Florida, Hawaii and Wyoming

Florida, Hawaii and Wyoming are home to many unaccredited universities and diploma mills. Are the "feds" aware of this and why aren't these states doing something to tighten their laws?
--just curious----

 

A search of this board's threads will reveal a great deal about this subject, including Wyoming's tightening of its rules (and enforcement), and Hawaii's litigation agains unaccredited schools who do not comply with its laws.

Do a search on Jeff "Brunton", the person who litigates against non-complying, unaccredited schools in Hawaii.

Do a search on "Wyoming."

As for Florida, they've always been pretty aggressive regarding unlicensed schools. Thomas Edison College, for example, or MIGS. I don't think they compare to the other two states you mention, nor to Louisiana, South Dakota, Iowa, California, and now it seems, Mississippi.

And what about overseas?

We're also seeing a greater presence of diploma mills with no apparent physical existence. It used to be that a diploma mill had to get its mail somewhere. But now everything--except sending out the fake degrees and transcripts--can be done over the internet.

 

Thanks for the info Rich. I want to see who is legitimate and who is RA in these states.
regards,

 

To find out who is regionally accredited go to Regional Accreditors select the region you are interested in, say for Florida that would be Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, click on the link and see what schools they list. If the school is not listed, and the school site does not list another regional accreditor (example being Touro), then they are not "RA".

 

As far as I know, the federal government has not put any pressure on the states to tighten the laws against degree mills. For the most part, education is considered more of a local issue in this country rather than a federal issue.

Of the three states you mentioned, Wyoming is amongst the weakest links in the country. I mean that they tolerate far more degree mills in that state that would probably be considered flat out illegal in most other states in the country. Hawaii has passed some new laws recently and while it seemed questionable in my mind that the law would do very much, it is currently being vigorously enforced. Many degree mills have been chased out of the state or closed down. Right now I'd have to say that a degree mill would be ill advised to open up shop in Hawaii. Florida has not had a significant problem (as far as I know) in a very long time, if ever.

 

Owww!! Stop it! Move a Californian to Virginia, and look how he acts!

 

It sounds like you're describing a slow moving brush fire. You can extinguish it in one state and hope it doesn't re-ignite while doing the same in other states. If Florida and Hawaii are cracking down on these unlicensed schools, why do so many still exist?

 

There are a number of reasons.

Since a degree mill generally involves more fluff than substance, degree mills can easily be moved from one jurisdiction to another. It usually doesn't require much more than getting a new postal box or new mail forwarding service to move from one jurisdiction to another.

It is cheap and easy to set up new degree mills, if done in a jurisdiction that ignores them.

It is also frequently difficult to even figure out what jurisdiction a degree mill is even operating from. Therefore the authorities don't even know that they're operating in their jurisdiction or can't tell. Also, degree mills will frequently not accept victims from the jurisdiction that they operate from so that the authorities won't be bothered by

Also contributing to the problem is that the victims frequently don't complain. The degree mill victims are frequently the most vocal and vigorous defenders of the con game that took their money. When an employer is dubbed by a bogus degree and it is discovered, the employee likely gets fired or doesn't get the job but seldom would they complain about the degree mill.

 

Thanks for the info Bill. I am now beginning to understand why diploma mills like Fairfax, Bircham International and North Washington have multiple mailbox addresses in numerous jurisdictions.

 

I'm not clear what you are referring to. In your first post you spoke of "unaccredited universities and diploma mills". Now you refer to "unlicensed schools". These are three different (though often overlapping) categories.

Obviously there are a lot of permutations, which creates a fuzzy area:

**Unlicensed, unaccredited, degree-mill. These are self-explanatory. The bottom of the barrel, the worst.

**Licensed, unaccredited, degree-mill. State religious exemptions allow this, as do the states with the lowest (or least actively enforced) standards.

**Unlicensed, accredited, degree-mill. I guess some of the schools accredited by spurious accreditors might fall here. It's hard to imagine a legitimate accreditor letting this happen.

**Licensed, accredited, degree-mill. People routinely charge that some accredited schools are so bad that they consititute degree-mills.

**Unlicensed, unaccredited, not-degree-mill. An unlicensed, non-accredited school that offers good education. It's possible, I guess.

**Licensed, unaccredited, not-degree-mill. The typical non-accredited school. (Of course, that would depend on how "degree-mill" is defined.)

**Unlicensed, accredited, not-degree-mill. This might be an extension branch of an out-of-state RA university that doesn't properly register in the state in which it's operating.

**Licensed, accredited, not-degree-mill. Most legitimate universities. This is the best-case.

The only one of these three variables that the law can directly act on is licensing. Licensed schools would seem to be immune from law enforcement, so long as they don't otherwise violate the law.

So I guess that the ideal is to write state licensing laws in such a way as to exclude degree-mills. That's impossible in the case of religious schools, because of court-ordered religious exemptions.

In the case of secular schools, that would mean either:

A. Creating an effective state quality assurance mechanism, by trying to duplicate the function of an accreditor in other words.
Or B. Making accreditation one of the necessary qualifications for state licensing. This would obviously require some kind of provision for new not-yet-accredited schools and so on. It would also make small or otherwise non-traditional schools problematic in some cases.

 

All of the above. Any school that does not have RA may very well be unaccredited or a diploma mill. A legitimate school in any state will apply for RA status (or candidacy) shortly after receiving its license.

 

Because:

1. There is tremendous demand for fake credentials.
a. Employers don't check and don't care.
b. People use them for egotistical purposes in many cases.
c. The foreign (especially Asian) market is very robust.

2. There is always another location willing to tolerate them--or profit with them.

3. As I said earlier, the need for any location at all is rapidly disappearing.

I thought all of that was clear.

 

Not so. First, there are legitimate reasons for not being accredited. Being too small, having too narrow a curriculum, being too new, having philosophical reasons against it, are all reasons why a school is not accredited.

When you say "A legitimate school in any state will apply for RA status (or candidacy) shortly after receiving its license. " it simply doesn't jibe with the observable facts. It takes schools a year or more to even prepare for an application for candidacy. Several years of operating prior to applying for candidacy is perfectly normal.

(By the way, a school doesn't apply for RA status or candidacy. It applies for correspondent status, which may lead to candidacy, which may lead to accreditation. And they typically don't talk about it until they're getting a visit for candidacy. It is considered bad form otherwise.)

 

Hi Rich,
So how would a newly licensed school that applies for correspondent status protect itself from being perceived as a diploma mill?
I'm curious how legitimate schools survive the uphill battle to accreditation.
regards,

 

Probably by doing the things that legitimate schools do, like offer degree programs with academic substance, administrative processes that work, etc. Students who chose to attend pre-accredited schools take a gamble that their schools will stay in business and become accredited. Students that attend well-established, unaccredited schools will never realize that benefit.

Pre-accredited schools grow slowly.

 

Thanks Rich,
definitely something to keep in mind.
regards,

 

I agree with everything Rich said.

If a school doesn't have accreditation, it has to demonstrate its credibility some other way. I'll draw examples from CA-approved schools, because I'm most familiar with them.

It helps to have financial resources.(Soka University has an endowment of $250 million or something.) It helps to have a strong list of faculty and administrators. (Hsi Lai has the former chairman of UC Berkeley's Buddhist Studies graduate group and its dean is a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the US.) It helps to have cooperative arrangements with respected schools. (The Keck Institute of Applied Life Sciences is a member of the Claremont consortium.) It helps for a school to have the trust of its professional discipine. (The National Test Pilot School teaches contract courses for the FAA, NASA, and several military forces.) It helps to have a good record on professional licensing examinations. (The SF Law School maintains a roughly 70% pass-rate on the California bar exam.)

 

Useful thread, guys.

 

I believe that South Dakota has now taken this approach (requiring accreditation). But the state is clearly willing to make exceptions for an institution that it deems to be on track towards accreditation -- see, for example, the statement on the FAQ page at Continental University (5th question): http://www.continentalu.com/faq.html

On the other hand, there still appear to be degree mills operating in South Dakota. Presumably as a result of a lack of enforcement of the new regulation.

 

Continental certainly spells out its current status carefully--and repeatedly--on the webpage. Nobody could misconstrue the relationship with UNISA. Well done!