The American Conservatory of Music, ordered this year by Illinois courts to stop offering bogus college degrees, has inched over the state line into Hammond in an apparent effort to set up shop as a Bible college.
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The troubled school has been in and out of Illinois courts for years. Its re-emergence in a new incarnation underscores the difficulties states have in regulating institutions of higher education, especially at a time when they are proliferating because of Internet degrees and other contemporary trends.
Earlier this year, the last judge to rule on the matter ordered the Illinois attorney general’s office to pursue criminal contempt charges against the family who runs the school.
Yet still using the century-old name of a once-renowned music school, the conservatory now claims ties to the “Eastern Orthodox Church, in general, and more specifically of the monastic community of the Archangel Michael” in the Central American country of Belize, according to documents filed in Indiana.
Indiana does not accredit Bible colleges, which can award religiously oriented degrees without state oversight.
It is unclear whether any of the school’s former students in Chicago, some of whom paid $22,000 in tuition and fees for what proved to be worthless degrees, are attending in Indiana. The conservatory’s Loop office, at 36 S. Wabash Ave., remains open, but officials there have said they are not offering instruction for college credit.
If the conservatory qualifies as a Bible college, Indiana will have to leave the school alone or risk opening a wider issue that lawmakers are reluctant to tackle.
“I’m not going to be the one to say to the General Assembly of Indiana that we should regulate Bible colleges,” said Phillip Roush, commissioner of Indiana’s Commission on Proprietary Education. “I’d be run out of town.”
Whatever the outcome, the situation highlights the tremendous difficulty state regulators face in closing troubled schools. Each state has its own rules and regulatory structure, and schools sometimes avoid problems in one state by opening up elsewhere.
Illinois officials, who thought they had finally succeeded in closing the private music school in May when a Cook County Circuit Court judge ordered the locks on the conservatory’s doors changed, said they were exasperated with the school’s latest tactic. Though precise numbers are elusive, scores of worthless degrees have been awarded since 1992, primarily to foreign students.
“I would have to advise any student who asks me whether they should attend that institution to seriously consider any other option,” said Marcia Langsjoen, staff counsel for academic affairs at the Illinois State Board of Higher Education.
Indiana education officials are investigating the school’s operations there.
“If you’re a Bible college, you’ll operate as a Bible college,” said Roush. “Don’t come in as a back door to what’s going on in Illinois.”
But defining a Bible college can be tricky.
“We don’t say how much of the curriculum must be in religious areas,” explained Roush, “but certainly a portion of it must be.”
A recent conservatory catalog boasts a cornucopia of courses, from English, French and Western civilization to jazz, sacred music and Christian Ethics. Courses are taught every other Thursday in St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Hammond. The number of students currently enrolled at the school is unclear, but it may be as few as 15.
The conservatory also has incorporated in Hawaii–a haven for diploma mills because the state has virtually no laws governing higher education–and in Nevada.
Conservatory officials have told Indiana regulators that they also have an accounting office in Colorado.
The original American Conservatory of Music, founded in Chicago in 1886, produced Pulitzer Prize winners and garnered international recognition. But it went bankrupt in the early 1990s. At that point, in stepped Richard and Theodora Schulze, a husband-and-wife team who had studied at the conservatory in the 1940s but never graduated.
Richard Schulze has had prior legal trouble. In 1995, he was convicted in the fraudulent sale of securities in Florida, ordered to pay $350,000 in restitution and given 20 years’ probation.
Along with their son, Otto, they ran a music school that they called the American Conservatory of Music.
The Schulzes said they were continuing the old school and did not need state approval. But Illinois education officials said that they really had opened a new school that had to be reviewed and approved before degrees could be awarded. That stance led to the legal action in Illinois.
Asked to comment on the conservatory’s evolving operation, Theodora Schulze declined. She was contacted in the Chicago office the school previously had occupied, and she answered the telephone, “Conservatory.”
Otto Schulze issued a brief statement that read: “An Indiana corporation has been organized under the name American Conservatory of Music. The Indiana corporation is in dialogue with the higher education authorities in Indiana and is working with them to ensure compliance with Indiana law.”
But more details emerged in a July 23 memo to “all faculty, staff, students and friends of the conservatory.” In that note, Theodora Schulze wrote that the “headquarters campus” had been relocated to Hammond, described as a “nearby suburb of Chicago.”
“We have completed our legal research, which indicates that we are eligible to operate a postsecondary degree-granting institution in Indiana,” she wrote.
“At the time we meet with you in Indiana, we may safely refer to ourselves as the American Conservatory of Music,” Schulze continued. “That is because Illinois loses its jurisdiction at the border and can no longer interfere with us while we are in the state of Indiana.
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“Thank you for your support during this time of challenge,” she concluded.
The Schulzes’ conservatory has targeted for enrollment foreign students, particularly those from Asia, who are issued special visas to attend school in this country.
Despite all the court action against the conservatory, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service–much to the surprise of the Illinois attorney general’s office–had never revoked the school’s permission to award student visas.
But that may soon change.
In July, after Illinois courts had ordered the school to close, the Schulzes’ conservatory requested additional foreign student visa applications from the INS, said Gail Montenegro, an agency spokeswoman.
Conservatory officials asked that the forms be sent to 36 S. Wabash, which differed from the Chicago address INS had on file for the conservatory. INS officials now say they are looking into revoking the conservatory’s permission to award student visas, though that action has not yet been taken. But even without official revocation, no new visas can be awarded without additional application forms.
Roush, the Indiana commissioner, said he was surprised that the conservatory had never lost its power to grant student visas. But he added that the story has taken many surprising twists.
“It’s a saga that continues,” Roush said, “and there will be more episodes, I believe.”
Indeed, an Alabama woman, Susanne Gilmer Stibolt, recently submitted a proposal to Illinois officials to open a degree-granting school to be called the Chicago Conservatory of Music. That name is similar to one of another defunct institution, the Chicago Conservatory College, which operated from 1857 to 1981.
The proposed Chicago Conservatory of Music would be staffed with musicians who taught at the old American Conservatory of Music. But Stibolt said her proposed institution would be distinct from the Schulzes’ school.
“I have nothing to do with them, absolutely nothing to do with them,” she said.
“It’s a new conservatory in a great city, and it would give us the opportunity to work with students from around the world,” said Stibolt, the president-designate of the proposed school.
Langsjoen of the State Board of Higher Education said officials are seriously considering the application. But she noted that few new schools are approved.