Chronicle article & forum on diploma mills

On today's Chronicle of Higher Education website. You must be a subscriber to read the article-- http://www.chronicle.com

WORTHLESS? NOT TO THEM
The college degrees sold by diploma mills require no learning, but they turn out to be worth millions to the people who relentlessly promote them. Join us Thursday in Colloquy Live for a live discussion of the issues raised in this article.


Clicking the Colloquy Live link reveals this...

Thursday, June 24, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

By some estimates, diploma mills generate a half-billion dollars in revenue each year and churn out new "graduates" every day. The business is booming like never before, and some of its customers are college professors. For the most part, we ignore them. But does this indifference undermine the value of legitimate degrees? What steps can colleges take to make sure that academic credentials actually mean something? Do we need a federal law that makes it illegal to claim a degree from an unaccredited institution? How else should government and academe fight against the fake degrees?

The Guest

Alan Contreras is one of the few government officials fighting diploma mills. As director of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization, he goes after diploma mills and the people who use such degrees. In Oregon, state law makes it illegal to use most unaccredited degrees to get a job or a promotion. Mr. Contreras has been outspoken in urging that other government officials crack down on diploma mills by making their products -- the degrees themselves -- illegal. He says that going after individual operators is tricky, at best, because they can easily move to other states or to foreign countries. He will respond to questions and comments about these issues on Thursday, June 24, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. Readers are welcome to post questions and comments now.

A transcript will be available at this address following the discussion.


Tony Pina
Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino

 

You can participate in the online discussion without being a subscriber. You can access the discussion at http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2004/06/diploma/

Note the time for the online discussion: Thursday, June 24, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time.

 

Outraged

Ah hum, one of my graduate degrees is from Valdosta State... and I am outraged. Talk about academia doublespeak. This will hopefully get heads to roll in Valdosta and other places. This nonsense has just cheapened my degree. And thanks for the link to the discussion site... I asked a question about that.