Methods degree mills use to fool people: John Bear offers list, asks for help

There will be a section in the book on degree mills Allen Ezell and I are writing for Prometheus Books called
METHODS THAT DEGREE MILLS USE TO FOOL PEOPLE

Here's our list so far. Thoughts on glaring (or other) omissions gratefully received. Helpers will be acknowledged in the acknowledgements section of the book. Thanks.

John Bear
[email protected]

*Fake accreditors
*Unrecognized accreditors.
*Fake or worthless membership organizations
*Real membership organizations, but ones that don't screen members
*Misuse of concept of state licensing (worst offender: Alabama, where licensing is a rubber stamp, but the legislature mandates it be called 'state approval')
*Apostilles and notarized statements of all kinds
*ISO 9002 (I think Newport invented this one)
*Bogus or self-interest reference books (at least three so far, including Pellar and Reddeck)
*Faculty -- either real but naive, or ones who don't know they are on the faculty, or made-up names
*Big names as Chancellors and Provosts etc. (especially British ones, where there seem to be enough senile or poverty-stricken Lords and Ladies)
*Disreputable or incompetent credential checking services
*Banners and paid search engine placements
*Educause and the useless .edu (not to mention the www.University-edu.com approach)
*Spoofed websites, such as the fake Liberian government site and the fake Russian Academy of Sciences site.
*Testimonials, either made up or from co-conspirators or fooled people
*Misstatement of non-profit 501(c)(3) status as reassurance
*Claimed affiliations with real schools
*Better Business Bureau membership (several phonies have had it)
Similar or identical names to real schools
*"Prestigious" Board of Trustees, etc.
*Offer legitimate certifications (like Microsoft)
*Paraphernalia, including Jostens-printed diplomas; rings
*Scholarships offered
*Claim to have a student loan program
*Claims of famous alumni
*Lies about acceptance of degree, especially the Sosdian and Sharpe study
*Advertisements in prestigious places (and "As advertised in…" mentions)
*Mis-stating or misinterpreting the history: "founded 1867" or things like *Warnborough claiming "Bertrand Russell and G B Shaw strolled on our lawns…" which, if true, happened long before the school rented that building.

 

Working1: "Dr. Bear, Has the Alabama legislature or Dept of Education replied to your statement? If so, what is Alabama's response?"

John: There is a certain dynamic that has gone on, and probably still does, in Alabama, between two of the top people there. I think I would not invite Doctor Elizabeth French, Alabama Commission on Higher Education and Doctor Eddie Johnson, Asst. State Superintendent, to the same picnic. The former has been very concerned for many years about things going on in her state, and used to be wonderfully candid when people called to ask about Chadwick, Barrington, Nasson, the University of the United States, and a dozen other Alabama wonders. Emphasis on the 'used to be.' The latter only responded once to my inquiries back when I was trying to find out how it was that Chadwick and a few others used to be allowed to operate without a state license as long as they didn't take Alabama students. (Chadwick is licensed -- and approved (!) -- now. I sent Dr. Johnson a faxed letter asking this. Every day, for about two weeks. Then twice a day. Then four times a day. About the time it reached an hourly fax, he telephoned me, and actually sent me a unknown-to-me opinion letter from a former Attorney General of the state setting forth the rules for that situation, and he said that there was a new AG now and things might be changing.

I think Dr. Johnson is simply carrying out the mandate of the legislature, and I know nothing about how that law or rule came into place.

 

Thank you!

Wonderfully helpful response. Thank you, thank you, Rich, Bill, Jimmy, and George. If more things occur to others, please don't be shy.

John
[email protected]

 

Lists of businesses and organizations who have "accepted" the school for tuition reimbursement.

Fake pictures of the school's building(s).

Follows the British method for quality control.

Information about the legitimacy of awarding life/work experience credit (and then not following and/or abusing those processes).

Self-accrediting/approving.

Rejection of the importance of accreditation.

Claim that, as a global university, it doesn't require accreditation and/or government approval.

Photos of faculty and staff that aren't true.

Picture of the diploma and transcript.

Prestigious-sounding address. ("University Circle," etc.)

 

• Circular accrediting - school's fake accreditor accredits an unrelated dubious agency which in turn accredits another school in the first school's stable (Capitol University)
• Claims to donate part of tuition to charitable causes (Earlscroft University)
• BBB knock-offs where glowing testimonials are plants (Trinity C&U)
• Map to a non-existent campus (Concordia C&U)
• Non-existent alumni gatherings
• Implied legitimacy through NGOs and/or UNESCO.
• Listing on unverified UNESCO portals (Capitol University)
• Pointing to inclusion on unofficial, compiled lists of universities
• Creation of seemingly independent "fronts" authored by non-existent educational authorities (Trinity C&U)

 

Accreditation is only for Federal loans

False statements that legitimate schools are not accredited (Harvard)

The separation of church and state claims

Giving degrees to famous people and listing them as degree holders in catalogs, bulletins, brochures, websites, etc.

Claims accreditation by another school (Trinity-Liverpool)

 

• Fake approval agencies (Trinity C&U's APCU)
• Rented facilities portrayed as the campus (RKU - Berne)
• Approval or status by a micro-nation (IUFS - Melchizedek)

 

Dr. Bear, Has the Alabama legislature or Dept of Education replied to your statement? If so, what is Alabama's response?
Thank you.

 

* Incorporation in offshore jurisdictions with no oversight for the use of the word 'university' in business names - ie TCI, Seychelles, Dominica.
* Subsequent claims of 'self-accreditation' or right of conferral of degrees due to wording in articles of incorporation.
* Claims of reciprocal, automatic recognition due to being a dependent territory of the motherland (ie TCI = UK, Norfolk Island= Australia etc)

Cheers,

George

 

Along with the related claim that incorporation in a commonwealth territory or dependency grants derivative full EU acceptance of degrees.

• Registered in the mayor's office...
• Stating "XYZ university is not a diploma mill because diploma mills are illegal"
• The 5% claim - only 5% of applicants are graduated on first application
• Fake course lists - typically copied from legitimate schools
• Reselling courses from third party vendors with the implication that they're acceptable for credit
• Lengthy, glowing descriptions of campus activities, greek organizations, community involvement programs, etc. with no mention anywhere of the school's location.

 

-Filling out a resume for "life experience" credit. A nice touch sometimes is to ask the mark for clarification on some detail of the resume.

-Saying that accreditation is not required and only optional. They self accredit themselves.

-Not specifiying which classes are required or how many units are required to graduate. Just gives the title of the degree without any other details.

-Backdating diplomas to help the "graduate" fool people.

-Selling graduate honors or improved GPA to help "graduate" fool people.

-Tell the candidate that they will be an active co-conspirator and verify the degree but then change the degree mill name and phone number every few weeks so that neither the graduate or a potential employer will ever be able to contact them again.

 

• pretending to be bigger than they are (the proprietor calling himself "vice-chancellor" when there's no "chancellor"; multiple administrative e-mail addresses all forwarding to the same person; etc.)
• shills (people posting to the Internet supporting the school, claiming to be merely alumni and not disclosing their financial stake)
• intimidation (trying to silence negative reports by threatening lawsuits, retaliatory defamation, etc.)

 

Hi John - Not sure if it still applies, but it used to be the worse the degree mill the bigger, better, more colorful the catalog and other promotional materials were - based on the fact that they didn't have spend any more money after the student was hooked!

Mary

 

A couple of subsets of setting up fake sites:

Setting up a fake degree mill in order to have something to compare themselves favorably against.

http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7152&highlight=fake+degree+mill

Also, setting up their own discussion forums that appear to be independent, but are actually filled with their own shills.

 

The pretense of size:

1. admissions committee
2. financial aid office
3. board of trustees
4. many different departments
5. many different majors

And, of course, the ever-popular, lying about how old the "school" is.



Tom Nixon

 

There is of course the various inducements used to lure folks in further once they make that initial inquiry after answering one of the advertisements from the back of many magazines or from SPAM.

Some of those are (and a few are already mentioned in this thread):

-- a negotiation of fees whereby a package is put together that may include two or more degrees at a reduced cost.
-- The ability to specify your own courses and grades on a transcript.
-- The ability to specify your own dates of graduation to make it look like the degrees were received years ago.

Overall, my point is that the sales patter used to convince the person to lay down their dollars would make for interesting reading. It gives the would be buyer a sense of the tactics used against them in a complete package.


The is also the proverbial list of business and agencies that accept or "pay for" the degrees that is provided to give the buyer a sense that there must be legitimacy with the purchased credential.

John

 

There is also the big discount if you sign up quickly.

Sorry, that one is also used by accredited schools.

 

And on a macro-scale - the creation of multiple schools, multiple accrediting type agencies, credential evaluators, transcript verifying services, etc. so that the sheer size and complexity feign legitimacy.

• Inclusion in NCES 98-299
• The loophole con - implying that there's a legal loophole that can be exploited
• Creating an appearance that the school is located in another country, as opposed to the more common "XYZ U. is a Nevis corporation" buried in the fine print, if anywhere (Ashington U. and many others)
• Selected links, generally on .gov sites, to explanations of experiential learning processes, accreditation, etc. surrounded by misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

 

Larege number of programs and degrees in relation to "faculty" size. Offering 40 to 50 different degrees/programs with four or five "faculty" (tlak about student/teacher ratio!).

 

The identification of "branch campuses" in many countries, usually just the alumni selling degrees like some sort of weird MLM effort.