL is www.usanfranonline.com but I won’t give them an actual link). The ad offered an “Internet Marketing Certificate” after an 8 week course of study.
Wow, I thought — an actual university offering an Internet Marketing certificate? Well, not quite.
This link leads to the *REAL* University of San Francisco. It’s a Jesuit Catholic College (one of only 28 in the world) and is the oldest university in San Francisco (according to their website). And since they have a real, live .edu domain, they must be a real, legitimate university.
I also like their mission statement (from this link):
USF exists to provide a rigorous, world-class education to a new generation of leaders, who will work to create a more humane and just world.
You aren’t going to reach that goal with an 8 week Internet Marketing certificate!
But what about the people who seemingly have ripped off their good name? Let’s do a bit of digging, shall we?
usanfranonline.com is hosted on IP address 67.134.215.5, which is registered to Bisk Education of Tampa, Florida.
Obviously there must be a San Francisco, Florida — right?
Uh, no. In fact, I can’t find another San Francisco in the United States.
So to me, Bisk Education is taking advantage of the REAL USF’s reputation to make a quick buck.
I didn’t find out much about Bisk Education, and much of what I did find was on sites like Ripoff Report (where people write about their experience and the site owner uses it to extort hush money from the website owner, so take what you read there with a grain of salt). I won’t link to the site, but you can go to Google and type in “Bisk Education site:ripoffreport.com” and get the link. Not very flattering, to say the least.
So I think Bisk Education is trying to confuse and trick people with their “fake” University of San Francisco Online web site. And while the reviews are mixed, I’d personally stay away from anything that has Bisk Education written on it. Yes, you’d get an education, but probably not the kind you really want!
If you want a college education, go directly to the college or university of your choice and deal with them. No need to get yourself embroiled with an intermediary.
And legitimate institutions of higher learning will, for the most part, have a .edu domain, not a .com domain. If you visit a website that claims to be a educational institution but they don’t have a .edu domain, be careful.
And I can only hope that the 8 week Internet Marketing certificate comes in a roll so that you can get SOME use out of it…