American University of Technology may resemble a University at first glance. There is a "campus" of sorts, sitting along the sea, 20 miles north of Beirut, Lebanon. There is a website, www.aut. Edu., displaying a host of course offerings and majors. There is a faculty, complete with profiles on line.
But, it is all smoke and mirrors, the creation of Ghada Hinain, a Lebanese Diva who lives a jet-set life style and who does not pay her faculty and staff.
AUT only has two full time faculty members in the College of Arts & Humanities. The rest are part-timers, who have not been paid in months.
Salaries, when they are paid, are paid in cash.
Hinain offered me a position last Fall, with paid airfare and good salary to head the Arts & Humanities department. It was a disaster from the start.
There is no Academic Council, no Deans, no academic direction. Every micro-managed decision from course offerings to who is going to use the only university ladder is made by Madam Hinain.
The local hires stay on, hoping from day to day that Hinain will change her ways. They go for months with no paycheck, living off of family hand-outs, caught in the free-for-all economy of post war Lebanon that allows such human rights abuses as being dished out by Ghada Hinain and her shadowy husband, Marcel.
How this Mom & Pop university ever gained any credibility I do not know. Empire State College (SUNY) in New York has partnered up with the Hinains offering US degrees online to AUT students, giving the Hinain's a piece of the tutition action. What Empire and the Hinains do not disclose is the Empire State online degree is worthless in Lebanon.
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