Why did you choose your college or university?

His bio, alone, is enough to write the business off as a diploma mill. The fake accreditation from a small country that is among the most corrupt in the world and the honorary degrees for sale only make it worse.

 

You know, as I age and my time on this good earth draws to its inevitable close, with so many things either gone forever or found only in museums, it's somehow comforting that the standard Degree Mill schtick still endures.

Alas..It also still makes victims.

 

Do you really think that degree mills make victims? It's hard for me belive that the majority of "students" are victimized. It's easier for me to believe that these "students" knowingly look for a short cut, an easier path. They are victimizing the people they dupe with the bogus degree they bought.

 

Now, now, Pug. Charity in all things.

 

How disingenuous.

 

I'm sure that there's a wide range of how victimized degree mill customers actually are. They are almost all victimized to some degree, I believe. For example, let's say that someone buys a degree from a degree mill and is fully aware that it is a degree mill. He's still being victimized from the perspective that he could just totally make up a degree for free but he's paid for a worthless piece of paper.

 

We don't know. To my knowledge, this hasn't been studied for one very obvious reason: identifying the population and accessing a sample.

It would make an interesting qualitative study, though, if you could get a couple of handfuls of diploma mill customers, interview them, and see if one or more archetypes emerge. It would have to be something done after one's degree is finished. Dissertation committees take a dim view of inductive studies. Believe me, I know.

 

Some become victims of their own delusions but otherwise I'd say degree mills in the classic sense, a made up program offering little or no substance, offering life credits and fast diploma, in exchange for funds are transactional and victimless since there is no excuse for an employer, school, or evaluator not taking the time to Google the unfamiliar degree and school. On the other hand the more modern use of degree mill for accredited online schools using predatory sales and marketing tactics that charge inflated prices for weak degrees, do have victims in the sense the government is defrauded and students become accomplices to student loan profiteering.

 

The first school I attended was Humber College, on the advice of my high school guidance counselor. Didn't do well in my classes (computer engineering technology) except programming and the campus was depressing. Dropped out. Three years later, I was living near Durham College so I decided to return for a Social Service Worker Diploma. Loved the program and school.

Then I wanted to get my Bachelor's degree, so I transferred to the Trent University satelite campus. Didn't enjoy those classes either, and turned down a summer of intensive French instruction paid by a Government of Canada grant to attend Trent, that was a mistake. I actually enrolled in a course at Athabaca, a second-year women's studies course and then didn't attend at all and withdrew! What a way to throw away $700. There weren't many SSW jobs so I decided to return to Durham College for a 2-year Accounting diploma, only to drop out in my final semester because I actually got offered a crisis line program manager job. Funny how life works. Because I had three semesters of coursework, I got a Business Fundamentals certificate as a consolation prize.

Eventually decided I wanted to finish my degree online, and Athabasca was the easiest way to do online courses. After finishing my bachelor's in Human Services I set my sights on a master's degree. I applied to both Eastern for my MS in Data Science and Quantic for my MBA, expecting not to get into both. But I did! So I carefully managed my time for the next 18 months and earned both.

Then I was looking for a PhD program. I knew I wanted a PhD specifically, and University of the Cumberlands came well-reviewed. I ended up dropping out because my family needs to come first, but I will go back. I didn't get my bachelor's degree until I was 28. I dropped out of 4 schools. (Durham, Trent, Athabasca, Cumberlands) and earned credentials from 4 schools (Durham, Athabasca, Quantic, Eastern.)

You're not on anybody's timeline but you're own.

 

That's a great journey. Thanks for sharing that. I didn't get my bachelor's degree until I was 35 (and a half, lol). Got my first Master's at 49.

 

Got my first bachelor's at 20. Got my most recent doctorate at 55.

 

That doesn't make him a victim. To view him as a victim would be to completely disregard personal accountability. If I am driving down a highway and voluntarily exceed the speed limit, the car I purchased didn't victimize me, nor did the dealership or sales person. I think it's prudent to hold people accountable for their decisions instead of finding ways to blame others for our poor choices.

 

It doesn’t matter if the fraud was simple or had extra steps; it's still fraud. People who know they're purchasing diploma mill degrees are banking on the fact that a lot of people in HR still don't understand accreditation.

 

Perhaps, sanantone, but you're doing what us lawyers call "assuming a fact not in evidence". You're assuming the purchaser knew he was purchasing a diploma mill degree. Possibly he did. Possibly he did not. It makes all the difference.

 

I was arguing that there can be degrees of victimhood. I agree that the example I gave was only a small amount of victimhood. That was my point. So giving my example another layer, say the fellow knew it was a diploma mill but, he was assuming that if HR called the diploma mill that they would at least verify that they sent him a diploma. But the diploma mill doesn't even keep track of who purchased their diplomas and won't respond to HR requests. Then I'd say yes he was a minor victim of the diploma mill. He sent them money and got nothing in return except for a useless piece of paper. I'm not saying he is legally a victim just a minor victim from the non-legal perspective because he could have gotten the same results by just printing his own diploma and saved the money he wasted on the diploma mill.

 

It's not an assumption that some of them know because some of them have been found guilty, some have confessed, and some have been caught lying.

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/08/another-iowa-nurse-loses-her-license-in-national-diploma-mill-scandal/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-diploma-mills-degrees-professor-1.4291437

https://www.wtae.com/article/expensive-cancer-treatment-pushed-by-man-with-diploma-mill-doctorate/8074970

 

I have a looooong history with this, having started in this field in the 1970s. There was a time when people generally didn't understand nontraditional methods of earning credits and degrees. Spurious schools--often with legal standing--were selling degrees via "life experience." And their customers often and truly believed they were being awarded their degrees legitimately, even though trained eyes could see it as a scam. Victim or Villain? It's often hard to say.

And where is the line drawn? Accreditation? School licensure? Is there a difference between what is legal and what is acceptable? Propio? Degree validation? Apostilles? Kyrgyzstan? That French degree thingy? Frankly, one person's diploma mill could be another's nontraditional university.

This is why making broad sweeping statements about the villainy of purchasers. As Justice Potter once said about the definition of obscenity, "I know it when I see it." But do we?

I "earned" an A.A. degree by submitted some test scores and a check. My first bachelor's was awarded with two college courses, and my second was awarded with zero. Diploma mill purchases, or nontradtional methods of earning credits and degrees? There is NO objective standard. And don't tell me accreditation is the line, because it isn't. I once experienced an administrative assistant to a senior government official known professionally as Dr S0-and-so whisper to me that he had a doctorate from a diploma mill. Something called "The Union Graduate School." Yeah, me too.

And it's not just domestically. That French thingy, propio, even the "new" universities in the UK all experience some forms of scorn or lack of recognition. And so it goes

 

That isn't an accurate analogy. A better one would be you buy a new car under the expectation it would be able to drive on the freeway. Then you take it out and it breaks down and the dealer won't take it back and you have a lemon. This has happened hundreds of thousands of times. Many diploma mills in the US have been shut down and student loans forgiven for those who took them out since they were scammed.

Just look at Trump University for instance. It was a rug pull.

 

Okay, and that is a bad example since Trump University was not posing as a degree-granting institution.

And, as far as I know (and my knowledge only goes back to the beginning of diploma mills), there never has been a diploma mill approved to participate in Title IV funding. Unless your definition of a diploma mill includes schools with recognized accreditation. This would, then, support my contention that it is an imprecise term that means different things to different people.

 

The administrative assistant is just another example of someone not understanding accreditation. No offense to anyone, but an administrative assistant is usually not even required to know anything about credentials. If they're not in HR, it doesn't matter what they think.

The general expectation is that, when someone is using a degree to obtain a job, the degree comes from an accredited institution. People don't have deep knowledge of all the quirks in foreign degrees to run through all those scenarios in their minds. The school is either accredited by a recognized organization or it isn't, and a lot of the diploma mills have had business addresses in the U.S. If you have questions about a foreign institution, that's what credential evaluation services are for. The problem is that some HR departments don't bother to verify accreditation at all, or they don't know how to verify recognized accreditation. But, what we've seen time and time again is employees getting fired when the employer is informed that the degree is from a diploma mill.