Lazar’s educational background has been shrouded in mystery and confusion, with numerous myths and rumors surrounding his academic achievements. Many people seem more interested in discussing the degrees he supposedly didn’t earn and the schools he didn’t attend, rather than focusing on the schools he actually did attend. In this article, I aim to shed light on Lazar’s educational record based on the available evidence to the best of my ability.
It has been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that Bob Lazar worked for Fairchild Industries from 1976 until the 1980s and at Los Alamos National Labs in late 1982 as a contract technician through Kirk-Meyer. Considering these facts Lazar had to have at least some formal education before starting to work at Los Alamos Labs.
Stanton T. Friedman’s research indicates that Lazar attended Pierce Junior College, where he took mostly Electronics classes. Friedman even spoke to one of Lazar’s teachers at the college, named Duxler, who confirmed teaching a student named Robert Lazar in the late 1970s.
To further investigate Lazar’s educational background, I made a formal request to Pierce Junior College for any information they had on Lazar. With their permission, I am able to share the following information:
Admit term of Fall 1976
It looks like he was associated with LAPC from Fall 1976 to Spring 1979
Mostly took Electronics classes
Doesn’t look like any degrees or certificates were taken
I will be using these statements from Pierce and treat them as fact, but I will not take ambiguous statements such as “associated with” for granted or assume that they mean something specific. Similarly, I will not assume that the statement that Lazar “mostly took electronics classes” proves that he was aiming for an associate degree in electronics unless it is corroborated with evidence.
I would like to express my gratitude to the librarians at Pierce College Library for their invaluable assistance during my research. I have been provided with several digital copies of pages from their course catalogs of 1976 to 1978 which were indispensable for my work.
Based on these catalogs, we can make informed guesses about Lazar’s educational plans. However, without verifiable student records, an absolute determination cannot be made.
According to the catalogs, William Duxler taught the courses Physics for Engineers and Scientists 37, 38, 39. These courses were not part of an associate degree program, but rather were intended for transfer students who wished to attend Cal State Northridge or the University of California Los Angeles. While some electronics classes were transferrable through the California State University system, they were not typically required for transfer programs targeting these institutions.
One issue with the hypothesis that Lazar was pursuing an Electronics associate degree is that the program required the acquisition of a certificate first, which would have taken two semesters or a year to complete. Since we know that Lazar did not receive any certificates from Pierce Junior College, it is difficult to understand why he would have remained at Pierce for an alleged two to three years to pursue an associate degree if he failed to complete the mandatory certificate program for Electronics. Furthermore, it is unclear why he would have taken Physics courses if he was failing Electronics, and why Pierce College does not have a record of what specific degree program he was enrolled in.
Duxler’s schedule strongly suggests that Lazar studied Physics starting from the Fall of 1976, although he may have initially taken the night classes. Assuming that Lazar was aiming to transfer from Pierce and taking courses to achieve that goal, I can make informed speculations based on his interests, Duxler’s physics classes, and the course catalog. Bob Lazar publicly stated that he attended Northridge “for some classes” after Pierce, suggesting that he may have transferred to Cal State Northridge. However, according to the transfer section of the Course catalog, a student would have needed to obtain a certificate to transfer to Northridge, and since Lazar did not receive any certificates from Pierce, we can assume that he did not transfer there. This does not mean that he could not have taken “some classes” at Northridge while attending Pierce College.
While students transferring to CSUN were provided with a certificate, those transferring to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) were not required to obtain one. Therefore, if Lazar was taking classes to transfer to a university and fulfilled the requirements, he could only have done so by aiming for UCLA. There were several transfer programs that required the completion of Duxler’s classes, but the most likely one is the program named “Engineering Curriculum”.
There are multiple factors that suggest that Bob Lazar may have been aiming to transfer to UCLA and work towards a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Sciences and Engineering there. The transfer program he was likely involved in would have taken about two years to complete, although it was technically possible to finish in as few as three semesters.
The majority of classes in the transfer curriculum were from the Mathematics department, which amounted to about one semester’s worth of credits (18). However, if Lazar completed more classes in Electronics than any other department, as suggested by Pierce College, he would have needed to complete more than 18 credits in that area. This could have been achieved over the course of one semester. It is also possible that Lazar was taking Electronics classes alongisde the transfer program, since he was working as a electronics technitian at the time, but he may have failed to earn all of the required credits in time for a transfer in 1978. Alternatively, he may have only taken the Electronics classes after failing to transfer to UCLA in 1978, if he did indeed fail.
While there is no concrete evidence to prove or disprove whether or not Lazar attended UCLA or attempted to transfer there, there is a piece of circumstantial evidence that supports this theory.
In 1990, Lazar’s probation officer wrote a report in which she stated that Lazar claimed to have earned a bachelor’s degree from Pacifica University in 1978. This is impossible as Lazar did not begin his higher education until 1976 at Pierce. Nevertheless, Lazar’s friend Gene Huff stated that:
He told her he took an English course and a history course from there. Bob needed these courses to get complete the requirements for a degree. He was simply taking the course of least resistance to achieve his goals. He had taken enough courses in science related subjects mathematics, physics, electronics, technical writing, etc., but lacked a couple of courses which are required to assemble the other courses into a degree. (Source: otherhand.org)
I find it difficult to accept this explanation because if Lazar was lacking courses for a degree, why was he obtaining them in 1978 when he could only receive a bachelor’s degree in 1980 at the earliest? If Lazar obtained these courses in 1978 while attending UCLA, he would have had to acquire them during the first quarter of his studies, which seems a bit premature. However, if he obtained the Pacifica classes while at Pierce, he could have taken them during his fourth semester, before transferring to UCLA.
One may argue that the date in the police report is not reliable. However, it’s important to note that Pacifica University was a diploma mill that shut down in April of 1978, so Lazar could not have purchased his classes after that date.
We soon discovered that diploma mills were a thriving industry from coast to coast. After looking over the crowded field, we decided to concentrate on California Pacifica University in Los Angeles… Sinclair was talking himself into serious trouble, and he must have understood that, because he was no stranger to legal difficulty. He already had served time in three states for mail fraud, and a few days after we broadcast “A Matter of Degrees” in April 1978, he was arrested and once again charged with that crime. (Source: Between you and Me)
Let’s revisit Gene Huff’s claim that Lazar took a History and English course at Pacifica. Consider the following: there are two mandatory requirements in the transfer program for UCLA that every student must fulfill before transferring, and those are History and English. These courses could have also helped meeting Breadth requirements which were also mandatory for anyone transfering to UCLA.
It should be noted that in Gene Huff’s email, he only mentioned Electronics, Mathematics, and Physics. This suggests that Lazar may have taken Electronics classes as his elective, instead of Engineering or Computer Science. Although UCLA does offer credits for such classes and students aiming to be engineers do have the option to choose their own electives before transferring, it cannot be proven whether Lazar was allowed to choose Electronics as his elective or not. Since Pierce has suggested that Lazar had association with the college for a third year, it is possible that Lazar was enrolled simultaneously at UCLA and Pierce to take more Electronics classes. Concurrent enrollment was allowed in some cases at UCLA in 1978.
If Lazar requested a transfer from Pierce College in November of 1977 to start his education in the Fall 1978 quarter at UCLA, then it would have made sense to get the credits for History and English in early 1978. This seems plausible, however it is possible that UCLA did not accept Lazar’s transfer request in 1978 and did so only a year later or not at all. UCLA makes its admissions decisions in March, so it would not have known about Pacifica’s closure in April and may not have had a reason to deny Lazar’s admission.
There is no evidence that Lazar went to UCLA or earned a degree from there. Mathematically speaking, Lazar could have earned a bachelor’s degree by 1980 or 1981. However, on his marriage certificate of July 27, 1980, Lazar claimed that his highest school grade completed was 12, which rules out the possibility of earning a degree in Spring 1980.
Additionally, I have checked a private copy of the UCLA yearbook for 1981 and confirmed that no person with the name of Robert Lazar was included in there.
You can find part 2 here: https://medium.com/@weaponized/bob-lazar-revelations-part-2-4c7c8d925930
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