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A new report exposes diploma and accreditation mills — fake universities and colleges which con students out of their money and supply fake degrees that deceive employers into offering jobs, sometimes with alarming or fatal consequences.
The 'Accredibase Report' is the result of an 18-month international research project by Eyal Ben Cohen and Rachel Winch of Verifile Limited, one of the leading background screening firms in the United Kingdom,
Report co-author Ben Cohen says: "We have so far identified 1,762 fake institutions, and we are still investigating a further 1,545 currently filed as ‘suspicious' before publishing them on the 'Accredibase' database."
Alarmingly, the US was found to be the world's fake college capital, with 810 diploma mills already identified and many more still under investigation as the Report went to press. More than 35 percent of the diploma mills operate in California, Hawaii, Washington and Florida. The world's second biggest concentration of fake colleges was in the UK, the Report exposing 271 bogus institutions, making the UK the centre of Europe's bogus colleges scam.
A British government spokesperson said: "Tackling the serious issue of bogus degrees at its source remains a challenge.
We welcome any innovative approach that further helps to disrupt the activities of bogus education providers, whilst safeguarding legitimate education and the public."
Multiple 'fake university businesses' are often run from one address — The 'St. Regis University' network ran as many as 121 phony institutions all from a single office in Spokane, Washington. This allows the scammers to easily shut down one business if the authorities become suspicious, while suffering minimal disruption to the fraud - or to the huge profits being generated.
Official estimates that the fraud is earning those involved more than $100m every year are supported by the revelation that one diploma mill alone (known
variously as Kennedy-Western University and Warren National University) was revealed to have banked approximately $25m in only one year of operation.
Ben Cohen adds: "The problem of unaccredited institutions and bogus colleges is evidently a large and very real one facing employers, universities and government agencies around the world."
Fake degrees are much more of a problem than people simply buying them to impress their friends, family or boss or trying to earn more money. The harsh reality is that some fake qualifications can be highly dangerous and have already resulted in tragic consequences.
Fake degrees can make it easier for terrorists to infiltrate facilities by securing them jobs on the inside.
Also The Report lists the case of a Seattle 'Doctor', Brian O'Connell, whose degree in Naturopathic
Medicine was not recognized by either the US Department of Education or the Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).
The bogus doctor's "care" hastened the death of a teenage cancer patient.
The Report also reveals one fake doctorate holder who works as a clinical director in a hospital. There could be many more. In October
of last year, eminent British forensic psychologist, Gene Morrison, was convicted of raping three children. Morrison had earlier received $350,000 for his 'expert' services before he was exposed as possessing a fake degree purchased in the US for $200.
These fake accreditation mills may hide their location to make it more difficult to establish their legitimacy.
For example, the International Accreditation Agency for Online Universities (IAAOU) and the Universal Council for Online Education Accreditation (UCOEA) have been named as unrecognized accrediting agencies by Michigan Civil Service Commission. In fact, they are not recognized by any country's authorities but it does not stop numerous universities, including Belford University and Rochville University, from claiming to be accredited by IAAOU and UCOEA.
"For prospective employers", advises Eyal Ben Cohen, "asking to see original certificates will not tell whether an institution is genuine since these institutions not only provide their "students" with official-looking certificates but also provide verification services where employers and background screening companies can call to 'verify' if the student has the degree they claim! What is required is an accreditation check to see if the institution itself is genuine before even considering the validity of the certificate."
The Report lists a number of key warning signs to look for in any suspected educational institution:
- It does not have authority to operate or grant degrees from the education authorities where it claims to be based.
- You can get a degree in a very short space of time - sometimes just a few days.
- You can get a degree based entirely on your work or life experience.
- Contact details are limited to an email address and the institution is vague about its location.
- It will let you choose your own course title and specify the graduation year you want to appear on your certificate.
- Sample certificates, transcripts or verification letters are available to view on the website.
- It makes over-complicated or misleading claims about accreditation or recognition.
- Its name is similar to that of a recognized and respected education institution.
- The website is poorly designed, has poor spelling and grammar or it plagiarizes copy from other institutions.
Accredibase has set up a global database of unaccredited institutions and unrecognised accrediting bodies that brings together information from government education departments and law enforcing agencies worldwide.
Top 10 United States locations of the "diploma con" by state:
California 134
Hawaii 94
Washington 87
Florida 57
Texas 53
New York 44
Louisiana 39
Illinois 29
Nevada 29
Arizona 28
…simply ensure that whatever online (or any other kind of) school is ACCREDITED by an agency approved by the US Department of Education (USDE) and/or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). Only those two agencies in the US may approve US accreditors. All other so-called “accreditors” are nothing but fakes; and degree/diploma-mills create fake accreditors (with fancy dancy web sites) to make them look good.
Never believe ANY school’s claim of being accredited. And don’t waste your time looking closely at the web site or doing any other kind of your own due diligence to spot other telltale signs that it might be a diploma/degree-mill. There’s a much easier way, to wit:
Just look-up the school in question in the online databases of either or both (preferably both) of USDE and/or CHEA…
USDE DATABASE: http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation
CHEA DATABASE: http://www.chea.org/search
…and if the school in question isn’t in either or both of those databases, then the school is *NOT* accredited… no matter what it might claim on its web site.
If the school is in EITHER of them, then it’s accredited, and so it isn’t really necessary to look it up in both databases if you find it in either of them. However, if it’s not in one database, then do look it up in the other because there are a tiny handful of schools accredited by CHEA but not also USDE (and vice versa).
It takes only SECONDS to look-up a school in those databases… far, far less time than it takes to do your own due diligence.
Now, all that said, there actually are legitimate and credible schools out there in the world which are not accredited. I’m not an accreditation snob who believes that no school is good unless it’s accredited. But, honestly, there are darned few of them. Most of the ones that I know of are specialist schools… schools which are unaccredited, but which nevertheless qualify people for something special, like state licensure (law, psychology, real estate, etc.) ; or which are strictly religious schools (usually seminaries) which qualify people to be clergy in certain denominations. I’m not saying that there are no other kinds of unaccredited schools out there, but once you eliminate the two kinds I just mentioned, there are, to be candid, almost none others which are truly credible, rigorous, and worthwhile.
Plus, there is a growing list of US states which make it flat-out illegal to list an unaccredited degree on one’s resume, on business cards, in advertising, on job applications, etc. So even if the school’s credible, but unaccredited, one can still get in trouble with the law by proffering an unaccredited degree in at least those states… and, again, that list of states is growing. Oregon was the first state, and remains the most strict. So it’s a good example if you want to learn more. Just Google Oregon’s “Office of Degree Authorization” and read all about it.
Finally, unaccredited coursework is usually not transferable into any other accredited school’s degree programs; and degrees from unaccredited schools are usually not accepted as requisite for entry into higher-level degrees at other accredited schools; and, unaccredited degrees are usually not acceptable to US employers or the US government.
So, bottom line: Yes, there are credible and legitimate unaccredited schools out there. But it’s a time-consuming and rigorous task to do one’s own due diligence to figure out if they’re rip-offs; plus their coursework and/or credentials are virtually useless out in the real world, as a practical matter. It’s simply easier to just decide, right out of the gate, that you will not attend ANY school — be it online or in the classroom — unless it’s accredited by a USDE- and/or CHEA-approved agency. If you do that, and then simply look-up any school you’re considering in either or both of the USDE and/or CHEA databases, then you’ll NEVER have a problem. Never!
Hope that helps.
________________________________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com