My Journal Article About Diploma Mills & DL

What sort of vulgar allegories?

 

LOL Randell would ban me for saying it.

 

Better to be honest and poor than to be dishonest and rich. On the other hand, it would be no shame to be honest and rich, if that were possible.

 

Oh, you mean allegories having to do with the self-service pump?

 

Not the first time...

 

.....uh hem

 

Honest and rich would be nice. Money doesn't buy happiness but I hear it does well enough to rent it for a while.

 

I've always heard that money doesn't buy happinesss, but it sure can let you buy things to help you forget how unhappy you are for awhile.

 

I agree that it doesn't, but I would mind proving that fact for myself.

 

Anthony,

Fantastic article! It was a pleasure to read and you have a really nice writing style.

Any other of your publications out there that are available on the 'net?

Cheers,
Adrienne

 

Thank you. You are very kind.

Some of the journals are only available in printed versions, but here are a couple that are available online:

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring111/

http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jul_08/index.htm

 

Michael: "Holy cow! According to that article, some diploma mills are earning $20 to $30 million a year."

John: Sacred bovine, indeed. In our degree mills book, Ezell and I present a great deal of "insider" info from the "University Degree Program" owned by an American and run from Romania, confirmed by the FBI: Sales averaging $1 million a week for about nine years = $450 million.

-John Bear
www.degreemills.com

 

Sacred bovine!.....Seriously though, I would like to read that book. I had no idea that the diploma mills were so lucrative. I assumed that almost everyone laughed such institutions off, but I suppose there should be no underestimating the American appetite for the "cheap and easy".

 

The problem has long been that many people did not take them seriously: some jerk printing a few diplomas on his home printer. But wherever there is clear evidence, the numbers are staggering. When the FBI raided LaSalle, they actually recovered over $10 million in cash and found evidence of $35 million in bank deposits. When the Postal Inspectors brought down Columbia State University, there was evidence of $72 million in deposits made in just four years in a California S&L, then withdrawn and hand-carried to the owner on his yacht in Mexico. Etc.

 

But what good are such diplomas? Surely no good in academia at any level. I suppose some employers wouldn't bother to check on the legitimacy and some might not care. Personally, I would be embarrassed to be caught with one.

 

One of the many important contributions of Allen Ezell's & Dr. Bear's book "Degree Mills" is the documentation of how many people have tried to use diploma mills to get ahead and how many of these "time bomb" have exploded. It is my hope that people who read my little journal articles will turn to Ezell & Bear (2005), who have written the standard work on the subject.

Ezell, A. & Bear, J. (2005). Degree mills: The billion dollar industry that has sold over a million fake diplomas. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.

 

Wow, a time bomb, yes. The more I learn from you all, the more I would like to read "Degree Mills". This thread has really opened my eyes to an issue that is much larger than I thought. Like you said, Anthony, these operations obviously must hurt the image of legitimate online schools. I suppose that's because of ignorance; people tend to lump the good in with the bad. No wonder online education still has a stigma in some circles.

 

Precisely. If it were up to me, I would have anyone in a leadership position read "Degree Mills". It is (well) written for a general audience.

No, I do not work for the publisher or for the authors. Since Degreeinfo colleagues are some of the most active people on discovering and unveiling diploma mills, I like to point out that Ezell & Bear's "Degree Mills" and Ezell's "Accreditation Mills" are the two best books on the subject and deserve to be better known and more widely read.

 

I notice that there is another post by someone asking about a new operation that sure looks like another mill to me. Using my vast knowledge of the subject...ahem...I tried to warn him away. http://forums.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=32803