These Degrees Are a Fraud
Distance learning has become too much of a good thing. Illegal diploma mills have, in the past, figured prominently in the undermining of high-quality e-learning. Consumers shopping for online degrees have a volatile combination of career zeal and lack of know-how when it comes to online degree scams. What’s legitimate and what is not is often alarmingly misunderstood. Perfectly reputable professionals have been duped into believing they could buy a degree in return for very little work. There is no reason to remain ignorant to the diploma mill business.
Life Experience Degrees
Avoid, like The Plague, any online business selling you a degree based on your “life experience.” Hard sells such as this come from organizations that sound like reputable colleges or universities—names like Randford University, Harrington University, and Hamilton University—all illegitimate. The associated website may look the part as well. This smoke and mirrors game has been played over and over again and is responsible for the sale of hundreds of illegitimate “degrees” to supposedly ignorant individuals that actually believed their job and personal experiences qualified them for any type of real college degree. Alarmingly enough, a few of those duped individuals have worked in high-level government jobs.
The marketing jargon is certainly convincing—why shouldn’t your past job experience count for something? Unfortunately, higher education in the U.S. has very specific metrics assigned to college degrees: course credits, GPAs, and hands-on
skills tests.
skills tests.
How Do I Find Out if an Online College is a Degree Mill?
The Department of Education publishes a list of regional and national accrediting agencies, which it sanctions, as well as a short list of distance education accreditors. Any others not on a DOE list are unrecognized by U.S. higher education. Accreditation used to indicate a high-quality institution, which had particular academic criteria to which it must adhere. Now, the term has been used so often, for illegal purposes that it may indicate illegitimate accreditors. Use the U.S. Department of Education information to double-check any institution that claims accreditation.
Degree Mill Warning Signs
Characteristics of illegitimate degree mills will bear them out in the end. Some indicators of possible diploma mill practices:
- “Life Experience Degrees” and other suspect promises.
- 24-hour turnaround on “applications.”
- Online form applications that ask little about previous schools, GPA, or previous transcripts.
- Promises of degrees in “as little as two months.”
- Discounted prices and price quotes.
- Terms such as “real,” “guaranteed,” and “accredited,” are no indication of legitimacy.
Good advice when choosing an online degree provider is to look for reputable colleges and universities. Explore websites; make sure degrees are matched to real world requirements. For example, online Associates degrees may take students up to two years to complete; Bachelors degrees, four years and more; Bachelors Completion programs, two or more years; Masters degrees between one and three years; and Ph.D. degrees between two and three years.
Online degrees have achieved renewed legitimacy, but degree mills persist. Until everyone knows how and where to find the right information relative to authentic degree granting institutions, there remain risks.