“Queens University” a new Colorado mining school to increase your salary!

No sooner had I posted the piece below on e-learning opportunities for the mining industry, than my attention was drawn to a long article entitled Back to School in the October issue of Mining Magazine.  There Mr. Dave Porter writes about the Queens University of Brighton (QUB) in Aurora, Colorado.  Seems Mr. Porter had an interview with the Chancellor, Dr. Johan Potgieter who is quoted as saying:

The programme has been set up by reputable professionals and academics, who will conduct non-traditional, but still professional, degree programmes, opening up the route to all adult learners who have an educational need, either for a first, masters, of doctorate degree.

The article goes on in effusive tone & terms about how the mining industry can benefit by having their professionals learn from Dr. Potgieter’s professionals.  

I have been told that Mining Magazine is a reputable journal of impeccable credentials so I wondered if I could get a PhD from this university, or failing that get them to engage me as a professional to go to China where in 2006 they graduated many students. 

So I took a look at the QUB website.   They say that 25 percent of their students come from North America, 15 from Europe, 5 from South America, 45 from Asia and 10 from Africa.  Apparently Dr. Potgieter has three PhD degrees, one in Aviation Science and Technology, one in Business Administration, one in Engineering, and in addition he has D.Litt. in Education.  No information about where he received all these degrees. 

I wondered what it would be like to work on their campus.  Here is the adress they give for The Evaluations and Admission Office:  The Queen’s University of Brighton, 543 Jamaica Street, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America.

Too easy, I went to Google Earth and MapQuest.  Surprise, surprise.  There is no campus at this address: just a plain old house in an ordinary suburb of Denver. 

No chance of being on campus for these guys; Dr. Potgieter obviously runs the university from his house, maybe even the basement.  No problem with that.  Some good computer companies started out the same way.

There is another address on the site, that of the “contact.”  It is 12110 Grandview Road, MO 64030. On Google Earth this is a very large one-story structure with no signs out front and no cars in the parking lot. Mmm. 

The Mining Magazine article concludes by quoting Dr. Potgieter again:

Coupled with the ability to deliver a complete and comprehensive academic programme in the most remote locations, QUBs broad offering will allow mining installation to reach out to local populations and provide a launch-pad for economic growth and development. 

Damn that is good.  The only problem is that search as I might I can find no mining-related courses in their prospectus.   In fact I can find nothing about mining anywhere on the site.  Maybe Dr. Potgieter is planning to take the mining industry by storm. 

If you know Dr. Potgieter or he reads this, ask him to contact me and let me know where he got his many degrees, how he manages from Aurora, and what he plans to do for the mining industry.  Even better get Mr. Dave Porter to tell me how he investigated this outfit; after all he writes about it in such admiring tones and paints a picture of such opportunity for the to-this-point uninformed mining industry.  As an author for a prestigious magazine like Mining Magazine he owes us all a more in-depth revelation.