University of Phoenix uses Mississippi State University building in their banner ad

I don’t normally pay much attention to banner ads, especially for diploma mills, but this one caught my eye:

I thought to myself, “That looks familiar.  It’s almost as if I have been there before…”

I have:

Swalm Hall, on the Mississippi State University campus.  This is about half of a mile away from where I work part time as a graduate researcher at the MSU Center for Computer Security Research while I finish up my Ph.D.  As an undergraduate, I had a technical writing class in Swalm, and attended entrepreneurialship lectures in the auditorium.  While it’s a relatively new building, built while I was an undergrad, it was designed as a replica of another, older building on campus, Lee Hall:

These two buildings face each other, on opposite sides of the drill field.  I had actually convinced myself that the University of Phoenix was using an image of Lee Hall, and was halfway through writing this blog post, when I went looking for an image of Swalm Hall to give the post some character.  In the process, I stumbled across the picture of Swalm above, which appears to be the exact image they used (or very close).

We can’t quite offer a 13-month degree here, but at least we don’t have to claim buildings from other campuses .  If you’re ever in the area and want the grand tour, let me know.

• Original flash version of the ad
• Blog post where I found the pic of Swalm, and probably where the “artist” for the ad found it too