Politecnico di Studi Aziendali


The Politecnico di Studi Aziendali, formerly also referred to as Politecnico di Lugano, is an unaccredited distance learning, proprietary, for-profit university located in Zug, Switzerland operated by ISSEA SA.

Degrees

The school has no campus and issues degrees based on life experiences and optional online learning courses. Although the director/founder is not a member of the Swiss Bar or Italian Bar, he introduces himself as an attorney, using the Italian "avv." title. The school 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. The institution is accredited by the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities 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 —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

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 or Polo Tecnico di studi aziendali, Unipsa, I.S.S.E.A. sa Scuola Universitaria Privata a Distanza, C.I.S.M.A.D., unisupdi.ch or Supsi.
In 2016, after moving to Zug, the institution also started to use the name "Università telematica privata Unisanraffaele - Unise" while maintaining all the previous names. The new name may be misleading because it closely resembles "Università telematica San Raffaele"—where "San" and "Raffaele" are separated by a space—which is a real accredited Italian online university.
An old website called "Private University Consortium", created in 1999 and deactivated in 2006, also sold degrees from Gibraltar under the name of "Università Mons Calpe", from Colorado under the name of "American Business School LLC", and from Panama under the name of "University Europanamense". The consortium was supposed to be headquartered in the same office as the Politecnico di studi aziendali in Ticino. All the institutions were unaccredited and all the offices no longer exist.

Univolta Università Telematica Privata Alessandro Volta

As of 2017, the institution is also being advertised as "Univolta Università Telematica Privata Alessandro Volta", using the same office in Zug and the same domain name as the Politecnico di Studi Aziendali — whose name has been declared illegal by Swiss authorities — as well as "Atena Unitelematica scuola universitaria www.uniatena.ch". At the same time, www.unipsa.net is being used by the aforementioned "Polo Tecnico di studi aziendali".