Quality Assurance Department Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools 750 First Street, NE Suite 980 Washington DC. 20002 Dear ACICS Quality Assurance Chair and Committee. I'd like to draw your attention to several serious criteria compliance issues that exist at Northwestern Polytechnic University. a member institution In particular, the following three operational practices are in direct violation accreditation criteria: I. Library 7 NPU is operating without a ualified professionally trained librarian, The university fired its librarianfion July 21,2014. For the past one and half semesters, an administrative staff, "as been running the library (sometimes with one student assistant) has no education in library science and had never before worked in a library. Another staff mcmbe_(who previously worked in NPU library as administrative staff). works several hours a week in the library helping with cataloging ofbooks and AV materials. had taken a few courses in library science at a community college long time ago, but she is not qualified to be a librarian, either. It appears the university has no intention to hire a new librarian any time soon. Additionally, NPU had never had a full-time librarian until August 2012 when they hired as the librarian, two and a halfmonths before the siti: review by expert panel for NPU's accreditation extension. In the past, it was who served as the librarian. worked as librarian forNPU during 2007- 201 1. She worked part-time (24 hours/week) and was paid partitimc but the university made her lie to reviewers from and say that she worked fullAtime for NPU. Before it was even worse. NPU simply paid some librarians from other organizations to come to NPU campus and sit there for three days when ACICS reviewers came to visit. Faculty--NPU has no real full-time faculty. All NPU faculty is part-time in fact. Categories of full-time, part-time or adjunct faculty are arbitrary. There is no such thing as tenured faculty position. All instructors sign teaching contracts on a semester basis. There is no exception. Whoever are named arbitrarily as fullrtime faculty. do not have health insurance, 401k or any other benefits, just like any part--time faculty member. The so-called full-time faculty members do not necessarily teach more courses or more hours than part-time faculty members, either. Many NPU professors have l'ull-timejobs elsewhere (this is especially true with Engineering School faculty); others have businesses oftheir own, A small number have no otlierjohs except teaching at NPU. but there is no guarantee they will be invited to teach from semester to semester. Attached here are Linkedln pages of only a small sample 7 a few major faculty members who are supposed to be full-time. All were asked to sit in theirNFU offices all day. making the appearance or working full-time for NPU during accreditation rci iew panel's site visit in October 2012 Dean of Academic Affairs - Dean, School of Engineering Computer Science --7 Chair. Computer Systems Engineering The two other major academic administrators that are not included here are: Dean, School of Business He is the CEO ofhis own investment company. Dean, General Studies He is collecting social security while teaching partytime at NPU. Another problem related to faculty is the inadequacy of instructors in quantity and quality. Since Fall 2013. student enrollment has more than doubled (total 2030 in fall 2014 compared to 705 in Fall 20l27 for example). Around 90 percent ot'the increased student population major in Computer Science. Yet, the number of faculty members teaching computer science hasn't increased proportionately (3-5 only). In addition to asking existing computer science faculty members to teach more sessions/courses. NPU absorbed the added student numbers also by enrolling excessively large number of students in individual class sessions (from 30-40 to 60-80), When that's not enough, they turned some students into Lab and asked them to teach many classes (called lab sessions). Almost all these Lab Instructors are students studying for their Master's degrees while teaching other students who are also pursuing Master's degrees. These student instructors are paid Sl 6.00 an hour and the courses they teach are granted one credit. Exams and grades -- Cheating during exams is rampant. Many students' grades are claimed to be changed by a senior administrator. Some professors revealed that sometimes more than a dozen students' mid-term or final exam papers look exactly the same. The issue was said to be raised during faculty meetings. but the university administration has no intention to solve the problem. Worse still. according to reliable sources: the administration actually was involved in changing students grades. The bottom line here is money. NPU is and has always been controlled by the president's family, In the past, it "as Dr. George Hsieh. Today, it is his son. Peter Hsieh, Although noniproflt in name, the family wants to make mone). Students at NPU cannot fail their exams ifthey do. they lose international students' status and have to leave. NPU wants to keep all their students. so that they can make money from them Therefore, cheating is condoned and even arguably facilitated. When some students still failed to get a passing grade after all the ?help?, someone from the university administration even went so far as to change their grades. This explains why a large number of international students who couldn?t make passing grades at other universities and had to transfer to NPU all miraculously passed their exams at the end of their very first semester at NPU. Changing a large number of students? grades by senior administrators took place mainly at the end of the fall semester of 2013 and the spring semester of 2014. After that the administration achieves its purpose mainly by putting pressure on faculty (through the deans) to give students more lenient grades. Most recently they have come up with yet another clever strategy change all students? failing grades from (fail) to (withdraw). The difference here allows international students from certain parts of the world to be still eligible for student loan in their home country, thus continue their study at NPU. I must also add that there are many other areas where Northwestern Polytechnic University is not following rules. The ones listed above are only some of the major ones. To address the issues most effectively, it is my strong belief that an on-site review by ACICS experts and staff is necessary. In a separate document, I will provide information for possible sources of evidence and potential witnesses to the above mentioned violations by NPU administration. Thank you for your time, Sincerely, A concerned member of NPU constituent