Although it was shut down in 1984 by a court order, it is most notable today as the institution from which Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard obtained an honorary "Doctorate of Philosophy" in the 1950s.
In 2009, the British government released a series of documents from the California Department of Education stating that Sequoia was never approved nor recognized as a school.
"[24] At the time it had outlets in both California and Oklahoma, and was still offering degrees in osteopathic medicine, religious studies, hydrotherapy, and physical sciences.
referring to an equally unearned civil engineering qualification supposedly obtained from George Washington University, from which he had dropped out in his second year of studies).
Newton, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, have all sought to find the exact laws of human behavior in order to help Mankind.
Doctor Hubbard, educated in advanced physics and higher mathematics and also a student of Sigmund Freud and others, began his present researches thirty years ago at George Washington University.
[28]Hubbard also envisaged using Sequoia to bestow a variety of "degrees" on students of his proposed "Freudian Foundation of America", a scheme which he put forward in April 1953 but which apparently never got off the ground.
The board of enquiry that produced the report was suspicious of the degree's validity and, in its words, caused inquiries to be made as to the identity of this university and was informed by the Australian Consul-General in San Francisco that the Sequoia University was a privately endowed institution which was not accredited, that is, not registered with the Western Association of Schools and colleges, which is the accrediting body for the west coast of America.
He issued a policy letter in February 1966 defending his degree: "I was a Ph.D., Sequoia's [sic] University and therefore a perfectly valid doctor under the laws of the State of California".
(The latter claim was not true, as Sequoia had never been accredited by the State, nor had it any chance of being — as Christopher Evans notes, it "used to be well known to quacks on the West Coast as a degree mill where 'qualifications' could be bought for suitable sums.
[35] Similarly, biographies published by the Church of Scientology also continued to mention the "doctorate"; the 1973 book Mission Into Time, for instance, claims that Many awards and honors were offered and conferred on L. Ron Hubbard.
][citation needed] Sequoia University is also part of a controversy surrounding the credentials of Kelly Segraves, director of the Creation Science Research Center, a creationist organization.
[52] In 1954, actor turned propagandist Edward Leo Delaney published his first book "False Freedom" through Sequoia University Press.