Scandal over bogus teacher credentials could spread to Broward, Palm Beach

Wow - 657 teachers might be affected by this scam

I can't believe they thought they could get away with this for so long

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-dteachers02sep02,0,4712084.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

 

I suspect if someone bothered to look in the next county, there'd be another coupla' hundred; and the next, and the next, and the next, etc. This has been what John Bear and others have talked about for a long time around here and elsewhere: That the business of diploma mills is big business. I mean, just look... between Miami and Broward/Palm Beach, we're looking at nearly 1,000 people who bought fake degrees. At... oh, let's say $500 a pop, that's roughly half a million bucks that some diploma mill operator(s) collected, in exchange for a piece of paper and maybe a plastic frame or fake leather holder, plus the piece of paper or two for the fake transcript... for a total cost to the diploma mill operator of maybe $3 to $5, at most. Talk about profit. And that's just from a very small geographic area; and that's just the ones who have fake teaching credentials (or, more accurately, fake advanced degrees to get higher teacher pay). Imagine how many more fake credentials would be discovered if the workers in virtually every type of profession and vocation in those places came under that same kind of microscope.

There are probably diploma mill credential holders in every county in every state... thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of them. And every last one of them just as much a fraudster and, in many cases, a criminal as the diploma mill operator himself/herself.

Miami's a good place to begin, if you think about it. Someone should just just pick-up the ball and and expand the inquiry West and North into every county, in every state, all the way to the Canadian border and the Pacific Ocean, and then on to Alaska and Hawaii. Every person who has proffered any fake degree to any employer should be found out, and should suffer the consequences.

Too bad it will never happen.