European Professional Doctorate

[Chankosumo]

And the key word is "possibly", as it completely leaves "possibly not" on the table. Google Translate for a thesis ... isn't that a bit too hardcore? Regarding Spanish specifically the AI may (may - the key word) be fairly capable, but I have seen how terrible the translation is in some languages with fewer native speaker population. If someone pulls this off it will be among the greatest educational achievements I have ever witnessed ...

[Messdiener]

Regarding the Slovak St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work, I did some research on this some time back. While I'm not an expert in Slovak accreditation, I recall that they are a recognized and accredited institution, but they mostly focus on health degrees, also dabbling in missionary studies.

They have an English site here, which mostly seems to exist to funnel people into a contact form: https://www.seu.sk/en

Their main site has quite the lengthy 'Yearbook' that contains information on all of their program offerings but is almost exclusively in Slovak: https://vssvalzbety.sk/userfiles/Studijn...022-23.pdf

Uploading the document to GoogleTranslate does do a solid enough job to understand the degree offerings as well as the courses within each degree program. Unfortunately, a quick look-through again shows only Bachelor and Master-level degree offerings, so this college may not be an option for someone looking to do doctoral studies.

[Tomas]

St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is fine. Trouble is the claimed cooperation with the Cosmopolitan Institute. After few more searches, it seems CIE has more websites, I´d say this:

Cooperation with St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is just a loose wording for some random kind of cooperation. They also claim to cooperate with plenty of official Czech institutions including public universities, that's a red flag alone. At best, maybe they attended some conferences organized at those institutions, maybe they organized seminars for some administrative staff of those institutions, maybe some professors of those institutions have a gig with them in their spare time.


On their (CIE) website they mention: "CIE is accredited by the professional organization Association of Adult Education Institutions in the Czech Republic (AIVD), which is part of the internationally recognized European Association For The Education Of Adults (EAEA). Meeting the accreditation conditions means that we had to comply with the complex quality requirements for the award of the certification, which authorizes us to award the international degrees of BBA, MBA, MPA, MHA, MPH, LLM, LLD, MSc, DBA and Ed.D."

That means those degrees are not from St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work by any chance. They are from CIE alone.
Also, their accreditation claim is intentional misrepresentation and nonsense, AIVD is not an accreditation organization but professional body where one can become member after paying 200 USD per year, and it represents companies that organize adult professional non-academic education.
CIE also claims to be accredited by "American Association for Higher Education and Accreditation".

[Unlucky]

That said, what kind of degree are you looking for? Just LLD or what? Your post isn't very clear.

I am looking for an affordable doctoral-lever training on Law (international law or human rights law), Political Science, or Strategic Leadership (that has less common elements with Business Administration). Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Basically, for myself, I'm planning to do the double doctoral degree here, it might be something you're interested in especially if you understand Spanish: https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Thread-...#pid399607

Thank you for introducing me to the Emagister site. Could you please share more information about its associated doctoral schools, such as Campus Universitario Europeo and UPE Universidad de los Pueblos de Europa, among others mentioned. 

I forgot to mention, regarding law, recognized upper level titles in law behind masters are PhD (same as PhD everywhere else), and JUDr. JUDr is "small doctorate"

Interesting. Could you please give me some examples of schools that offer online JUDr training?

St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is fine.

This Slovak school is sometimes referred to as a College, while other databases call it a University. I don’t speak the language, so I wonder if it’s the same thing? Also, I still don’t understand whether the school has the granting power to certify doctoral-level studies similar to that of the FVES/Jagiellońska relationship. If so, through which Czech school(s) (as apparently CIE is out of the list)? Nonetheless, by coincidence I learned that St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work (by this exact name) is indeed approved in my country’s list of foreign universities in Slovakia, meaning that its degrees are fully recognized and equated if somebody wants to work for the government or continue their education here.

[Tomas]

Interesting. Could you please give me some examples of schools that offer online JUDr training?

IMHO it can't be done online and there is no training/studying involved (except self-study for the exam). It involves writing a dissertation and in-person exam on specified topic. Fairly inexpensive - fees start from around $300. Couldn't find evidence of possibility to do the exam in other languages besides Czech. Still might be possible as conditions depend on the school (ie. different schools might have different conditions). It's their extra income. So perhaps they could be open to discussion. The topics of the exam, besides Czech law, also seem to include topics accessible to professionals form other countries - eg. European law, Roman law.
If I have not missed anything, it's only offered by these universities in Czech republic:
https://www.prf.cuni.cz/statni-rigorozni...42254.html
https://www.law.muni.cz/content/en/pro-u...ni-rizeni/
https://www.pf.upol.cz/studenti/studium/...ni-rizeni/
https://www.fpr.zcu.cz/cs/Admission/Rigo...index.html
First two most prestigious, last one not much, but all are state universities. Law study is fairly regulated here, these unis deliver like 98% of country lawyers, rest is from foreign schools. Also, some of them actually have English study programs (in person), so maybe they shouldn't be closed to the idea of JUDr exam in English...
(However, if I didn't mention it earlier, JUDr. title from legal point of view is still master level title, equivalent to Master of Law, it's not doctoral level.)

This Slovak school is sometimes referred to as a College, while other databases call it a University. I don’t speak the language, so I wonder if it’s the same thing? Also, I still don’t understand whether the school has the granting power to certify doctoral-level studies similar to that of the FVES/Jagiellońska relationship. If so, through which Czech school(s) (as apparently CIE is out of the list)? Nonetheless, by coincidence I learned that St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work (by this exact name) is indeed approved in my country’s list of foreign universities in Slovakia, meaning that its degrees are fully recognized and equated if somebody wants to work for the government or continue their education here.

They are university level as they have Phd degree granting powers (however, only in Public health, Laboratory investigation methods in healthcare/Health science, Nursing, Social work, Missionary, charitable and development activities, Physiotherapy). 
They don't have any undergraduate, graduate nor postgraduate degrees in law in Slovak republic. Because of that, they can't offer any law degrees (Mgr., Phd, JUDr) in Czech republic. (Of course they still could offer eg. LLD or LLM, but that would be unaccredited/completely outside of local academic systems, moreover I don't see any evidence that they offer such degrees.)
In Czech republic, they offer undergraduate and graduate degrees through their local branch in Pribram: https://www.vssvalzbety.sk/pracoviska/de...ka/pribram
and Prague: https://www.hitspraha.cz/ (That one is in cooperation with some institute that alone is not university nor college, but shall be fine as they are listed on ministry website. That institute HITS Praha probably only provides facilities and services. )
Here it's possible to check which foreign schools are allowed/recognized to offer degrees in Czech republic (offical website of ministry of education):
https://www.msmt.cz/vzdelavani/vysoke-sk...r-3?lang=1
(by clicking on tab "4. Zahranicni vysoke skoly")
Generally, these foreign universities should only offer programs that they have accredition for in their home countries.
Or here is an official registry, not in English either, but better structure and more details:
https://regvssp.msmt.cz/registrvssp/zvssp.aspx

[Messdiener]

St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is fine. Trouble is the claimed cooperation with the Cosmopolitan Institute. After few more searches, it seems CIE has more websites, I´d say this:

Cooperation with St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is just a loose wording for some random kind of cooperation. They also claim to cooperate with plenty of official Czech institutions including public universities, that's a red flag alone. At best, maybe they attended some conferences organized at those institutions, maybe they organized seminars for some administrative staff of those institutions, maybe some professors of those institutions have a gig with them in their spare time.

But if St. Elizabeth doesn't offer any doctoral-level courses, I don't imagine they can teach nor grant doctoral degrees.

[Unlucky]

But if St. Elizabeth doesn't offer any doctoral-level courses, I don't imagine they can teach nor grant doctoral degrees.

Attached is a sample of the diploma supposedly issued by both CIE/Elizabeth collectively (from CIE website). But as you and Tomas noted, I think their alleged collaboration and granting power are questionable because there’s no evidence of such relationship in Elizabeth’s website. Also, I have emailed CIE many times before to ask basic questions about their program’s structure and some documentations, but I never heard back from them. This ambiguity even rubs more salt into the wound for them.

---

(However, if I didn't mention it earlier, JUDr. title from legal point of view is still master level title, equivalent to Master of Law, it's not doctoral level.)

Yes, I realized from your earlier comments that JUDr isn’t a doctoral-level program, but I think it would be an interesting educational journey as one would still have to produce an appropriate thesis and take a comprehensive exam on a related topic.


To narrow down the list of findings of (legitimate and suspicious) schools that offer “LLD” professional trainings, we have:

1. Collegium Humanum (Poland) - Best fit so far, albeit a bit expensive 
   
2. FVES/Jagiellonian (Czech/Poland)
   
3. CIE/Elizabeth (Czech/Slovakia)
   
4. European Business & Management Institute (Unknown) - Know nothing about this school, but it seems to be a “degree mill”: https://www.ebmi.eu/programs/lld-corporate-law/
   

Any more suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you all,

[rachel83az]

And the key word is "possibly", as it completely leaves "possibly not" on the table. Google Translate for a thesis ... isn't that a bit too hardcore? Regarding Spanish specifically the AI may (may - the key word) be fairly capable, but I have seen how terrible the translation is in some languages with fewer native speaker population. If someone pulls this off it will be among the greatest educational achievements I have ever witnessed ...

Agreed. I would not trust Google Translate or DeepL with a doctoral-level paper unless I was at least B1 (preferably B2) and just needed a little "help". If you're not at least partially fluent, you're going to miss the glaringly obvious mistakes that automatic translation sometimes makes.

Warning, some foul language... because that's what GT does: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/15-be...late-fails

Admittedly, GT and DeepL are better now than what was possible 5 years ago. But they're still not great. And they make some very obvious mistakes. Obvious if you're a native speaker or relatively fluent, that is.

[Tomas]

St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is fine. Trouble is the claimed cooperation with the Cosmopolitan Institute. After few more searches, it seems CIE has more websites, I´d say this:

Cooperation with St. Elizabeth College of Health and Social Work is just a loose wording for some random kind of cooperation. They also claim to cooperate with plenty of official Czech institutions including public universities, that's a red flag alone. At best, maybe they attended some conferences organized at those institutions, maybe they organized seminars for some administrative staff of those institutions, maybe some professors of those institutions have a gig with them in their spare time.

But if St. Elizabeth doesn't offer any doctoral-level courses, I don't imagine they can teach nor grant doctoral degrees.

That's regarding law degrees (because they can grant doctoral degrees in other fields, just not law): they could easily grant LLD, if they wished, as LLD is not a doctoral degree in Slovak nor Czech republic, LLD is nothing there, regading degree granting powers for LLD title in Czech republic I myself have same full degree granting powers as that college. 
However, they wouldn't risk their reputation with such shady business, and I'm 100% sure they themselves don't grant LLD degrees either.
The activity in Czech republic looks like a cooperation between a private business CIE and head of one of the many branches of St. Elizabeth College in Slovak republic, namely in Dunajska streda city. I can only guess but it's a shady side-business of that person (undersigned on the above diploma). It's not a cooperation with official branch of St.Elizabetch College in Czech republic (at least CIE claims it's with the Dunajska streda branch).
If he was a head of a branch or faculty of Czech public university and this came to light, he would be gone or at least demoted instantly. Eventhough not illegal, it would seriously damage reputation of the university here. 
(FVES is a bit different thing though. Their reputation is non-existant and they can afford the shady side-business offering diplomas certified by a known accreditation mill and nobody to fire as it's most likely the activity of the owner of that local faculty. Yet at least I can imagine they might have some able teaching staff, it's likely not that they are just selling the paper.)

[Unlucky]

FVES is a bit different thing though. Their reputation is non-existant and they can afford the shady side-business offering diplomas certified by a known accreditation mill and nobody to fire as it's most likely the activity of the owner of that local faculty.

I recently experienced a highly unprofessional interaction with FVES due to discrepancies in pricing and misinformation regarding their programs. They seem to determine charges based on perceived geographic location and assumed income. They justified this by stating they “have different price policies for different regions, this is normal everywhere in the World due to e.g., infrastructure” (their exact words).

More importantly, I noted the inconsistencies between their email content and website information, specifically concerning doctoral thesis requirements, and sought clarification. Regrettably, my inquiries were met with insults and threats of email spamming should I persist. (They literally called me “crazy” and threatened to “spam” my email account if I sent one more message.)

Subsequently, I reached out to the rector of the main Polish school on two occasions to address this ethical concern, but regrettably, my complaints were outright ignored. This appears to align with Tomas’s observation that the main Polish school does not maintain authority over its branches like FVES, essentially acting as a “franchise,” permitting other entities to operate under its name without intervening in operational matters.

I’m sharing this to ensure potential students are apprised of the possible treatment they might encounter.