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Diploma mill

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A diploma mill (also known as a degree mill) is an organization which awards academic degrees and diplomas with very little or no academic study and without recognition by official accrediting bodies. Such organizations are unaccredited by standards of traditional institutions, but they often claim accreditation by non-standard organizations set up for the purposes of providing a veneer of authenticity. Many diploma mills claim to offer these qualifications on the basis of life experience but most of them require a payment to issue a diploma/degree certificate without having to provide them with any educational documents; they do not evaluate one's academic potential. They are used to fraudulently claim academic credentials for use in securing employment (e.g., a schoolteacher might get a degree from one in order to advance to superintendent). These issues are described by author and diploma uninformed twit Steve Levicoff in his work "Name it and Frame it" and he has list available online of 75 steps to spot a degree mill [1].

Common attributes of diploma mills

Diploma mills often have names that are deliberately chosen to sound confusingly similar to prestigious accredited institutions (preventing such confusion is the purpose of trademark law, but the mills strive to barely avoid this legal recourse). They often claim to be accredited, even when they are not. Some even go to the lengths of inventing their own accreditation organizations to endorse them, complete with superficially convincing websites modeled on those of real accreditation organizations. The more elaborate operations come complete with services such as transcripts with online and telephone verification for potential employers investigating a customer's credentials.

Compared to legitimate schools, diploma mills have drastically reduced or nonexistent requirements for academic coursework. Some allow customers to simply buy credentials while others will have clients engage in some exercises or submit written reports about relevant 'life experience' before awarding degrees. A common feature of diploma mills is that degrees are offered for a flat fee, rather than on a per-course basis. However, flat fee charging for degrees is usual in some European countries such as the UK.

Some diploma mills claim to be based in small countries with unusual circumstances, even though they are selling to customers outside those countries. This is common with "offshore" jurisdictions.

Legality

Degrees and diplomas issued by diploma mills are frequently used for fraudulent purposes, such as obtaining employment, raises, or customers on false pretenses. Even if issuing or receiving a diploma mill qualification is legal, passing it off as an accredited one for personal gain is a crime in many jurisdictions. In some cases the diploma mill may itself be guilty of an offence, if it knew or ought to have known that the qualifications it issues are used for fraudulent purposes. Diploma mills could also be guilty of fraud if they mislead customers into believing that the qualifications they issue are accredited or recognised, or make false claims that they will lead to career advancement, and extort money on the basis of these claims.

Diploma mills are mainly found in jurisdictions which have not adopted tough laws to prohibit them, such as parts of the United States. Some degree mills take advantage of the constitutional division by establishing themselves as ersatz Bible colleges which can legally offer degrees in religious subjects without government regulation.

Fraudulent educational institutions continue to proliferate. These diploma mills survive by operating in states with lax law governing schools, such as California, Utah, Hawaii and Louisiana. They assume identities of well-known schools or as "religious" organizations. Because of constitutional safeguards in the United States guarantee separation of church and state, most states have been reluctant to pass any laws restricting the activities of churches, including their right to grant degrees. John Bear has asked, "What about a school that requires a five page dissertation before awarding the Doctorate. Nobody seems to want the government stepping in to evaluate doctoral dissertations before permitting schools to grant degrees." [2]

Although the DipScam operation in the 1980s led to a decline in diploma mill activity across the United States, the lack of further action by law enforcement, uneven state laws, and the rise of the Internet have combined to reverse many of the gains made in previous years.

For example, in Australia, it is a criminal offence to call an institution a university, or issue university degrees, without authorisation through an act of federal or state parliament. Thus, diploma mills are not as much of a problem in Australia.

One issue under Australian law is the use of the term "university" by many corporate training programs. Although such use of the term might be argued to be illegal, in practice it is tolerated since everyone understands that such programs are not actually universities.

In the UK it is illegal to offer something that may be taken to be a UK degree unless the awarding body is on a list maintained by the Department for Education and Skills. This is difficult to enforce on the Internet, where the site is based abroad. However, UK Trading Standards officers have had notable success in countering a large diploma mill group based in Romania and Israel that was using British place-names for its "universities".

See also

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