Former name Politecnico di Lugano Established 1987 (1987) Director Massimo Silvestri | Type Unaccredited Parent institution ISSEA SA | |
Rector Fausto Cardano (previously: Gregory Overton Smith) | ||
The Politecnico di Studi Aziendali (Polytechnic University of Business Studies), formerly also referred to as Politecnico di Lugano (Polytechnic University of Lugano), is an unaccredited distance learning, proprietary, for-profit university located in Zug, Switzerland (previously: Roveredo, Agno, Lugano) operated by ISSEA SA.
Contents
Degrees
The school has no campus and issues degrees based on online learning courses and life experiences. Candidates for a degree are usually required to discuss a project. It issues Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees. Despite being based in Switzerland, the school has Italian landlines and the personnel only speak Italian because the degrees are offered mostly to Italians, as unaccredited universities are illegal in Italy.
Legal status
Its parent company, ISSEA SA, can operate because of the economic freedom and scientific freedom guaranteed in Title 2 of the Swiss Federal Constitution (art. 27 and art. 20) but the institution is not accredited by the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS) nor by the Department of Education, Culture and Sports of Ticino. ISSEA SA has also been denied accreditation by the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland. The same federal court permanently banned ISSEA and its Politecnico di studi aziendali from the European Erasmus Programme because of their unaccredited status. Since January 1, 2015, the usage of the words "polytechnic" and/or "university" by unaccredited institutions has been declared illegal by the Canton of Ticino, which is why the Politecnico di Studi Aziendali had to leave Ticino.
In 1993, the Italian Ministry of Education included the Politecnico di studi aziendali in a list of private institutions which are not allowed to issue valid academic qualifications.
ISSEA is a member of the general assembly of EMUNI University so it can receive European public funds (such as €50,000 in 2012)—although Switzerland is not in the European Union—and is certified by SQS.ch with registry number 34044.
In 2016, the Canton of Grisons' parliament asked to stop the company from operating even in the new location. A few months later, the unaccredited school moved to the Canton of Zug.
In the same year, in the tribunal of the Canton of Ticino, the company was convicted of unauthorized use of protected names ("university", "polytechnic" etc.)
Other names
After the Swiss authorities declared the name "Politecnico di studi aziendali" illegal, the institution's ads started to use different names as well, such as Polotecnico di studi aziendali (one vowel was changed), Unipsa, Issea, C.I.S.M.A.D. (Centro Italiano Studi Multidisciplinari a Distanza, www.cismad.it).
In 2016, after moving to Zugo, the institution also started to use the name "Università telematica privata Unisanraffaele - Unise" (www.unise.ch) while maintaining all the previous names. The new name may be misleading because it closely resembles "Università telematica San Raffaele" — where "San" and "Raffaele" (Saint Raphael) are separated by a space — which is a real accredited Italian online university.