The chair of the Hernando County Planning and Zoning Commission got her Ph.D from a diploma mill.
Hammond defended her academic background and said she has “nothing to hide.”
She said she is in the process of obtaining her transcripts from the Southern Africa Policy Institute in Zimbabwe [UD gets nothing when she Googles this name.].
She also said the Ph.D she received from the now-closed and non-accredited Kennedy Western University (which later changed its name to Warren National University) was legitimate.
She disagreed with published reports that referred to the university as a “diploma mill.”
“If it is a diploma mill, then there are a lot of people in this country who are in a position they shouldn’t be in because they got degrees from Kennedy Western,” Hammond said. [If lots of people bought their degree there, it can’t be a diploma mill.]
Hammond said she has also never referred to herself as a “doctor” in referencing her position. [Why not, if you believe your Ph.D degree is legitimate?]
October 19th, 2010 at 1:52AM
I could not more strongly agree with your [bracketed] comments. There’s no question that Kennedy Western (and the now-defunct successor Warren National) was a degree mill.
But, just to be clear, it wasn’t a diploma mill. Rather, it was a degree mill. There’s a difference.
A diploma mill is little more than a print shop… it just prints-up diplomas (sometimes transcripts, too); and ot usually (but not always) claims to so do for “novelty” purposes.
A degree mill, on the other hand, is an entity which actually pretends to be an actual school. It may just sell the degree in exchange only for cash, and in that sense it’s little more than a diploma mill, I suppose. But because it’s out there saying it’s a school and not just a place where one can get pretty much anything they want printed onto a very authentic looking diploma, it’s a degree mill rather than a diploma mill.
Degree mills usually try to at least PRETEND to be a real school by making the “student” maybe write a paper to evidence “life experience” which the mill will claim is worth a whole degree’s worth of credit; or it may do that, plus make the “student” take a few lightweight courses which a monkey on a three day drunk could pass…
…or, like Kennedy Western, it may actually offer quite a few “courses” which, in some cases, are actually kinda’ almost challenging (but which are nevertheless still not on par with a real college course) to make the degree seeker at least SUSPECT that the “school” is maybe more legitimate than first thought.
But the degree mill will, no matter what, not really be requiring anywhere near as much coursework (if one can even call it that) — nor any of it anywhere near as rigorous as — real college would require.
In any case, I agree with you about this good-for-nothing Hammond woman. She’s a fraud, and everyone — including her — knows it. Now all your readers do, too.
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Gregg L. DesELms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com