Thread: When is an Unaccredited University not a Mill

I had just read a guy's refutations that his PhD was from a diploma mill, he kept insisting that his university was a valid unaccredited university but not a diploma mill. How do we distinguish between the two? I can't even find the university on the Internet and USDOE.

Find the answer to this question: Does the school in question offer academic rigor?

But how do you find the answer to that question?

You could simply ask the university administration or staff (this would be a "first-party" evaluation). But can you trust the answer? The operators of unaccredited schools obviously have an incentive to claim that their degrees are rigorous -- even if this is not the case.

You could ask students or graduates of the school (this would be a "second-party" evaluation). But can you trust the answer? People who have invested time and money in an unaccredited degree obviously have an incentive to claim that their degrees are rigorous -- even if this is not in fact the case.

You could enroll in some courses at the school yourself. However, you would have to spend significant amounts of your personal time and money to thoroughly investigate even a single unaccredited school -- and there are hundreds of them out there.

Ideally, then, what you want is a thorough evaluation of the school by some other independent "third party", preferably one that has lots of experience in this field, and that is widely recognized as an authority. There's a name for this approach: it's called "accreditation". Unfortunately it is (by definition) inapplicable to unaccredited schools.

Short answer: realistically, there may not be any good way to distinguish a legitimate unaccredited school from a diploma mill. In fact, diploma mills thrive precisely because of this confusion.

Originally Posted by jackrussell

I had just read a guy's refutations that his PhD was from a diploma mill, he kept insisting that his university was a valid unaccredited university but not a diploma mill. How do we distinguish between the two? I can't even find the university on the Internet and USDOE.

Like the others have said, that is tough call. Being UA does not automatically = a diploma mill. For example, California Coast U was UA for several years, however, they required coursework. Randell can attest to this. So, even when they were only UA, they were not a mill. Having said that, I signed up immediately after I was sure they received DETC accreditation.
See ya,

Abner :)

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One additional point regarding instructors at unaccredited schools. Some mills have been known to put people on their faculty list with their knowledge or permission. It makes the mill seem legitimate. But if you contact that professor to ask a question about the curriculum, etc. they tell you that they've never heard of that school and certainly don't teach there. In dealing with unaccredited schools you always have to ask those extra questions. You can say that I have a suspicious nature if you like but I have always adopted a "guilty until proven innocent" stance regarding these schools and would put them to every test I could imagine before signing on.

I’m not an expert on Diploma Mills. But if I was a recruiter for my company and someone came with a bogus PHD, I would immediately request to see a copy of their dissertation. If not possible, then would inquire about their publications on respected academic journals.

Originally Posted by TMW2009

You'd be suprised... Just do a google search to see how many faculty at some colleges/universities hold Ph.D.s from Kennedy-Western University... And I ain't talking about other unaccredited schools, either...

How are those people getting faculty jobs while graduates with accredited online Ph.Ds aren't?

Originally Posted by Kizmet

Ecole Superiourere Robert de BlahBlahBlah

:D You, Kizmet, are my new favorite person on DegreeInfo.

I would say the best way of checking the utility of an unaccredited degree is finding out if ANY accredited colleges will accept their credits. If none at all, then it may as well be a mill.

Originally Posted by Maniac Craniac

How are those people getting faculty jobs while graduates with accredited online Ph.Ds aren't?:

They have likely been entrenched at their jobs for years now, probably prior to the big expose of KWU by the government.

I still think its rather embarrasing to see faculty members proudly touting their KWU degrees. That 100 page 'dissertation' that they had to do and pay to have published seems to have done them pretty well.

When is an Unaccredited University not a Mill?

When it's this:

http://www.sanfordburnham.org/traini...ate_schoo.aspx

The answer to the question is 'An unaccredited school isn't a degree-mill when it's academically credible'.

The problem with that, as others in this thread have already noted, is that it might not be obvious to outsiders which schools are credible and which aren't.

My example was chosen because its strengths are obvious.

The government is throwing money at it. Here's just one example of many, a $97 million grant from the the National Institutes of Health. (This is one of the four largest recipients of NIH research funding in the country.) The state of Florida paid them $350 million in incentives to build a second campus in Orlando.

http://www.sanfordburnham.org/news__...er_2_2008.aspx

It participates in scientific collaborations with institutions all around the world. One example of many:

http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1533

The graduate school only has about a dozen students at this point. Each student gets free tuition, all expenses paid, plus a generous stipend. (This school pays students to attend it, but it's very selective.)

Faculty outnumber students by something like 10/1 and are kind of an international 'best-and-brightest' bunch. Keep in mind that all of these individuals are principal investigators and heads of laboratories, and might have many people working under them, associate researchers, post-docs, technicians and so on. All in all, the scientific staff numbers about 850.

Click on the faculty for descriptions of their laboratories' research and for information on where they earned their degrees etc.

http://www.sanfordburnham.org/resear...culty_a-z.aspx

I'm waiting for somebody here to win the first California-approved Nobel Prize. They're getting there:

http://www.japanprize.jp/en/prize_pa...5_prize02.html

Recent news and events:

http://www.sanfordburnham.org/news_a..._releases.aspx

Google search results from .edu sites.
Results from .gov sites.
Results from .ac.uk sites.
Google scholar results.

Image results.

Originally Posted by Maniac Craniac

How are those people getting faculty jobs while graduates with accredited online Ph.Ds aren't?...

In most cases that I know of, they already have faculty teaching positions with their RA masters degree and are using the PhD to get tenure, a tenure track position, or a raise/promotion.

I've met multiple people like this in academia. Nowadays, they seem to be more likely to be caught. In one case a tenured faculty member got a PhD from LaSalle Univ for (I believe) the purpose of getting a raise and eligibility for full professorship. The university refused to recognize her degree. They didn't penalize her, they just didn't reward her either.

In another, a teacher used an unaccredited PhD (it might have been from Kennedy Western) to gain a raise at one university. However, when she tried to find a job at another university she got the news that her degree was a sham. Now she is pretty much trapped teaching where she is, because no other school will accept the degree.

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mcjon: "What does it matter whether the person did work to get the unaccredited degree if there is no way to determine whether the work was equivalent to work done for an accredited degree? "

John: Here's one way. For many years, I've been suggesting an experiment in which, for instance, five dissertations in a given subject are randomly checked out of the Harvard library, and five more taken from the archives of an unaccredited (perhaps a California-approved school. Remove identifying marks, and let the ten theses be evaluated by experts in the field, who are familiar with doctoral research. Their task is to determine the five from Harvard and the five from the unaccredited place. The results of this "Turing test" could be most interesting.

That would in fact be truly interesting to see. It would be crazy if they could not tell them apart.
Dr. Bear is you get a chance could you pop back over to this thread, I have been wondering about this.
http://forums.degreeinfo.com/accredi...e-credits.html

While it is true that unaccredited does not equal diploma mill, from one perspective it doesn't matter that much to many people because there are many that will automatically assume that if it is unaccredited then it must be a diploma mill.

The number of legitimate unaccredited institutions seems to be decreasing. I think number of unaccredited legitimate institutions (for general education ) is on a downward spiral. Some are becoming accredited after long periods of unaccredited operations . Others are going out of business. I think that the forces in play here are two-fold. First, distance learning has become accepted and accrediting agencies will now seriously consider distance learning only institutions. Second, unaccredited institutions are less accepted because the Internet has increased the number of diploma mills and because there are now accredited options.

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Originally Posted by John Bear

mcjon: "What does it matter whether the person did work to get the unaccredited degree if there is no way to determine whether the work was equivalent to work done for an accredited degree? "

John: Here's one way. For many years, I've been suggesting an experiment in which, for instance, five dissertations in a given subject are randomly checked out of the Harvard library, and five more taken from the archives of an unaccredited (perhaps a California-approved school. Remove identifying marks, and let the ten theses be evaluated by experts in the field, who are familiar with doctoral research. Their task is to determine the five from Harvard and the five from the unaccredited place. The results of this "Turing test" could be most interesting.

@ John Bear: As a control group, one could get another five dissertations from a 4th-tier RA schools. Would we see three (or two;)) distinct levels of quality?

@ mcjon77: A "time bomb" I'm keeping tabs on wrote a 100+ page disseration for his "PhD" and had it reviewed by three dissertation advisors. The stated "university" (an FBI-identified diploma mill) is a fake and so are the listed advisors (fictious names...OR experts without any publications/internet trace whatsoever). No doubt you'll agree that it is not the writing of a 100 or 300-page disseration that gets one a degree, but the addition one makes to the body of knowledge in a particular field, as determined by peer review. Without such review, a dissertation might as well be 100 pages of "Lorem ipsum dolor..." filler text.

Depends I'm not an expert but it depends for me why your getting the degree? Religious degree granters often use more secular an approach ,I'm not including my program in this folks just saying the fact, go to God's Big Ol' Bible College they might not require skills in biblical languages arguing there are English translations of the KJV so why demand that for a typical minister? Go to the Catholic University of America your going to learn several languages and do translations at some level for a degree.

Does that make one school worse or better, not at all in my view. I for one find any such degree silly but if your a working minister and want a degree the first makes sense. If your a Catholic Priest and they want you to get a doctorate the other is demanded most likely.

Its a matter of persepctive. In the case of other degrees its different if your seeking a degree in psychology its necessary to count, it be accredited.

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