Update: When I first created this page, it was intended to be a message to the needy. The world is full of people who are being deprived of a meaningful life simply because they lack a degree, and this page, in its own small way, attempted to address that, and still attempts to address that. Since I put this page up, however, I have received e-mails from several people who are already employed reasonably well, but would like to attain even greater position through a university degree, but who lack the time or inclination to go back to university to get a degree, or the next level of degree.
I should emphasize that this page is not really for those people. If you are already making a living for yourself, then you are not truly a needy person. This page was created for the people who simply cannot make ends meet, the ones who have trouble maintaining a place to live (or do not have a place to live) and food to eat for want of a degree. Those are the people who have cause to take drastic measures in their pursuit of life; If you cannot even manage the basic necessities of life, you cannot keep on living. But if you are already making a living for yourself and you merely want a better job, then you should consider getting a "real" university degree. This is not something I suggest you take lightly; There are many jobs in the world which should not require a degree, but which the employer wants a degree for anyway. As a computer technician, for example, I can attest to having seen many postings for jobs in computer programming which require knowledge that anyone can learn at home, yet which require a Bachelor's degree. That is stupid, and that is when it becomes time to consider whether you really want to spend four years in university to get your degree.
But there are many jobs in the world which place a tremendous amount of responsibility in the hands of the employee. Many scientists or engineers will create things that will affect the world around us for years to come, and the importance of these developments places a great demand on the training and knowledgeability of the people who create them. That people in these positions could be willing to take shortcuts in matters of such importance is slightly disturbing to me. It is one thing to try and forgo a degree for a dinky job programming a computer somewhere, but when people honestly think that they can become medical doctors or genetic engineers with a few months of study, I begin to worry.
Perhaps I should have foreseen this phenomenon when I began this page, but sadly, I did not. I suppose what I encourage here is a form of vigilantism, of taking the law into your own hands because of a perceived injustice. And while vigilantism may occasionally be called for in some circumstances, the problem with it is that it depends on the judgement of the general public. People who see themselves as creating a justice that the System failed to create may actually be creating an injustice. This is because "justice" is all in the eye of the beholder, and what seems right to one person may not seem right to another. And if you've spent any length of time studying what people do in their lives, you will probably agree with me when I say that there are a great many people in this world whose judgement is rather questionable and even dangerous.
This page still stands for what it was always meant to be, which is a call to the oppressed people of this world to make a life for themselves without depending on the educational system to create a life for you. But for people who actually want the kind of jobs that win Nobel prizes, please, work your way from the bottom. If you are actually going to be a scientist, then you will actually learn something that you can use in some of your university classes. When I complain that the information taught in universities is largely useless, I say this because it will only be used by a small fraction of people in the world; It is only useful to people who are going to actually get jobs in very specialized fields. Yet there are a few people in the world who do in fact get such jobs, and if you want to be one of those people, then you, too, should go to university and get your degree the "real", four-year way. They made those courses specifically for you, so use them.
I hope this has cleared up some misconceptions. By the way, I have also had a great many people ask me for personal recommendations on specific non-accredited universities to recommend. My answer is always the same: I have no specific recommendations. I did not actually get a non-accredited degree myself, because I am not an engineer who wants to design a supersonic airplane or a biologist who wants to cure AIDS. I am a simple worker who is happy turning screws and plugging wires for a living, and you don't need any degree for that kind of work. So please do not ask me for recommendations on where to go to get a "fast-track" degree; The only place I know of to find some suggestions is located at http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Library/8163/degree1.htm, which is a site that lists several institutions (both well-known accredited ones and blatant "diploma mills") which offer "distance education". If you are looking for the names of alternative universities, this may be a place to start, but please do not ask me for any other suggestions. Having said that, the page as it has always existed follows below.
This page is an attempt at providing some information and insight into getting degrees from non-standard institutions. Let me begin with a personal rant on this subject. I apologize for all those who came here seeking real information, but I feel one of the most important things I can do on this subject is express my opinion so that people will be able to understand it.
If you get a lot of spam e-mail, one of the more common spams you get may be an offer for a university degree which doesn't require any study, costs only a hundred dollars or so (about 1% of the normal cost of a degree), and has no requirements: "No one is turned down!"
Any sensible person unfamiliar with this kind of scheme will no doubt delete the e-mail immediately without a second thought. It seems impossible: Why would people spend thousands of dollars and waste years of time and effort, when you could get the same result this easily? Common sense dictates that it must be a scam.
That's what I thought too. It's true that you're not getting quite the same thing, but it may just achieve the same effect in the end. All it takes is a little thought.
This page is about how to get past one of the most significant obstacles between you and living a decent life: A degree. The modern system of employment blindly requires everybody to have a university degree, without seeming to realize how foolish it really is. There are many people in the world who simply do not have the money to attend an institution for four years just so they can go to work. In the end, this sytem is charging people money to be able to live. How can you put a price on human life? It's not just unethical, it's murder, plain and simple. In that light, here's some advice on how to bypass this problem.
First, think about what a degree really is. When you go to an employer proudly declaring on your resume that you have a degree from such-and-such university, what are you showing them? Well, up front, all they see is a line on your resume. That can easily be faked; It takes zero skill to be able to put such an entry on a piece of paper. Believe it or not, this in itself may be good enough. I personally know a man who works for a fairly large company (I won't name names, but you've probably heard of this company) who says that several executives who've been in the company for 10 years (yes, ten years) were recently fired because it turned out they didn't really have degrees, even though they claimed to when they applied 10 years ago. Nobody bothered to check.
Yes, they were fired. But guess what? Not only did they have a great job with a great company which probably made them a lot of money, they also have a good 10 years of work experience to drop onto the ol' resume. They probably won't get too great a reference from that company (employers tend to dislike dishonest employees, and rightly so), but still, I find this interesting.
Of course, many employers won't just take your word for it. They may want to *see* your diploma. This is what those "non-accredited universities" are for: They send you a piece of paper that looks very real, says you have fulfilled all the requirements to be a Bachelor or Master of whatever, signature of some person who probably doesn't exist, etc. And while it may be fake, let's face it: It looks convincing. If they make it look really nice, you can show it to an employer and they may be convinced.
Now, the absolute most suspicious employers will actually go so far as to verify your credentials, usually by phoning the university and checking to make sure that you really did get that degree. This, incidentally, is the only reason to really justify paying money for a "fake" degree: Many of these non-accredited institutions have a phone number you can supply for exactly this purpose. They will assure the prospective employer that you did indeed fulfill all their requirements and earn their degree. Some even go so far as to supply the employer with transcripts if asked to do so. Now that's service!
Another possible way to deal with this might simply be to claim that you came from a university in a far-off place, perhaps on the other side of the country, or even in another country somewhere in Europe or wherever. Many employers may be unwilling to bother calling overseas on their own dime for this purpose. Then again, some may be. It depends on who you're dealing with.
The point, however, is that getting a degree from a non-accredited institution is not totally worthless. True, nobody will have ever heard of the institution before, but name recognition is not something you can always have even with accredited institutions. After all, there are only about a dozen Ivy-league places which everybody has heard of, yet there are many, many universities which are fully accredited. Obviously most people have never heard of them, so name recognition isn't everything. Who's to say that there isn't really a University Of Uzupugstan, Arizona? For all most people know, there really could be such a place, and it really could be accredited. Accreditation for a university isn't everything. Accreditation doesn't mean a university is highly esteemed. It just means they happen to meet some kind of guidelines.
On the other side of the coin, not all non-accredited institutions are worthless. What does accreditation mean? It just means that an institution complies with a set of standards set by some governing body; If they don't meet every requirement, they don't get the accreditation. Not all non-accredited universities are "diploma mills" which just send a piece of paper for a charge. In fact, there are many fine institutions all over the world which have effective study courses and good professors, but are not accredited simply because they didn't match up to some standard. To dismiss them as worthless is unfair: You can still learn from them.
In fact, speaking of learning, it should be noted that, ironically, learning has taken a back-seat in this matter. The whole point of having a fancy degree is to show that you know something, right? It's to prove that you've learned a lot. Yet no employer really cares about what you know. They don't care if you're skilled in this or that. What they really want to know is: Do you have a degree? If not, why are you wasting our time?
I have seen numerous people with "real" degrees talking about non-accredited institutions, and their reaction to them seems universally hostile. They all rave about how worthless those degrees are, that they're not worth the paper they're printed on, that anybody with any common sense would go to a "real" institution. One person actually sent an advertisement from a non-accredited institution to law enforcement authorities, although they did not explain exactly what they felt this institution could be charged with. Is it illegal to give people pieces of paper? The wrath expressed by these folks seems to stem from jealousy. They're just plain jealous that they had to spend years of time and thousands of dollars to get their paper education. I sympathize with people who've had to go through that ordeal, but to become hostile to someone else who's trying to find a better alternative is not fair. It's like the old-timers who get angry at kids because kids these days have computers, while in the old days they had to use chalk or something. Yes, it's a shame they had to do through that, but that's no reason to get angry at someone else who's evaded it. And for the record, I have yet to see anyone with a "real" degree give a valid reason for not going the paper-mill route. Most just say "it's not worth it" without saying why. The only semi-valid argument is that your employer may find out about it, but if you show them a piece of paper which looks real, and if you really go all-out and your institution has a number they can call to check, (or if you just supply them with a friend's phone number and have your friend pretend to be a university official who confirms your graduation), how would they know? As I said before, there are people who did not supply anything more than the *claim*, which was assumed to be true and was enough to get them a good job.
It speaks volumes that many people who hate "diploma mills" hate them because they went to one themselves, not realizing that the institution was not accredited. They cite their "embarrassment" and "disgrace" because they were very proud of their achievements. I would advise these people to re-think their priorities. Going to university is not something to be proud of, because it is something you do for yourself, and things you do for you are not acts of pride; They are acts of necessity. If there is any justification in pride, it is for things you have done to make the world a better place for people other than yourself. However, pride is a worthless emotion in the first place, and it has no place in any human's psyche. If you are angry because your pride was wounded, I am sorry, but again, a degree is not gained for pride, but to improve your quality of life.
I do not like dishonesty. For those of you who say that this is all based on lying, I must admit that this is, indeed, somewhat deceptive. However, it is not an outright lie, and in fact you are giving the employer exactly what they want. If they require you to have a degree, then you are not lying if you have a degree from a non-accredited institution and tell them you have a degree. Some may say that what the employer *really* wants a degree from an accredited university, and this may be true, but let's face it: A degree is nothing more than a worthless piece of paper no matter where it comes from, and if you have a diploma from a diploma mill, you have exactly what the employer is looking for: A worthless piece of paper. A recent spam e-mail I received from another diploma mill said it very well, in a way that I found unintentionally funny: "Diplomas from established non-accredited schools show like any academic degree exactly what you really can do." They're so right; A degree says nothing of what a person really is, or is capable of. As I say, I do not like lying, and I do not usually encourage people to lie. Indeed, I wish that it were possible to be honest in every matter. But the utter foolishness displayed by fat-cat bureaucrats who do not know even one-tenth as much as the people they are demanding degrees from is, I believe, a strong reason.
Let me add that the word "education" is misused these days. A university is equated with "education", when in fact, education really means knowledge. It is about how much you know, not about how fancy your piece of paper is, or how accredited your institution is. I would encourage anyone who wants a job requiring a degree to study for that job to the best of their ability, and learn as much about it as possible so they can be a good employee. Education should be gleaned by LEARNING, not by paper or spending huge amounts of money and time on an institution run by people who probably don't know half as much as the students who study there. In the end, to be a useful and productive employee, you need to know a lot. As far as productivity is concerned, a degree is irrelevant. And if your employer thinks that you spent years in residence at some place on the other side of the globe, let the overstuffed management be happy in that belief, while you go about getting some real work done.
It is sad that people who have fancy degrees are assumed to be intelligent, and people without them are assumed to be incompetent. It truly shows that flash has a much higher place than subtance in our world. The fact is that intelligence is about what's in your head. Some people claim that going to a high-profile university proves that you know a lot because you did so much studying and took tests to prove it. That may be true, but ask yourself this: Would any Ivy-league university let you take a one-time test to prove your knowledge, and give you a degree if you passed? The answer is no. Even if you can verifiably prove that you have knowledge in an actual examination, they will not let you take such an examination until you have spent years studying first. This proves that it's not about what you know, but rather, how much money they can squeeze out of you.
I would also like to respond to people who say that these kinds of degrees "debase" traditional universities: What are they debasing? A university is not a proud institution, as many people seem to think it is; It is a thing of shame, because it is a business based on people's lives. A university is, in essence, the tool booth collector on the road to life. If you do not pay them the fee, you cannot pass. Sadly, they realize that this gives them free rein to charge whatever ridiculous amounts they want, just because a degree means so much in today's world. That's not something to be proud of. That's something to be ashamed of. There's nothing to debase in that kind of system. As I have already said, a degree is not gained because of pride. You do not get a degree to feel good about yourself, or to gain the respect of people. You do it to get a good job. It is true that these kinds of operations may dim, in the public's mind, the value of "real" degrees. However, it is my opinion that this is actually a very good thing, not a bad thing. It makes people realize how worthless a degree is, that it's really just a piece of meaningless paper, not a measure of a person. Nothing would please me more than for diploma mills to make people realize that any degree really is worthless. However, this is unlikely, as the world is simply too in love with the concept of paper-based so-called "education" to change that perception.
Furthermore, people who say this undermines the accomplishments of "real" professionals such as doctors and lawyers are the same people who but blind faith in those professionals. It is sad the way many people take what medical doctors say as gospel. If a doctor says it, it must be true! I do not believe in degrees as a sign of education. What I do believe in is a person's ability to think for their own self, without needing a doctor to tell them what to do. Nobody can look after your health as well as you can, not even that doctor with the fancy degree hanging in his office. I realize this is unfair to all the doctors who spent years studying for their qualifications, and I do believe that there should be strong constraints set in place to prevent just any yahoo from posing as a medical practitioner, but guess what? There are plenty of terrible doctors out there who went through the full medical school rigmarole. Just because a doctor is a "real" M.D., doesn't mean he or she isn't a quack.
If you have the ability to go to a world-famous, accredited university, I would encourage you to do so. The name recognition will certainly help your career. But for anyone who simply cannot do it, I urge you to not throw your life away. Do not banish yourself to a life of assembly-line or cash-register jobs because you could not afford something better. Everybody should be able to live a good life, and in an increasingly chaotic world, new methods of living must sometimes be employed. Please, observe the highest standards of ethics: If you do not believe you are qualified for a job, do not try to get it until you have studied, on your own time, what you need to know to fulfill it. When you are ready to advance your career, you must find a way to do so.
Good luck to everyone, and God bless you all.
Okay, the rant is over. Now, when looking for a non-accredited institution to better your job prospects, the foremost concern is legitimacy. It needs to look real. For starters, make sure that they give you a nice degree which looks professional. It should have an indented gold seal and a signature from some official.
But that's not enough; If you're going to pay them a hundred bucks to give you a degree, they need to offer a little more. After all, you can just print up a real-looking diploma yourself. Definitely make sure they have a phone number where your employers-to-be can contact them and have them assure that you did indeed go through their requirements and earn your degree. Also ask if they supply fake transcripts, which can be very helpful, as some employers actually ask for them, believe it or not. Letters of recommendation are also good, and I would recommend them.
I feel I should stress, however, that there is a difference between claiming you have a degree, and claiming that you have actually taken courses. Any institution can grant you a degree as long as you meet their requirements (and their requirements may simply be that you have paid their fee), but to claim, in course transcripts, that you have taken courses which you never really took is lying outright. It is also illegal and could land you in very serious trouble if it is ever found out. It is not wise to ask for fake transcripts for courses that you have never taken; If you truly desire course transcripts, I recommend that you find an institution which offers a "fast-track" degree program, the kind which really does offer real courses in real subjects, which last perhaps a few weeks. This way, you are really studying and really taking the courses, so you can be actually graded on them. Then there is no fraud in your paperwork. This course of action is much safer, both ethically and legally. Again, I am not encouraging anyone to lie; You are simply offering your prospective employers exactly what they are asking for: A worthless piece of paper that says "Degree" on it.
Note that it is also legally considered fraud to claim you have a degree when you don't. There have actually been cases where people claimed they had a degree when they didn't, and ended up getting taken to court over it and losing, resulting in significant penalties. This is probably rare, but be aware that if you lie outright, you're exposing yourself to a certain amount of legal liability. If this concerns you, play it safe and get a cheap degree; a $100 "diploma mill" degree is still considered a degree from a legal standpoint. Again, this will prevent you from being liable for fraud.
(By the way, to all the people who ask me for specific non-accredited institutions I could recommend: I don't know of any. I have not actually bothered to get a non-accredited degree myself, simply because I do not desire the kind of job that would require a Ph.D. I am happy being the simple computer guy who I am right now, so I myself am not able to recommend any particular places if you are looking for alternative education.)
"Accreditation" is simply an approval from some kind of watchdog orgnization that says a particular institution meets it requirements, and thus has earned its approval. It should be fairly obvious, then, that the value of accreditation depends entirely on what those "requirements" are. Various accrediting agencies will have different requirements. Indeed, it is easy for somebody to create an agency with incredibly simple requirements, like "The institution must charge students less than a million dollars" or some such, and then award "accreditation" to it. This is an easy way to get a university accredited.
In the United States, the U.S. Department of Education oversees this kind of process, and will give its stamp of approval to an accrediting agency that meets its own demands. Thus, ultimately, the question of what is required boils down to the government. If you want to be a really hard-core droid with no thinking power of your own, you will say "Any university worth attending must be accredited by an agency which is recognized by the U.S. DoE." Unsurprisingly, many people say exactly this. However, this is not really a huge problem for most job-seekers, since a prospective employer is unlikely to ask "Is this university accredited?" in the first place, and even more unlikely to ask "Is the accrediting agency recognized by the DoE?" Very few will ask this question, but if they do it's best to be honest so you don't get legal problems associated with dishonesty. It doesn't matter; You can always go on to another job interview.
(It's worth adding that many people consider the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) another organization which is "prestigious" enough to provide worthy approval of accrediting agencies.)
Some of you may well be wondering why I have written this. What motivated me to encourage people to find alternatives to conventional university enrollment? It is not jealousy or spite of people with "real" degrees, as some of you may suspect, nor is it some kind of attack to "take down" the universities. It is simply an attempt to share my opinion. Let me relate to you the sequence of events that led to me thinking the way I do now.
It began with me feeling much like any young person after finishing high school. I wished to continue my education and go to some university, but I did not have the necessary resources to go to any conventional one in the area. With the uprising of the Internet and subsequent popularity of distance education, I decided to enroll in an Internet university which would supply me with all my courses by computer, from the convenience of my own home. All they required was having completed high school (which I had done), while most other universities also required some kind of transcripts or credits (which I did not have).
I made great plans to sign up for this university. It was not a very well-known institution, but hey, a degree is a degree, right? So I figured. As long as I had a Bachelor's, who cared where it was from? Sure, if you could go to a big-name institution, that would be better, but I would just have to do it some other way. I began saving money and working to earn more so I could enroll. Meanwhile, I read some of the literature on this university, which proudly declared that it was an accredited institution.
Some time later, soon before I was to enroll, I saw an ad for another Internet university which offered much the same kind of program. Although I had never heard of this one (or the previously-mentioned one), the name was pretentious enough to get me thinking about the signifiance of a university's title: What's in a name? Is a degree really a degree, no matter where you get it from? Is a B.A. from Harvard as valuable as a B.A. from Crazy Joe's House Of Bowling And Higher Education?
After thinking about this for a long time, I finally realized that it was not, and furthermore, that where you get a degree from is actually very important. If you sport a diploma from an internationally-recognized name like Harvard or Yale, you stand much better chances of getting a good job than a comparable degree from a place nobody has ever heard of.
And then I realized why people really get degrees. It is certainly not to learn anything. It is not even to get a degree; Not really. The real reason people go to a university is so they can have the name of a well-known institution on their resume. Thousands of people spend the usual four years in a course of study, working and studying very hard to be able to get their degree, but in a place which nobody has ever heard of. The result of all this time and money will be almost worthless. Remember when I mentioned the fictional University of Uzupugstan? What if such a university really existed, and it was furthermore a fully accredited university by an accreditor recognized by the Department of Education, and a person gave their all to study there and earn their degree? What would it be good for?
Finally I realized a simple, hard truth: When a prospective employer looks at your qualifications, and they see a degree, they are very unlikely to think about whether that university is accredited or not. They likely will not ask you. Instead, they will see one of two things: Degree from well-known, prestigious place like Harvard, or degree from a place I've never heard of. Even if you worked to get your degree legitimately, it will have all been for virtually nothing if it was at a community college or some other local institution. It is virtually worthless.
And so what all this means is you have basically two choices. You can get a degree from a well-known place, or from an unknown place. Since there are very few people who can get into one of the dozen or so Ivy Leagues, you are most likely going to have to choose a lesser-known name. And since you know that this name will be scorned by anyone who sees it, why would you want to invest four years of your life and thousands of dollars for that?
It was then that I vowed I would never do that, unless I can get into a nationally-recognized university. And since that is not likely to happen anytime soon, a degree from a "diploma mill" serves exactly the same purpose as one from a community college, for a lot less money. If you are able to go to Yale, I would encourage you to do so, as there are certainly very few people in the world who can. Only a select few are enrolled into each of those big-name universities each year, and their name on your resume will certainly attract lots of people wanting to hire you. But if you cannot, you are simply throwing away your money to get a "real" degree from an unknown place. Since employers rarely ask questions about the university named, do you think it will make any difference in their eyes whether it is an unknown accredited place, or an unknown non-accredted place? Hardly.
After writing all this, it seems only fair to admit that there are certainly many valid reasons why a person would want to spend years in a university. In fact, it may surprise some of you reading this that I have a degree. I actually went through the expected time and effort to get a "real" degree the old-fashioned way. Why, you may wonder, would I do this if I seem to be against formal education?
The answer is simple: I am not against education. Far from it. If there is one thing I want to emphasize, it's this point. In fact, it's because I am in favor of education that I've written this page. My point with all this is that a degree does NOT equate to an education, and vice-versa: Many people with degrees are incompetent, and many highly capable people lack degrees.
As for myself, I was blessed enough to have the opportunity to go to a recognized institution and study there. (The institution I attended is not exactly world-famous, but if you live in my local area, I can guarantee that you've heard of it.) I'll admit that I learned some things while I was there. However, I still believe that most of the things I learned are things I could have picked up just as effectively reading them out of a book at home.
However, I'm just a computer techie. The work I do doesn't hold anyone's life in the balance, or affect matters of national or financial security. But I personally know people who are civil and architectural engineers. Some of these people design buildings. Some of these people design bridges and roads that cars will drive over. These are people who need formal training; If you design a bridge, you'd darn well better be sure that it doesn't collapse underneath a line of traffic. I also know people who work in the medical field and who make decisions every day that can easily mean life or death for others. A sound, serious education needs to back these people up. Some kind of standard must be set to ensure that not just any yahoo who thinks he or she can do surgery can pick up a scalpel and start cutting people open.
The issue, then, becomes: What should these standards be, and who should set them? Of course there is no "right" answer to a question like this, because the judgement of humans is imperfect and fallible. What seems like a perfectly sound practice to one person may seem unsafe or inappropriate to another, even if both of the people in question are reasonable, well-educated, and well-intentioned. Such is the nature of humanity; we do the best we can with what we're given.
It naturally follows, then, that there will be faults in the system. Failures are inevitable in any system of formal education, medicine, or government. It is impossible to eliminate these flaws altogether, although it is reasonable to try and minimize them. However, the underlying point that everyone must understand is that a formal system does not necessarily guarantee security. A person with a Ph.D. isn't necessarily educated. A person who's a licensed M.D. isn't automatically a good doctor. And someone elected to a public position might not be the best candidate for the job.
Ultimately, then, it's all well and good to have these kinds of systems in place to try and regulate human affairs, but folks need to take these systems with a grain of salt. Don't trust your doctor with your medical state; He or she's only human, after all. Don't trust your teachers to tell you everything you need to know. They won't. (They can't, because learning is a lifelong process.) And don't believe everything you read or hear.
So if you have the opportunity to go to a recognized institution of higher education, go for it. You'll probably learn something, you'll likely increase your employment prospects, and you might even enjoy it at times. If you want to go to university to increase your education, you have my full encouragement. More power to you, friend. If you want to go to university so you can pride yourself on how much more qualified you are than the unwashed masses who didn't (or couldn't) go to university, then I will be happy to scoff at your pretended "education" and encourage prospective employers to never hire you.
Whether you're self-taught or do your learning in an institution, good luck and good learning to you all!
I do not usually get involved in huge discussions or debates over political/social issues, as I am not a political person. I do not consider myself much of an activist. However, this is a topic I feel very strongly about, which is why I created this page. I feel it is important to be able to supply this information/opinion to people, and I would deeply appreciate any relevant opinions or insights from other people reading this. If you have anything you wish to say to me, please e-mail me.