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Here is a copy of "What is a Diploma Mill" from the Chronicle of Higher Education
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From the issue dated June 25, 2004


http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i42/42a00902.htm

DEGREES OF SUSPICION
What's a Diploma Mill?
By THOMAS BARTLETT and SCOTT SMALLWOOD

Some say only those operations that offer degrees for money alone can be properly called diploma mills. Others broaden the definition to include institutions that offer degrees for money and a little work. One dictionary says a diploma mill is an unaccredited institution that "grants degrees without ensuring that students are properly qualified."

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a private group that represents more than 60 accrediting agencies, says that while there is no single, agreed-upon definition, several indicators suggest that an operation may be a diploma mill: for instance, giving degrees for life experience, listing no faculty members, and claiming accreditation from a questionable accreditor.

The spectrum that emerges in the world of unaccredited higher education looks roughly like this:

Degrees for cash: You get an e-mail message and call the number. In return for a couple of hundred or maybe even a couple of thousand dollars, you get a degree from, say, Thornewood University or the University of Palmers Green. They'll backdate it for you, and you get to be summa cum laude, if you wish.

A bit of work: An ad in the back of USA Today may catch your eye. After a phone call, you submit a résumé for "analysis," on the basis of which you receive substantial credit for your experience. You may do additional course work or submit papers. A degree that might take years to earn in the accredited world can be earned in a few months or possibly weeks. Novus University's president contends that her institution shouldn't be considered a diploma mill because the required dissertations have a 55-page minimum. "You don't just pay and we give you a degree," says Natalie Handy.

Still not the real thing: At this level, institutions resemble the distance-education programs that have managed to secure legitimate accreditation. The program may take more than a year to complete. You may write papers and take courses, but in some cases more than half of the credits needed for the degree will come from life experience. Professors at accredited institutions have moonlighted as consultants for Kennedy-Western University and similar companies. But simply requiring some work may not cut it, says David Linkletter, with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which regulates degree-granting by private institutions in the state. "Just to make people go through hoops of some sort doesn't mean they're going through the right hoops," he says.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Special Report
Volume 50, Issue 42, Page A9
 
More on diploma mills

Second article on diploma mills:
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From the issue dated June 25, 2004


http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i42/42a01701.htm

DEGREES OF SUSPICION
Tilting at Diploma Mills
By THOMAS BARTLETT and SCOTT SMALLWOOD

They're not quite the X-Men, but the small group of people doing battle with diploma mills might have come out of central casting. One is a former FBI agent. Another is a government bureaucrat. There's the former president of an unaccredited university. And there's the physics professor who is devoted to stamping out fake degrees.

They've even given themselves a name and a logo right out of the comic books: the Carpmasters. (Get it? They're fishing for bottom-feeding pests.)

Because no coordinated government effort exists to combat diploma mills, these compatriots have become the go-to experts on the subject. They meet occasionally, but generally they coordinate their investigations through phone calls and e-mail messages.

Going after diploma mills is just a small part of Alan Contreras's job as director of Oregon's Office of Degree Authorization. Even so, his vigilance has made him the country's leading government watchdog on unaccredited higher education. He is quoted often in the news media, gets calls from people all over the world checking on dubious institutions, and has testified before a U.S. Senate committee. His office's Web site (http://www.osac.state.or.us./oda) provides the most comprehensive list of diploma mills available.

Under Oregon law, using a diploma-mill degree to get a job is illegal. "Helping people make good decisions about what is a college and what isn't is rewarding," he says. "The flip side is that I get a lot of letters from lawyers. No one likes to hear that their degree isn't any good."

For George Gollin, exposing fake universities isn't a job. It's a relaxing pastime. When Mr. Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is stumped by a particularly thorny physics problem, he takes a break by investigating a diploma mill. He has become an expert on several clusters of operators, and he regularly sends out e-mail messages to the Carpmasters and others, updating them on what he has found.

"Part of my worldview is that we have to decide when it's appropriate to intervene when there are harmful things happening in the world," says Mr. Gollin, a self-described "goody-goody" who became interested in the issue because of the spam he would receive from diploma mills. "This is corrupt activity. ... That got me to stick with it."

Learning From Within

In nearly every article written about diploma mills, John Bear offers his pithy quotes. He is best known for Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning, which regulators themselves use when faced with an institution that they haven't heard of. What often goes unmentioned is that Mr. Bear himself has been involved with several institutions that Mr. Contreras, at least, now considers diploma mills. He once served as president of Greenwich University, was part of the founding of Fairfax University, and worked with Columbia Pacific University two decades ago.

Though he no longer owns stock in any unaccredited university, Mr. Bear remains a proponent of distance education and tells people that they should study the issue carefully before deciding whether an unaccredited institution meets their needs. He says that when he was involved with the unaccredited institutions, they were reputable, and that he cannot be responsible for any subsequent changes they made.

Mr. Contreras does not believe that Mr. Bear's background makes him any less credible now. "I can't imagine a better way of learning how these operate than being involved in unaccredited institutions in the past," the Oregon official says. "Does it mean people look at John and say, 'Hmmm?' Sure. Do I see that as a big issue? No."

Allen Ezell, another of the Carpmasters, took time off from his job as a corporate security manager to write a book on the diploma-mill industry with Mr. Bear. Mr. Ezell, a former FBI agent, once led a task force called Dipscam, which shut down dozens of diploma mills in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Simply catching the carp, though, may not be enough.

"It would be good to shut them down, but they will instantly open up somewhere else," Mr. Contreras says of individual operators. "They will go to Africa, they will go to the Isle of Man, they will move outside the country. You can't stop that."

The key, he says, is to dry up the demand for such degrees, by making it illegal to use them to get jobs or promotions. That's essentially what laws in Oregon, New Jersey, and North Dakota do. Other states may be coming around to that strategy, Mr. Contreras says. Among the calls he gets about whether individual institutions are diploma mills have been inquiries from officials in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Nevada, who are considering adopting regulations similar to Oregon's. And the U.S. Department of Education has proposed creating an official list of all accredited universities, to make it easier for prospective students to distinguish the carp from a good catch.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Special Report
Volume 50, Issue 42, Page A17
 
I have been attending University of Phoenix Online since late 2001. (BS in computer information systems) I can tell you that, without a shadow of a doubt, the school's program is no diploma mill. A lot of the coursework I have done thus far has been fairly intense in some respect.

I have talked with a lot of hiring managers, including my HR director. All of them have said that, as long as the college is accredited, the degree is acceptable. Now, a bachelor's degree is regarded differently from graduate degrees (MBA, MS, PhD, etc.). But, even then, the chosen career field determines the institution's worth.

In my experience, bachelor's degrees are "union cards" in the business world. They differentiate you from the "average Joe," but that's about it. They prove that you can stick with something that is not fun and takes years before any real benefit is seen.

--Dim
 
With regard to accrediting agencies, North Central Association, which is one of the primary accrediting groups, accredited a one room office with a printer and computer as a degree granting institution. I have not heard what has happened since. This was during the years of excitement over on-line degrees.
Below is an article you might find to be fun.
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From the issue dated April 2, 2004


http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i30/30a02901.htm

Member of Accrediting Group Has Ph.D. From 'Notorious Diploma Mill'
By THOMAS BARTLETT

A member of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which accredits approximately 600 private career-training institutions, claims a doctorate from a distance-learning institution based in Liberia that one state official called "a notorious diploma mill."

Michael Davis, who was appointed to the council in June, holds a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Saint Regis University, which is based in Monrovia, Liberia. The council says it is investigating the degree.

Mr. Davis, 56, is president and owner of Gwinnett College of Business, an accredited, for-profit institution in Georgia. He received a doctorate in October after about 10 months of work, he said in an interview last week.

"They've got a pretty good Web site," Mr. Davis said. "I wrote up about 26 pages of my experiences in the business world, and they gave me a lot of credit for that." He said he also wrote four 10- to 20-page papers and a thesis that was more than 60 pages long.

'Why Would I Question It?'

At first, Mr. Davis said, he was suspicious of Saint Regis, especially when he learned that he could receive a doctoral degree in so little time. That's why he "researched the crap out of it," he said, sending e-mail messages to the Liberian Embassy in Washington to verify that the institution had government approval in Liberia.

Mr. Davis said he had heard through an acquaintance that Saint Regis was accepted by the State of Georgia as legitimate. "I thought, if the State of Georgia is going to approve it, why would I question it?" he said.

Recently, however, after a state investigation in Georgia determined that Saint Regis was not a legitimate institution, the state cut the salaries of six public-school teachers with graduate degrees from Saint Regis. The teachers must pay back money they had received in raises as a result of claiming the degrees. Like many states, Georgia pays teachers with graduate degrees more than it does their counterparts.

Alan Contreras, administrator of the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, said there was no doubt that Saint Regis is bogus. In fact, Mr. Contreras refused to use the word "university" to describe it.

"The entity called Saint Regis University is a notorious diploma mill that pretends to have approval from the government of Liberia but appears to be operated by people in the United States," he said.

Even a quick search of the Internet raises a number of red flags about Saint Regis. Its Web site says students can earn degrees "with no further courses or classes -- based on what you already know!" A search also brings up a number of discussion groups that refer to Saint Regis as a diploma mill.

Multiple-Choice Master's

An official at the Liberian Embassy said that, indeed, Saint Regis was accredited in that country. Paul Smith, who identified himself as an "officer" with the embassy, said he could offer no further details about what such accreditation entails. Mr. Smith said he had been working at the embassy for only a few weeks.

A telephone call to Saint Regis's headquarters, in Monrovia, was answered by Jallah Faciann, who said he was the dean of studies. He said Saint Regis was fully accredited and was not a diploma mill. Mr. Faciann, who had to speak loudly because, he said, a party was going on in the office, said Saint Regis has been unfairly maligned and does not sell degrees.

But an investigation by a reporter for the Gwinnett Daily Post, in Georgia, seems to contradict that assertion. The reporter, Jaime Sarrio, who was looking into claims made by the six public-school teachers with Saint Regis degrees, purchased a master's degree from Saint Regis for $995 after completing a multiple-choice test online.

It remains unclear what action, if any, will be taken by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. Steven A. Eggland, executive director of the council, said he only recently had become aware that Mr. Davis received a Ph.D. from Saint Regis.

Mr. Davis was appointed to the 14-member council last June and received his degree from Saint Regis in October. The degree was listed in his brief biography in the council's winter newsletter.

"At the moment we are taking no position on the degree," Mr. Eggland said. "There will be a continuing inquiry."

Mr. Davis, who said he paid about $3,000 for the degree, acknowledged that he was not sure now whether Saint Regis is legitimate, and said he planned to look into the matter more thoroughly. When asked if he might have been fooled by Saint Regis, he responded, "I could have. I certainly could have."

http://chronicle.com
Section: Money & Management
Volume 50, Issue 30, Page A29


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Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
 
The following article describes how easy it is to corrupt the academic system.

Enjoy,
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Nation & World : Tuesday, March 20, 2001

Close-up
Clinton scandal and a $40 million scam
By Josh Getlin
Los Angeles Times
NEW SQUARE, N.Y. - For more than four decades, this community of Hasidic residents has lived a reclusive existence far removed from the malls and subdivisions surrounding the village north of New York City. Television sets and newspapers are banned here. So are shorts, T-shirts and bathing suits.
Signs in Yiddish advise men and women to walk on different sides of the road. As mothers shepherd children through snowy streets, their fathers, husbands and sons spend hours in study halls poring over holy texts.
But this village that deliberately shut out the modern world also is the home of a sophisticated scam that bilked $40 million from the federal government to support civic and spiritual enterprises.
And ever since then-President Clinton commuted prison sentences for four men who engineered the fraud, the town that overwhelmingly backed Hillary Rodham Clinton's U.S. Senate bid has been caught up in scandal.
The U.S. attorney in New York City has launched a probe to determine whether there was a deal that swapped votes for the reduced sentences, and last week FBI agents began questioning residents.
"I'd say the mood here is one of exasperation, because nobody has offered proof that there was a deal to trade votes for pardons," said Rabbi Mayer Schiller, a town spokesman. "Nobody got rich here. The men convicted used the money to support local schools and, while they might have violated the letter of the law, they didn't think they violated the spirit of the law."
Vote for Clinton: 1,400-12
Prosecutors have angrily protested the commutations, saying they send the wrong message to groups contemplating fraud.
And many observers have challenged Hillary Clinton's contention that she had nothing to do with her husband's decision to reduce the sentences.
The New Square furor had its roots in her visit here in August, a time when her Senate campaign was in trouble with Jewish voters over her earlier embrace of a Palestinian state. She needed a show of support from the state's politically potent Orthodox Jewish community and, with great fanfare, the first lady toured the village. The highlight was an audience with Grand Rebbe David Twersky, the town's spiritual leader.
Sen. Clinton has said repeatedly that neither she nor Twersky discussed the four imprisoned men during the meeting, an account supported by several witnesses.
In November, the town voted 1,400-12 for her, unlike two neighboring Orthodox communities that voted heavily for her opponent. The Clintons invited Twersky to visit the White House on Dec. 22, when, she said, the rabbi lobbied to reduce the sentences.
What New Square is all about
A town of modest, sometimes ramshackle houses and apartments, New Square was founded in 1956 by Grand Rebbe Joseph Twersky (David Twersky's father) from Ukraine. It was the United States' first all-Orthodox Jewish village, modeled along the lines of a 19th-century Russian shtetl.
The sexes are segregated in public, and residents mingle as little as possible with American culture, which is deemed profane.
Although some people are employed, most are absorbed with trying to observe a strict Hasidic lifestyle. As a result, the 7,000-member community has traditionally sought government funding to stay alive, said J.J. Goldberg, editor of Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper published in New York City.
More than 60 percent of residents live below the poverty line, according to federal statistics, yet the town is rich in another sense: Its leaders have historically delivered huge blocs of votes to supportive politicians, in past elections giving equally lopsided votes to New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat.
But there are limits to political largess: Although New Square's life is centered on its yeshiva, a school for Talmudic studies, there is a federal ban on aid to such religious institutions. And this was the seed of the fraud that took root in the early 1980s. Unable to get conventional funding for the yeshiva and other schools, a handful of men connected to the town's village council tapped into a gold mine of federal programs.
The scam: phantom schools
During a 1999 trial, prosecutors said hundreds of New Square residents had received thousands of dollars in federal grants to attend a fictitious school based in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, newly arrived Russian immigrants received $300 payments to sign up for nonexistent courses in local schools with teachers who didn't exist.
Similar schemes were hatched with small-business loans and rental subsidies from federal housing programs, enabling organizers to fund the yeshiva and other facilities until the fraud was halted in 1992.
Although they claimed to have simply misunderstood federal regulations, four residents were convicted of funneling federal money into the New Square yeshiva and other schools, bank accounts and, in some cases, the pockets of the organizers. U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones said the men had masterminded a scheme that was "sophisticated, long-term and brazen in its execution."
Two other New Square men were indicted, but they fled to Israel in 1997. Chaim Berger, a town political elder and alleged architect of the fraud, is fighting extradition.
In his Jan. 20 commutation, Clinton reduced the sentences of Kalman Stern, Jacob Elbaum, Benjamin Berger (Chaim's son) and David Goldstein from a maximum of 6½ years to a maximum of 2½ years. Attorneys said that the men, who remain in custody, are remorseful and that their large families are suffering.
'The feds got fed up'
The New Square case was similar to others in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities probed by federal investigators during the early 1990s. During a 1993 U.S. Senate hearing, witnesses cited 37 instances where groups were using federal money illegally. Most cases were settled through negotiation, but New Square landed in court.
"I'll tell you why," said a prominent town figure, who asked not to be identified. "The feds got fed up, because at the initial stages of the investigation, people here were very uncooperative. The government was really annoyed at the scale of the fraud and the kind of resistance they encountered."
When FBI agents drove into town to serve subpoenas in 1995, they were surrounded by motorists who threatened them and forced them to leave. When agents returned with a police escort, they were followed by a car with a loudspeaker blaring instructions in Yiddish and urging residents not to cooperate. The next year, after a federal court had failed to get financial records from the yeshiva, a judge forced it into receivership and levied a $1 million fine.
Scam perpetrated for years
Authorities later determined that the defendants had signed up many residents for Pell education grants beginning in the early 1980s. These stipends of as much as $2,500, which do not have to be reimbursed, are designed to further a student's college education and help develop career skills.
The scam had escaped major scrutiny until auditors visiting New Square in 1992 grew suspicious. Brian Hickey, a veteran investigator with the Department of Education, triggered a wide-ranging probe after he asked to inspect financial records. He was kept waiting for hours, before finally inspecting documents that seemed to be freshly typed.
When he asked one Pell-grant recipient when she expected to graduate, she answered, "You mean from high school?"
Hickey and other auditors decided to go door to door to see whether students were taking college-level courses. They discovered widespread fraud: Abraham Berkowitz, who testified under a grant of immunity, said he and the defendants regularly posed as school administrators for the fictitious Brooklyn school and rehearsed their roles before auditors arrived.
Two women who got Pell grants for 14 and 11 years, respectively, could not recall what they studied.
One student, asked what she learned in biology, said she had been trained to prepare kosher meat. Another woman, told her husband had been enrolled in rabbinical courses for six years, testified that he actually was a limousine driver from Teaneck, N.J. "If he'd taken all of these classes," she said angrily, "he'd have been a rabbi by now."
 
I know I have had plenty of course work with UVSC too. That is my plan to get this degree and then if need be I will get a degree in a traditional class room setting.
 
Dep676 said:
I know I have had plenty of course work with UVSC too. That is my plan to get this degree and then if need be I will get a degree in a traditional class room setting.
You can sit in the classroom at UVSC and get the same piece of paper if you never step foot on campus.
The degrees that are questionable don't have a campus and aren't accredited.
 
Don't be foolish!

UVSC is an accredited university. You do not need to pursue an additional degree.

Accreditation is any form of independent review of educational programs for the purpose of helping to establish that the learning offered is of a uniform and sound quality.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Utah Valley State College is Accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. (NWCCU)[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In the United States, the most widely recognized form of accreditation for degree-granting programs comes from the regional accreditation boards. When people ask if you have attended an "accredited university" in the United States, they most commonly mean a regionally accredited university.[/FONT]

I graduate in December and my degree is the same whether I do it online or in the classroom. As long as the online program is through an accredited university it will not matter what industry you work in. An online degree is not frowned upon in any way. Now those life experience degrees are a little shady but we are talking about something completely different here.

Good luck to all of those at UVSC.

 
The Above

was not directed towards you Viper. You just posted before I could respond to Dep676.
 

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