According to the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, a diploma mill
is an institution of higher education operating without the supervision of a
state or professional agency and granting diplomas which are, either fraudulent
or because of the lack of proper standards, worthless.
“Earn a bachelor’s degree in less than 5 weeks!” I'm sure you’ve
received piles of these advertisements in your mailbox, and unlike others,
you might just have been smart enough to ignore them. The truth is 99% of these
amazing, too-good-to-be-true offers are, well, just that. The majority of these
are what we have come to call “diploma mills”. In recent years, diploma mills
have become a major source of fraud within the work industry. With long distance
education becoming prevalent in our society, mail-ordered diploma scams are
common.
Many diploma mills simply hand you a diploma in exchange for a sum of money
without ever asking you to do work. A few will require an essay. Those
fraudulent businesses scam people by sending them convincing brochures filled
with fake statistics and pictures. In actuality, most diploma mills are no more
than some con-artist running a scam out of the computer of his one bedroom
apartment.
Some diploma mills will attempt to offer their customers
degrees based on life experience, as in the case of an honorary degree. While it
is true that real life experience can often times be more valuable than
classroom experience, they can only account for so much of your education. Even
if you are an expert in your field, generally a few additional courses should
still be required to attain your
degree.
Do they work?
Yes. While most employers claim to check your credentials, statistics show
that only about 40% of employers actually take the trouble to do so. Stories
have been told of patients dying from medical practitioners hired on fake
college degrees. And if you think these fake degrees are only good for getting
hired, you may be wrong. Many already-employed workers obtain these degrees in
order to qualify for a pay raise at their current jobs.
How to avoid them
With online universities popping up
everywhere, it can be a rather daunting task for an employer to determine which
universities are real and which are merely selling inscribed sheep-skin. The
trick is to look for accreditation. If the college you are receiving a degree
from is not backed by one of these accrediting agencies,
chances are, the credits you’ve earned aren’t worth much. You can also do a
search for your school in this database of higher learning
institutions approved by the US secretary of Education.