Neumont U. Fires Edward ‘Nasty Ned’ Levine
Update 8/30/2015: Acquisition reports remain unconfirmed. We are now being told by some sources that Neumont was in fact acquired by Caltius Capital Management out of Los Angeles, California, despite Neumont not being mentioned on their Portfolio page. Emails sent by CollegeTimes to Caltius have not been returned.
Update 9/13/2015: Caltius Capital has refused to reply to CollegeTimes, and still no public confirmation of who now owns Neumont. In the meanwhile, every single one of their Utah corporations has expired, besides Neumont University LLC, which was last renewed on August 5, 2015 (although managing members are not publicly listed).
Update 4/16/2016: Edward ‘Ned’ Levine appears to be desperately trying to rebuild his image, recently registering the domain edward-ned-levine.com in an apparent attempt to outrank this article for Google searches of his reputation. Despite reports from Neumont University’s own press release that he was “retiring” in order to focus on “land conservation” efforts, he has now launched a new “growth advisory” company called Firebrand Advisors (firebrandadvisors.com), according to his public LinkedIn profile. Remember, this was the guy who called me a “would-be SEO expert” while attempting to slander my name, and whose book on internet marketing was a complete failure (“Deep Branding on the Internet: Applying Heat and Pressure Online to Ensure a Lasting Brand”). His book, co-written with fellow-Jew Marc Braunstein, has only 11 reviews on Amazon.com, most of which seem to have come from Levine’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island during the year 2000…
Update 4/26/2016: ‘Nasty Ned’ Levine is now employing the same tactics that he did previously on behalf of Neumont University; he successfully pressured Scribd to “noindex” the public PDF we published that reveals his getting fired by Neumont (a press release document that Neumont released to the public). He’s also possibly leaving comments on this article itself under an alias, as he did on our Neumont University profile, attacking me personally, a bully tactic he also used against various Neumont students such as Jason Aquino and faculty such as Jeme Deviny, who was harassed for being disabled. Apparently the guy hasn’t learned much…
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There truly is sweet justice in the world every once in a while (or, kind of…).
Yesterday, for-profit Neumont University announced in a quiet Facebook post that a new CEO would be taking over their flagship campus in Salt Lake City, Utah, replacing Edward “Ned” Levine after he spent more than 8 years at the helm:
Meet Shaun McAlmont. He is Neumont University’s new president. Shaun joins us after serving as CEO of Lincoln Education Services, a multi-campus educational institution headquartered in New Jersey offering a range of academic and certificate programs. He’s carefully made the decision to join a university like Neumont, where he can work directly with students, staff, and faculty, like he did early in his career as a director of student affairs at Stanford University. He’s thrilled to return to Utah where he lived during his college years as an NCAA athlete at Brigham Young University.
According to Neumont insiders, the change is due to the school’s (sudden) new owner, (Lincoln Education Services?), dumping Levine as part of its recent takeover. The news comes just weeks after Neumont’s “disparagement” lawsuit against CollegeTimes was officially thrown out after nearly 2 years of proceedings.
A source tells us, “Rumor from the ‘Nasty Ned’ haters is that new investors bought Neumont and told Ned to hit the road. Ned and his significant other, Isabella Porter, are both out of jobs. Ned is old enough to retire, but not Isabella.”
Although an AP wire story last week briefly mentioned the Levine transition, there has been no public confirmation of new investors or ownership of the Neumont campus, which has been controlled by Great Hill Partners for most of its (short) existence.
However, at the time of writing, Great Hill appears to have removed Neumont from their investment portfolio page, and Matt Vettel, a managing partner at Great Hill, appears to have updated his public LinkedIn profile to remove his active position on Neumont’s board of directors, all lending credibility to buyout rumors.
Years Of Hostility, Harassment, Threats
Levine, who previously worked at for-profit Johnson and Wales University after various business ventures in Rhode Island, had been both president and CEO of Neumont University since 2007. During his tenure, students accused him via CollegeTimes of fraud, harassment, lawsuit threats, and making “drunk” phone calls to their families.
A 2014 CollegeTimes interview with Jeme Deviny, the former Financial Director at Neumont, was even more telling. Deviny accused Levine of near-daily workplace harassment of various staff members, especially those with “disabilities” or whom Levine felt were too “old” or “overweight” to keep Neumont’s image “youthful and vibrant.” Deviny also revealed that Levine had chosen to fire one employee, Kristi Robertson, just weeks after her husband died of cancer, causing her to become deeply depressed. Some days later, Robertson fell into a diabetic coma, and died shortly thereafter.
Among other events, Levine got Neumont banned from Wikipedia for years of spamming, worked with the Salt Lake Tribune to spread disinformation, stalked and spied on CollegeTimes along with top ranking members of the LDS (Mormon) Church, hired faculty who lacked a college degree, and even successfully convinced another for-profit college to threaten us as well. CollegeTimes has tracked the misdeeds of Neumont for several years, even connecting Harry Reid and Mormonism to the lawsuit Neumont filed against our web host in federal court (which was thrown out a few months ago). Levine even posted a pseudo-press release to Neumont’s website slandering me personally so that it would show up in Google results, which is still live over 2 years later.
Ironically, it appears Levine has gotten a taste of his own medicine, now being shamelessly dumped by Neumont’s new owners (although he doesn’t seem ready to remove the CEO position from his LinkedIn profile yet).
Another Buyout, Another LDS Connection
Shaun E. McAlmont, the former CEO of Lincoln Education Services, has been named (apparently by himself?) as Neumont’s new campus president. Notably, he does not seem to retain a “CEO” title, which has apparently been discontinued by the school’s new investors. A Google search of McAlmont finds his name mentioned across several spam blogs advertising for-profit diploma mill programs, which interestingly appear to have been deleted as recently as a few days ago.
In rather poor English, McAlmont described himself on his homepage:
Shaun attended Brigham Young University on a full athletic scholarship. He is one of a small population of minority students to successfully graduate from the predominantly Mormon University. … He has previously served on the Board of Directors for the California Association of Private Post-Secondary Schools and the Briarwood College Board of Trustees. Advocating for Private Sector Vocational and Technical Education.
…which again, has recently been deleted in place of a more formal description of himself along with photos of McAlmont alongside former U.S presidents.
It all begs the question of how the LDS Church (Brigham Young University) once again finds itself at the center of a major Neumont transition despite years of Neumont denying any connection to Mormonism or any LDS organizations. (Levine himself is reportedly Jewish, but seemed to regularly find conspicuously positive coverage from the likes of Deseret News, a major LDS-owned newspaper based in Salt Lake City, among other noted LDS connections. Perhaps tell-tale that the News nor even Salt Lake Tribune have offered any coverage whatsoever of the latest Neumont developments.)
Anyway, Ned — enjoy your “long-term interest in land conservation”… lmao.
University Of Georgia (Tbilisi)
TeachingCenter: ‘Key & Peele’ Video Spoof Of ESPN’s SportsCenter Show Is Hilarious, Thought-Provoking
Sometimes, satire is the only good way to make a point.
In this example – when whacking at balls and sticks earns you millions of dollars a year, while teaching and inspiring (in theory, anyway) young minds barely breaks $40,000 average salary across the United States – to parody the most watched sports show in America is a pretty effective way to show just how ridiculous, perhaps, our country’s obsession with athletics vs. mental substance has become.
The below video, which was produced by Comedy Central’s Key & Peele, spares no detail in fully replicating the flashy graphics of ESPN’s SportsCenter show in an effort to poke fun at the decidedly serious nature of sports news in America.
“For the first pick, Central Rapids High takes… calculus teacher Mike Yoast from Tulsa Teachers College,” one segment of the video reports, emulating a professional sports draft round. “And just like that, you’re a millionaire. Ha ha,” chuckles the announcer, “Mike Yoast is an unbelievable story, his father living from paycheck to paycheck as a humble pro football player. Kid was a natural mathlete.”
Other hilarious bits in the video include a BMW-sponsored teacher profile, who races around town in a BMW while eating an apple, and a breaking news story that a “teacher’s strike” is threatening to upend the “season.”
Serious Questions Over Salary, Taxes
Now, I’m not a blind supporter of teachers or their unions by any means. Like many other professions, there are plenty of lazy, greedy, incompetent, or abusive instructors out there, and teachers unions only seem to exacerbate bad habits. That being said, it is interesting that those assigned to nurture our children and prepare the future American workforce are rather, well, under-valued, compared to some developed nations, not to mention that several other countries (i.e. China, Turkey, Egypt) maintain much higher cultural respect for the teaching profession than the US.
But here’s the difference: while professional athletes are indeed offered insanely lucrative contracts, those contracts are 100% dependent on performance – both past, and future – in contrast with teaching, where pretty much anyone with a degree can get a teaching job (along with the benefits, holidays, and union protection that comes with it).
The satire video has already inspired renewed calls from liberals/leftists for higher teacher salaries in the US – it begs the question, then, why such activists are not more open to teacher performance reviews and things like charter schools, which allow “rich” donors to support the school while students benefit from free education. From the sidelines, it would seem that these union-obsessed anti-reform activists want to have their cake and eat it too, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.
Back before professional sports were such an obsession – and when schools in America were usually private – sponsoring schools with large donations was a very common thing among wealthy philanthropists. While this trend still exists for prestigious universities, private primary and secondary schools are rapidly dying out in the US, making things like teacher salary largely a governmental (and therefore tax-dependent) issue. Therefore, rather than simply chastising the sports industry (etc), perhaps the education sector in America could learn a thing or two from them.
Author’s Note: Pro sports teams are often much less profitable than people realize, as team ownership (and player salaries) have become mostly a vanity metric. For precisely that reason, perhaps team owners can stop accepting tax subsidies for their sports stadiums, and return some of that tax money to schools, instead.
Department Of Education Report Cancels Student Aid, Confirms Foul Play At Webster University Campus
As was expected by several Webster University : London students earlier this year, a report released by the U.S. Department of Education in June 2015 confirmed that all federal student aid has been indefinitely suspended to that campus due to a long history of foul play on the part of Webster University : St. Louis (parent campus).
Update 7/3/2015: Webster’s student-run newspaper, The Journal, has once again copied our story (and Scribd docs) without crediting CollegeTimes, continuing to function in more of a manipulative PR role than a voice for students. The Journal and St. Louis-based Post-Dispatch both published peculiarly favorable coverage of our March 2015 exclusive investigation into fraud and corruption at Webster’s Thailand campus as well.
The report, although dated January 15, 2015, was released just a few weeks ago on the DOE’s Student Aid website under the rather inexpressive title “Final Program Review Determination.” The public report – prepared by the DOE’s Student Participation Division based in Kansas City, Missouri – was published as the result of an apparent “off-site program review at (Webster) the week of August 6, 2014” carried out by DOE representatives Bridget Johnston and Jenny Armontrout:
The focus of the review was Webster’s compliance with federal requirements, specifically in regards to its arrangements and agreements with foreign institutions that are not Title IV _eligible. The review Consisted of an examination of Webster’s agreements with foreign institutions that are not Title IV eligible, and disbursement records for students who enrolled in programs provided by the ineligible institutions. A program review report was issued September 11, 2014.
The report’s publication comes on the heels of exclusive CollegeTimes investigations into massive fraud and corruption being carried out at Webster campuses in Thailand and London that received widespread attention across the web.
Flagrant Disregard For Federal Guidelines
Citing U.S. federal guidelines on student aid disbursement, the DOE report’s key (single) finding is that Webster’s campus in London was – and in fact, always has been – ineligible for U.S. student aid due to its illegal arrangement with Regent’s University London:
Citation Summary: A Program Participation Agreement (PPA) conditions the initial andcontinued participation in of an eligible institution in any Title IV, HEA program upon compliance with the provisions of regulations set forth in 34 C.F.R Part 668, the individual program regulations, and any additional conditions specified in the PPA that the Secretaryrequires the institution to meet. 34 C.F.R § 668.14(a)
Noncompliance Summary: The Department obtained a signed copy of an agreement Webster entered into in 2012 with Regent ’s University (Regent ’s), an institution headquartered in theUK, to administer educational programs at the Regent ‘s campus in London. At the time,Regent’s had no authority from the Department to receive or disburse Title IV, HEA program funds. Regent’s had not been determined to be an eligible institution, has not signed a Program Participation Agreement with the Department and has not obligated itself to act as a fiduciarywith respect to its receipt or disposition of federal funds. After reviewing the agreement with Regent ‘s, the Department determined that the programs offered by Regent’s on behalf of Webster were ineligible programs because the Agreement violated the Department’s rules under 34 CFR. §668.5(c) regarding written arrangements with ineligible institutions. As a result of this violation, Webster had permitted an ineligible institution to improperly receive Title IV, HEA program funds and provide a program to Title IV recipients
Interestingly, the report confirms that the DOE notified Webster in writing on July 18, 2014 “to immediately cease from awarding any Title IV, HEA program funds to students enrolled in programs administered through the Agreement with Regent’s [University London].” Such a timeline supports controversial claims by Webster London students who claim they were the victims of fraud during the Fall 2014 recruitment period, alleging that Webster purposefully hid the fact that all federal aid had been canceled as they continued to recruit dozens of new students to the London campus.
Let Off With Just A Slap On The Wrist?
To make matters worse, the DOE found that Webster was committing the same fraud at their campuses in China, but apparently chose not to cite them for it:
During the review, the Department was also informed that Webster has entered into agreements with Chinese institutions that implicate the same issue as the Agreement with Regent’s, although responsibilities attendant to Title IV, HEA program funding do not appear to be referenced in these contracts. Required Action Summary: Webster was directed to demonstrate that it put in place controls to ensure that no Webster students enrolled in programs administered through the agreements with Chinese institutions receive Title IV, HEA program funding.
In addition, despite the report acknowledging that Webster’s illegal relationship with Regent’s had been in existence since 1994, with the contract being renewed both in 2006 and again in 2012, the DOE team apparently decided to only hold Webster accountable for student aid funds disbursed post-2012 for unspecified reasons (the report’s wording is so vague, in fact, that an exact timeline is hard to distinguish).
Not only so, but the DOE team apparently took at face value Webster’s claim of applying only $87,869.00 in Pell Grants and $2,345,821.00 in Direct Loan funds to their London campus post-2012. Final “penalties” as assessed by the DOE are below:
- $87,869.00 (Pell Grants)
- $1,024.00 (interest on Pell Grants)
- $6,571.00 (estimated DOE “losses” based on $2,345,821.00 Direct Loans)
TOTAL: a mere $95,464.00 (due “within 45 days” by mailed check)
The Regent’s campus has been aggressively trying to achieve its own Title IV recognition by the U.S. Department of Education in order to accept more American study-abroad students, which it recently was able to accomplish with the notable exception of the American College section it runs alongside Webster University. The two schools announced earlier in 2015 that they would be severing their relationship, and that the Webster-Regents program would be cancelled before the end of 2016.
Author’s Note: Webster University appears to have successfully siphoned millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money into their pockets by committing over 20+ years of fraud at their London campus. Ultimately, it would seem this case once again proves that it’s definitely “worth it” for American colleges (both non-profit and for-profit) to commit fraud; from a business standpoint, the risk of legitimate consequences is so minute and the U.S. DOE and DOJ appear so unwilling to get involved that rampant fraud and corruption rages forward across the landscape of American higher education.
Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig Makes 15-Minute Case That U.S. Is Nowhere Near A True Democracy
American democracy. The oft-repeated phrase rolls off the tongue perhaps a little too easily, according to at least one American academic.
Lawrence Lessig, a renowned professor at Harvard University‘s Law School, tackled the issue at an event sponsored last November (2014) by Quartz, an online magazine operated by The Atlantic family of publications. In the last few weeks, Lessig’s comments have begun circulating again on social media, in which he argues that the United States is no more democratic than say, Hong Kong, or even Iran, because of the way that U.S. elections campaigns are currently controlled by ‘early-stage’ funders.
The ‘Funding’ Influence Of The 0.2%
Most political science students have probably heard the argument before: America is not actually a democracy, but rather, a republic. While the “republic” argument is often referenced by socially conservative or libertarian Americans, Lessig’s argument seems to go even farther, arguing that even according to historical American political processes, modern presidential campaigns in the U.S. have now been corrupted to the point of representing only a small sliver of wealthy ‘donor’ elites.
About ten minutes into the below video, Lessig cites a Cambridge University study published in September 2014 which found that U.S. public policy is very responsive to the shifting views of elites, but not to average Americans:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
After Lessig made his case, he briefly spoke with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
Lessig, who is also a political activist, has fought for campaign reform in the U.S. for several years, and has also been a key member of organizations such as Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He was also a professor at Stanford University’s Law School, and has been involved in several notable legal cases.
Hoverboard World Record: Canadian Inventor Displays Homemade Hoverboard Flight In Unbelievable Video
To be sure, this is not an April Fool’s Day stunt. (In fact, the below video was filmed and published by Guinness World Records themselves, so you can take comfort in knowing that you aren’t being pranked this time around.)
An inventor from Canada has set a new world record for “farthest journey by hoverboard” when he glided 275.9 meters (905 ft 2 in) over water a few months back, confirmed just this week by Guinness World Records. The inventor, Catalin Alexandru Duru, originally performed the feat at Lake Ouareau in Quebec, Canada on 25 August 2014, however the act was not mentioned by Guinness until a few days ago. The event has already lead some to wonder if the next extreme sport could be on the horizon.
Back To The Future – In Real Life?
Duru, understandably proud of his work yet seemingly cautious in discussing his self-created hoverboard technology, commented via YouTube:
“The first real-life hoverboard. The machine was built and designed by me, Catalin Alexandru Duru. I am the first man to create and fly a working prototype. I will showcase that stable flight can be achieved with a machine one can stand on and control with their feet, just like in the movie ‘Back to the Future Part II’. In our case, the machine is propeller-based. The prototype can be used anywhere, but is usually tested over water because of how dangerously high it can fly (which is ironic considering that the movie joked that it can’t).” – Catalin Alexandru Duru
Hoverboards, first popularized by the Back To The Future movie franchise in the 1980s, have been surrounded by rumors, conspiracies, and ill-fated attempts at replication ever since the movies first came out. Both fans of the films and researchers alike have debated the possibility of the “craft” for decades, with various types of technologies being mentioned including fans, propellers, magnets, gases, and beyond. Of course, the timely invention by Duru holds additional significance as October 21, 2015 was the date chosen by the BTTF movies as the “day of the future” from which to travel backwards in time, resulting in various web pages and other fanfare.
Duru said it took him a year to finalize his current hoverboard prototype. Many have compared the strange-looking machine to an octocopter drone often used by hobbyists to capture aerial video footage with GoPro cameras.
Langara College : West Broadway Centre
Cost Obsessions Map: From Prostitutes To Nose Jobs, The Most Researched Purchases Online By Country
“How much does ___ cost?” is an apparently very interesting lens through which to judge countries – or more specifically, the obsessions of their (would-be) residents.
From “prostitutes” in Thailand, to “kidneys” in Iran, and even “slaves” in Mauritania, a new report published by Fixr.com compiles the most popular auto-completed searches on Google in relation to every country around the world.
Using a simple Google search query, formatted as “how much does * cost in COUNTRY” the results were simply replicated and then collected into a spreadsheet.
An Honest Look Into Human Obsessions
Fixr, which is a cost-estimating website for home repair and remodeling, initially released a look into similar data for U.S. states only. After becoming “intrigued” by the results, the team says they “decided to see what the worldwide results” looked like:
It turns out that Google searches for the cost of something vary widely depending on the country of interest. For example, people are most interested in the cost of a passport or a patent in North America. As for Europe, many are concerned about practical things like the cost of living, studying, or buying a beer. Google users are interested in basic necessities such as food, livestock, and fuel in Africa. But if you look closely, you will find some more controversial search results, such as prostitution in Brazil, Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Latvia; slaves in Mauritania; a kidney in Iran; in vitro fertilization in Australia; and rhinoplasty in Korea.
The results are indeed both intriguing and often hilarious. “Prostitutes” were an obsession for multiple countries including Brazil, Uruguay, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Colombia, Latvia, and Thailand. “Beer” was a focus of several countries (esp. in Europe), while “camels” and “cows” were a stand-out in North Africa and Near East states.
In South/Central America, common research included “funerals”, “coke” (undetermined which type), and “cost of living” while “Bic Macs” (Serbia), “divorces” (Trinidad and Tobago), and “honeymoons” (Maldives) took the cake in other places.
Perhaps one of the most bizarre findings in the report was that “vasectomies” was a top Google search regarding New Zealand, while “in vitro fertilization” was a rather contradictory winner for nearby Australia. In Russia, the cost of “flying a MIG” [fighter jet] was a similarly surprising find. The team ultimately concluded:
Looking at some of the most popular Google searches throughout the World reveals some cultural differences, but also many key similarities. It also provides insights into the sometimes-strange things people think about when they are alone.
Disclaimer: the report’s findings should not be considered scientific.
‘Antarctica’ Drone Documentary: Breathtaking Scenes Of Blue Ice, Whales Filmed Completely with GoPros
In the latest “drone-umentary” to capture a wide audience of fans online, a bird’s eye view of what appears to be a mother blue whale and her calf along with stunning views of blue ice can be seen captured in various spots of Antarctica.
Swedish filmaker Kalle Ljung explained the film briefly on Vimeo:
This movie was shot during our 20 days trip to Antarctica in December 2014 to January 2015. We started from Ushuaia in Argentina and went to Port Williams in Chile, rounded Cape Horn and crossed the Drake Passage towards the Melchior Islands in Antarctica.
We spent 16 days in the Antarctic and got to experience the most amazing scenery and wildlife before we returned back to Ushuaia.
The entire video was apparently recorded using a DJI Phantom 2 quadricopter (drone) and a GoPro HERO3 camera, and includes shots of the crew’s sailboat, a team member standing on an iceberg, and other picturesque views of frigid Antarctic landscapes.
Although the trip took place from December 2014 to January 2015, the video was published to Vimeo in April 2015 where it has received an enthusiastic response from other users. Ljung edited the film using Final Cut Pro X.
The Melchior Islands are “a group of many low, ice-covered islands lying near the center of Dallmann Bay in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica” according to Wikipedia, and were named by French explorers after Vice Admiral Jules Melchior of the French Navy.