TEFL International make a big thing of their connections to universities – on their websites, on TEFL forums, and on blogs such as this one. Look at what those connections really are, however, and it starts to seem like mainly, or even entirely, smoke and mirrors.

On TEFLlife.com, for example, they say this:

“many U.S. universities offer financial aid and up to 12 credits for completion of both our course and an internship with TEFL International.”

and

“From Burapha University to the University of Washington, check out our Accreditation and Affiliations Page for more information.”

You’d think that you’d be able to click on a link in the second statement that would take you to a list of some of the universities they are talking about in the first one, but no. Only by digging deep can you find this statement:

“Past affiliations also include Washington University, Chaing Mai University, University of Southern Queensland, Manipal and Burapha Universities, Asian University and many others”

That’ll be past as in not present, I can only assume. So, why would they only list dead affiliations if it is still true that “many U.S. universities… ”?

At least that is better than “Affiliations – Middlesex University (pending), U.K. ”, something that was on their website for at least a year (and is still on those of some of their agents over four years later) and then disappeared. Doesn’t “pending” usually mean “will happen soon” rather than just “they haven’t rejected us yet”? Apparently not in TEFL International speak…

In fact, we have to doubt that their connections to any of those universities have ever been all that we might expect. The British Council certainly didn’t think that TEFL International had any important connections to universities when they emailed someone this statement, later posted on this blog:

“To date, TEFL International teacher training qualifications have not been approved as meeting British Council requirements for employment in our teaching centres around the world or as IELTS examiners. There is a process for obtaining such approval from the British Council, which has yet to be fulfilled by TEFL International as they have not provided the British Council with adequate documentary evidence of external validation of their qualifications.

TEFL International did not obtain British Council consent to make references to our acceptance of their qualifications on their web sites or elsewhere. They have recently agreed to remove these but, as yet, not all have been removed.”

In the same thread their CEO admitted that it was problems with BC accepting their connections with universities that was the sticking point. Apparently that being sorted out was also pending, because we never heard any more from him about that…

The worst example of a connection to a university, though, is the one that gets the most mentions, the University of Washington. The university clearly and publically stated a few years ago that “Students can not gain credit at the UW based on completion of a TEFL Intl. course…some UW students have gained undergraduate credit at UW based in part on their successful completion of a TEFL Intl. course. This is not possible today.”

The statements on TEFLlife.com on the topic are not exactly lies, but the way I see it they can only possibly be included in the hope that you scan them quickly and miss the past tenses and the word “several”:

“Our course has been fully evaluated for credit by Dr. Bill Leon, an instructor of Program Evaluation at the University of Washington.”

and

“I first became aware of TEFL International TESOL courses through my position in the Outreach office of the University of Washington. Though this office I developed a successful Service Learning Project in which we sent several University of Washington students to participate in training with TEFL International for credit.”

It is even stranger that those statements are up there when we read Bruce Veldhuisen’s public statement elsewhere that:

“A few months ago, with the assistance and cooperation of Bill Nicholson of the University of Washington, the disagreement between TEFL International and UW was resolved. We now have jointly agreed to the following quote:

“We feel that having students start their ESL teaching careers abroad with the training and supervision provided by TEFL International will make them excellent candidates for future employment and/or graduate study.”

All TEFL International sites will now use this quote and this quote only in reference to the University of Washington.”

That does indeed get a mention (along with the hilarious proviso “Letter dated November 7, 2001, from Professor Sandra Silberstein (then Director, University of Washington MATESOL Program)… [Note: Professor Silberstein… has no current opinion as to TEFL International operations]”), but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the only mention of the University of Washington to me.

The other mentions are perhaps due to the fact that the person they come from, Bill Leon, is a friend of the CEO (according to a comment by said CEO on this blog) and a paid member of the Board of Academic Advisors of TEFL International (according to TEFLlife.com). We’ll leave the fact that he is a professor of geography with no experience of or connection to TEFL to one side…

Again, you have to wonder why they make such a big thing of a long past relationship that has been so thoroughly repudiated by the university, when according to their website they are working with so many universities at the moment. The logical conclusion would seem to be that actually no universities are working with them now, or at least that no universities are willing to be publically associated with them. Please let me know if my logic is faulty here…

To summarize:

The connection of TEFL International to universities are:

– Mainly or entirely in the past

– Not worth much even then

Therefore TEFLlife.com, one of the main websites of an educational organization that also makes a big thing about being non-profit, is:

– A big pile of marketing crap

Much more proof of that last point about their website coming up soon. You can draw your own conclusions about the organization that is responsible for it…

More on TEFL International on TEFLtastic via the category link below.