The Real Story Behind Danny Sheehan and Those $15,000 UFO "PhD" Degrees

When UFO lawyer Danny Sheehan—he of the bizarre conspiracy theories and erstwhile representation of UFO stars like Lue Elizondo—launched a UFO think tank, the New Paradigm Institute, and immediately started fundraising efforts, it was clear that it would not be his last effort to turn flying saucers into cash. However, a recent Substack newsletter from Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning falsely implies that Sheehan recently launched a fake university to extract cash from gullible UFO believers. The truth is a little more complicated, even if the result is the same.

​Ubiquity University is indeed a dubiously accredited “university” charging students between $5,000 and $16,500 for advanced “degrees” in “wisdom studies,” various mystical and pseudoscientific ideas, and “extraterrestrial studies.”
 
If you are budget-conscious, you can opt for the less-rigorous certificate program in extraterrestrial studies, which requires only eight “micro courses” and an essay. (Dunning wrongly claims the certificate as the PhD program.) Frankly, I’m not sure how much more non-evidence one can learn in a full UFO PhD program vs. a certificate program. Any multiple of zero is still zero.
 
As Brian Dunning noted, an important problem with Ubiquity University is that it claims to be “a registered university authorized to award academic degrees” when it is not regionally accredited by an organization recognized by the Department of Education. (Similar problems under New York State law doomed the deceptively named Trump University.)
 
Ubiquity University claims to have awarded more than 300 “degrees,” meaning that the school may have raked in more than $4 million for their worthless diplomas. That’s not all that impressive, since the school was founded by Matthew Fox under another name in 1995 and has been actively recruiting students in its current form since 2012.
 
In the United States, the government does not regulate universities. However, the U.S. Department of Education recognizes several regional accrediting organizations that evaluate schools and certify that they meet generally recognized academic standards. Schools thus accredited issue degrees that are considered fully accredited, or, for lack of a better word, “real.” Like several Bible schools and scam colleges, Ubiquity University has a lengthy page explaining why they have rejected the regional accreditation process, claiming that it is a tool of oppression that suppresses alternative ways of knowing. Ubiquity goes further, creating its own accreditation body unrecognized by the Department of Education to issue its own “accreditation.”
 
Indeed, Ubiquity University’s model appears to be unaccredited Bible colleges, simply substituting New Age mysticism for Biblical fundamentalism. The emphasis of global “wisdom” traditions, consciousness, and various New Age spiritualities marks Ubiquity as a mirror image of a Bible school.
 
The original 1995 school was registered with the California Bureau of Private and Postsecondary Education, which has an oversight role in that state. This is the origin of their claim to be “registered.” However, Ubiquity does not appear in a search of the bureau’s current records.
 
The connection with Danny Sheehan comes from Ubiquity’s recent partnership with Sheehan’s New Paradigm Institute to offer coursework, certifications, and degrees in “extraterrestrial studies” under Ubiquity’s name but through programs taught and administered by New Paradigm.
 
Either way, the resulting “degree” carries the same value as a Bible school fake sheepskin to the world outside the New Age-UFO bubble.