Why did you choose your college or university?

There are about a dozen states that make it illegal to use degrees from diploma mills for employment purposes. As far as I know, not one state currently makes it illegal to use a degree from a low quality but validly accredited institution. Any hiring manager is free to have higher standards, but that really doesn't have anything to do with using a degree from an actual diploma mill as defined by the U.S. Department of Education or state law. That's just elitism, and the elitism usually comes into play during the hiring process. If a hiring manager doesn't like that you earned 30 credits from a GRE subject test for your Excelsior degree, that doesn't mean you committed fraud.

If I were an employer, I likely wouldn't hire anyone whose qualifying degree came from a for-profit college. The degrees are legal and accredited; I just don't like them, and I would be free to discriminate. Google won't even interview applicants for certain positions if their degrees didn't come from top-ranked engineering or computer science departments, but this is really a separate issue from the diploma mill discussion.

 

You are incorrect. Under New York law a University needs to be an accredited, degree-granting institution in order to use the title of “University”. It was one of the main points of the lawsuit against Trump University.

 

I'm not at all incorrect. Yes, Trump was forced to rename his operation in New York. But that doesn't at all change my point.

 

I think the better analogy would be if the buyer of that car bought it knowing it was substandard then when it broke down, still feeling astonished that the service was also substandard.

 

I could agree with you 15 or 20 years ago, but not today. There is simply too much information available today. There are so many resources out there. I can't excuse people from not doing their due diligence. If something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true. If something seems out of step with the norm, it should raise a flag no matter the context. If a BA runs $30k and is expected to take 4 years and a lot of hard work to complete and I come across a "school" offering to sell me a degree of $3000 for little or no work, that's a flag that should be instantly visible. If you were house hunting and the neighborhood you were browsing in had an average price if $500k and then you come across a house for only $25k that looks and professes to be like the others, you should be concerned enough to investigate. Yes, I am certain there are people who have been duped, but I have a hard time accepting that the percentage is anything more than very, very small.

 

This comment was about why some people intentionally earn degrees from diploma mills. It's because employers still hire them. In one of the Canadian articles I posted, the fraudster said that his employers verified his education. That is possibly true. They could have verified that he was awarded a degree by the diploma mill, but they didn't verify whether the university was legitimate. When confronted by journalists, he pretended to not remember where he earned his degree because he knew he purchased it from a diploma mill.

 

Well, as to people being convicted of fraud, such a conviction would have required proof of knowledge. Blanket statements of what is known and what is not known are often dangerous.

 

I think this further conflates the idea that "for profit college" = fraud or "diploma mill" and I think that's unfair. I'm currently attending the American College of Education which is...for profit, but nonetheless a regionally accredited, legitimate institution. Also, in my life experience I have seen that in the past some for-profit schools have provided solid curricula, motivated instructors, and offered a quality education - but have been undermined by low admission standards, unmotivated students, and desperate tactics or misleading claims in an attempt to "keep the ship afloat" so to speak. I've always felt that any college education is just a formalized opportunity to "self-educate" and that it is mostly up to you to make the most of whatever opportunity you find yourself in the middle of.

I know this is merely anecdotal evidence but in my previous position I had an applicant for a web/multimedia design position that had graduated from Mt. Holyoke - a rather exclusive "seven sisters" college on the east coast. She had also done a fellowship at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. But upon graduating, she had a hard time finding work with her arts-based degrees so she decided she would learn to code and she chose to go to ITT (for profit) here in Columbus because it was affordable. Obviously, with her academic background and achievements, she was a highly motivated learner and made the most out of what ITT had to offer - she always said that the instructors were great and that the material was strong...but a lot of the other students were very lazy and didn't take the program seriously - and of course with low admissions standards, there was a high dropout rate and a lot of students with a lot of debt with nothing to show for it. Her take was that a lot of the students loved to play video games, so they thought they were going to be video game designers or something and when confronted with actual coding - they lost interest. She also said that meant that the instructors, who were starving for students that actually wanted to learn could dedicate a lot of personal attention to the serious students. She liked the program so much, she ended up taking a part time gig teaching a coding class there before the whole thing collapsed. Her take on it was that people think for some reason it's going to be EASY because it isn't a "traditional college" and because they had low admission standards. But if you aren't good at managing your time, seeking out resources, or you didn't do well with basic math, writing, or critical thinking - you really aren't going to do well in a program like this. I hired her, BTW. Best decision ever.

Another friend went to Full Sail - one of those for-profit "media colleges" - he had a similar experience - he said that the school had all this great equipment for you to learn on, very hands on, and an opportunity to use what you would use in a professional situation - but most of his colleagues wanted to get high and go to the beach all the time - they didn't focus on the opportunity or take the work seriously - so the college had the same issues: low admissions standards, high dropout rate and a lot of students with a lot of debt with absolutely nothing to show for it. He came back to Columbus, started a freelance business and then opened his own recording studio - which is still open today 20+ years on. When I asked about it, he said something like, "The school was fine - but you get out of it what you put into it, and a lot of people didn't take it seriously so they wasted a lot of time and money."

I guess what I'm wondering is if the "for-profit" education model is inherently "bad" because profit is part of the institution's raison d'être or if it is "bad" because in an attempt to circumvent the traditional college model, it often attracts inadequate students that then blame the institutions for their own failures. Of course NONE of that excuses actual predatory behavior by for-profit institutions, I'm only suggesting that completely dismissing someone's credential because it came from a "for-profit" school might be a bit premature - if they managed to complete the program, they might actually be a more organized, highly motived self-starter than someone who went to a more established institution.

 

This was the central finding of my PhD research. You're putting your finger on the one unchanging fact in this issue.

 

Why? Some common reasons are low graduation rates, high costs, high-pressure sales. One common misconception is that the education they offer is of lower quality. Speaking as somene with experience on the inside, I would disagree with that assessment. (Not that you're making it, but it is a common one.)

 

I did my BA in 3 months after finishing my B.S. taking zero classes and it cost way less than $1,000 in today's dollars. I sat for two exams and that was that.

 

My BA is from a private non profit. My JD is from a state university. My ancient AAS and my LLM came from for profit D/L schools. I have no qualms that each of these schools did a good job and was worth the considerable money and effort. But prestige whoring isn't limited to the law. There may well be a prejudice against for profit institutions, I would take Dr. Douglas' word for that, but my own experience suggests that there's also significant prejudice against D/L degrees in general.

 

I understand, and I believe you understand the point I was attempting to make. In the end, it just comes down to my very strong belief that Mills don't victimize the masses. People use Mills to victimize themselves and others.

 

The name confuses people. Trump University was not a degree mill. It was an old-fashioned real estate "seminar" get rich quick scam and a bait-and-switch fraud. So, in a way even worse.

 

I don't get what you're responding to. Can you point out where I said that they all know? I'm pretty sure that I said SOME multiple times. A commenter presented a hypothetical person. All I said is that some of them do know, which you haven't disproven, and you can't because it's already been proven that it does happen.

 

Where did I say that all for-profit colleges are diploma mills? It helps to read what I was responding to for context. I was making the case that you should not conflate elitism or opinions on low quality institutions with people attending actual diploma mills.

I don't put much stock in people's personal opinions of the for-profit schools they've attended or taught at only because I've taken courses at some of those schools and have a totally different opinion.

 

Over the 14 or 15 years I've been on this forum, I have repeated the same reasons for why I believe that the for-profit college sector, in general, provides lower quality education. This is based on empirical data, having been a student at multiple for-profit colleges, having been an employee of a for-profit college, talking to thousands of their graduates over the years, and reviewing the business practices that do not prioritize educational quality.

In addition, I also don't think highly of certain non-profit schools, such as those accredited by TRACS after losing regional accreditation. ACCSC and ACICS have also shown that they do not do well with quality control.

 

I also quickly finished a BS after having a BA, but the important part that shouldn't be left out is that I had a lot of transfer credits. This is not the same as someone with no degree and little to no credits completing a bachelor's degree in three months.

 

I didn't just teach there; I was a full-time Campus Chair. I have taken both supportive and critical positions on UoP because both are true.