<p>Touro Colleges former admissions director and former computer center director and three New York City public school teachers have been indicted on charges that they took part in a scheme involving fraudulent transcripts, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said yesterday.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/education/17college.html?ref=nyregion[/url] ”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/education/17college.html?ref=nyregion</a></p> ;
He said those defendants were among 10 people indicted in a “cash for grades scheme” in which students’ transcripts were altered and transcripts and degrees were created for people who had never attended the institution, including the three city teachers. The teachers were said to have bought falsified master’s degrees from Touro that helped in their promotion and their certification.
How many transcripts were altered?
Mr. Morgenthau said the investigation was continuing, adding that he believed that hundreds, maybe even thousands, of transcripts may have been fabricated or altered.
Franklyn H. Snitow, a New York lawyer representing Touro, said, “We are doing our due diligence to determine the scope of these problems,” but “we don’t believe that the numbers reached the hundreds or thousands.”
Of course the three teachers will continue on the city payroll, earning a rate of pay based on bogus master’s degrees from Touro.
Touro, a Manhattan-based independent college that describes itself as operating under Jewish auspices, has more than 23,000 students, about half undergraduates.
Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, said the three teachers charged — Florence Constant, Renee Rene and Ghislene Joseph Julmice — were still on the payroll but were not working this summer. She added that they would be reassigned to positions outside the classroom until the charges were resolved, and dismissed if found guilty. She said that Ms. Constant and Ms. Rene were both tenured and could not be dismissed without a hearing.
I imagine that will also harm those from the school who did not receive falsified transcripts.