Fake Degrees: Exposing the Diploma Mill Problem
by Christina Couch
"Fake credentials are serious. This is a big problem." Imagine hiring a lawyer or visiting a doctor whose degree was obtained not after years of schooling and hard work, but by shelling out the right amount of money to a diploma mill.
...exposed more than 80 fake universities, including St. Regis University ...
...you can purchase credentials for literally any and every profession as well as your very own fake transcript, recommendations, and personalized diploma mill operation to go with it...
... the enormous reach of St. Regis University's illegitimacy (more than 6,000 fake college degrees--40 percent of them to foreign nationals seeking entry into the United States--were conferred) ...
... bringing incidents of scholastic fraud to light....
... Gollin's continued fight against worthless diplomas has prevented many scam-artist doctors, surgeons, security personnel, engineers, and Ph.D.s from entering the job market....
There's a book about all of this: Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas
For Bennett Packman, a physical education teacher in Miami-Dade County, Florida, doing something meant temporary unemployment. When Packman was asked to teach a driver's education course he was not certified to teach, he was encouraged by the school principal to skip the 100 hours required to gain the proper certification and instead enroll in a one-day course through a distance education provider, Move On Towards Education and Training (MOTET). When Packman became suspicious of MOTET's validity, he refused to enroll and requested a transfer to a different high school. When his request was denied, he refused to go to work. "I couldn't work with someone who would trap me into signing student waivers--it would be fraud on my part," he says.
MOTET was investigated eventually, and officials discovered that the organization had provided false credentials to more than 650 teachers in Florida. Additionally, through partnerships with at least five colleges and universities, MOTET had awarded illegitimate degrees to more than 750 students, including two congressmen and one state senator. Today, MOTET has been shut down, and its founder is serving prison time.
Packman says that despite the turmoil, he's glad he stepped forward. "I want kids to have teachers that they feel are role models, that they can emulate," he comments.
..."When I started this job in 1999, the only two states that had laws about what degrees were legitimate were Oregon and New Jersey," Contreras states...
...tarnished the reputation of legitimate schools...
However, any degree-granting institution worth attending should be accredited by at least one neutral authority. Accrediting bodies such as the American Bar Association, American Dental Association, and lesser-known organizations such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges provide independent assessment of the classes and degrees offered by schools. The U.S. Department of Education's office of postsecondary education has a Web site listing various accrediting organizations.
If it seems too easy to earn the degree a particular school is offering, it's probably not worth the paper it's printed on.
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Wow, great article ... it just doesn't pay to take shortcuts!!!!!!!!!!
Funny thing is .. next to the article, was a list of "University Partners", which was a list of online degree "schools" ... one of them being the heavily advertised University of Phoenix Online (which I don't know if it's a degree mill or not), and it listed Regis University which sounds a lot like the St. Regis University mentioned in the article. I know that the list was just advertising, because I recognized it for what it was, and they were outside links. To someone else it might look like part of the article. But why advertise something that's contrary to the message you're trying to get out? Actually, http://encarta.msn.com is HEAVY with advertising.
