… the way you know, if you’re a student paying to go there, that you’ve really chosen the bottom of the barrel, is the presence of known diploma mill graduates among the faculty.

Ramapo College, for instance, knows that Frank Tanzini bought his degree at Breyer State, one of the most notorious diploma mills, but it doesn’t care. They have him teaching (wait for it) Educational Leadership.

It’s just as funny to have the sort of person who goes to diploma mills teaching justice:

The granting of tenure last year for Theophilus “T.Y.” Okosun, a professor of justice studies, has caused rumbles among faculty members at [Northeastern Illinois University, a] 12,000-student public university on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

Okosun got his doctorate from the now-shuttered Pacific Western University in Los Angeles.

Rumbles? Rumbles? It bothers people who earned higher degrees over many years that one of their tenured colleagues got his degree in two seconds after pressing PRESS HERE FOR YOUR PHD TODAY! on his laptop?  And… what?  What was that?  They’re worried that he’s teaching students and he doesn’t know shit?

Okosun declined to provide a copy of his transcript or of his thesis.

Such contempt. Such contempt for their students. For the taxpayers. For the university.

A local candidate for the Cape Coral city manager position has been ruled ineligible because the master’s degree he claims does not meet the requirements for the position.

… [Tom] Leipold listed a master’s degree from a college that was not accredited. That school was raided by the FBI for presenting fraudulent diplomas. A Florida statute prohibits anyone from claiming an academic degree from a school that is not properly accredited.

… The job requirements for the city manager post include a master’s degree in public administration, business administration, finance, economics or a related field. Leipold’s application lists a master’s degree in hypnotherapy, not considered a related field.

A crime story out of Canada reminds us (UD likes periodically to remind us) that fake or diploma mill degree holders are often comprehensive, career criminals. Scratch a fake degree, find a world of fraud.

… the diploma mill.

… says Hamlet, and when it comes to readying yourself to snatch a diploma mill degree at just the right moment, no one does it better than Chris Oleyte, Director of Readiness for the US Army Aviation and Missile Command.

He wanted a promotion; he needed a degree for the promotion; he bought a degree.

Of course it doesn’t matter whether the guy in charge of America’s missiles has an education! Chris knows that.

The cynic. Look at him in his photo, all wrapped up in the flag…

Six other people in charge of our weaponry bought their degrees alongside their buddy Oleyte — and UD, veteran of diploma milling, will predict here and now that they all graduated from the same post office box. Teamwork is what the army is about.

… Thom Cooley.

And UD’s not sure why people are paying attention to this one. Because it’s being operated from inside a prison?

A university registrar who offered forged degrees to two women in return for spanking sessions has been given a suspended jail sentence.

Bristol Crown Court heard that Karl Woodgett filmed himself caning the women at a Bristol hotel.

The 37-year-old, of Ewell Minnis, Kent, worked at the University of Bath at the time of the offences.

He was given a nine-month sentence suspended for a year after admitting conspiracy to make fake degrees…

… is featured in this Wired story about diploma mills.

… In 2003 and 2004, the Government Accountability Office surveyed just a handful of agencies and found 463 federal employees with fraudulent degrees.

The diploma operations thrive in part because of a lack of centralized oversight of higher education in the US. The Department of Education leaves the job of accreditation to a group of nongovernmental agencies, which in turn grant institutions the authority to award degrees. All other rules, as well as penalties for fraud, are up to the individual states — which are often lax about enforcement. (And no, the domain suffix .edu doesn’t guarantee authenticity.)

Fake institutions that pretend to be based abroad have an even easier time bringing in business and avoiding scrutiny. Governments generally don’t challenge the legitimacy of universities accredited overseas, which is why many bogus degree mongers create the appearance that their schools are foreign entities offering classes on the Web. And of course, the growing acceptance of online education has only provided more cover for this kind of scheme.

Modern diploma mills are also becoming increasingly industrious and sophisticated. They might send spam to a million people at a time and provide detailed transcripts and verification services. One of the latest tricks is establishing a fake accrediting agency to legitimize fake schools.

… [Gollin’s] aim … is to convince lawmakers that tougher criminal penalties are necessary to fight diploma mills. In 2006 he was elected to the board of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, and he recently teamed up with a congressperson from Minnesota to help draft a federal bill that would tighten the definition of an accredited institution…

UD thanks Bill for the link.

$3,321.91 is a small price to pay to defend the integrity of a school system.

One of the frauds who passed off a diploma mill degree on a New Jersey school system and got more money because of it is suing. After all, whatever everyone else thinks, Breyer State University is an upstanding place for which this woman did outstanding work. Fuck the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, which, on finding the school a fraud, revoked her salary increase. She wants her money back, and she’s suing to get it.

Some local residents are unhappy about the district’s court fees, but UD says that the fight against the diploma mill industry, scourge of the armed forces, fire departments, and public school systems, is worth fighting, and fighting hard. Not only is this fight worth significant expenditure; the publicity such trials attract to the degrading details of the industry and the people who exploit it is priceless.

Here’s the newly elected mayor of Balch Springs, Texas, Dr. Carrie Gordon. Dr. Carrie, who always calls herself Dr., positively boasts on her campaign web page that she earned the right to call herself Dr. because she got a doctorate at Columbia Pacific University — a notorious, now-defunct diploma mill.

Here’s another campaign web page, in which Dr. Carrie announces her victory in the contest for mayor by saying All Praises and glory to God Almighty!!!

Which makes UD worry a tad about the separation of church and state in her administration. But UD doesn’t live in Balch Springs, so it’s not that big a deal for her…

The Dallas Morning News reports that more and more people are beginning to question that pesky, illegal Ph.D.

…When she ran for mayor of Balch Springs this year, Gordon used the title of “doctor” extensively – including more than 20 times on her campaign Web site, on campaign signs and T-shirts, and in campaign filings. She’s listed on the Balch Springs City Council’s Web site as doctor.

Gordon did not respond to requests for comment.

Columbia Pacific appears on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s list of “institutions whose degrees are illegal to use in Texas.

I think Dr. Carrie should respond to requests for comment. She should say what her hundreds of outed diploma mill precursors say at this point in the process: I will not dignify this smear with a response.

If she follows the well-worn path of all the shabby fake Drs. in this country, she’ll continue with variants of this for awhile: It’s sad that my political foes feel compelled…

After that, the comments will be like this: I’m far too busy doing the people’s work to respond to …

As things heat up for her, Carrie Gordon can be expected to say I entered that program in good faith, worked my butt off for it, and am the victim of a scam.

If things get even hotter, here’s what she’ll say: I was a young, hard-working wife and mother. I had no time to attend a traditional university. If in my haste to improve myself through higher education I made some wrong moves, I apologize to my constituents.

She will graciously announce at the next council meeting that the residents of Balch Springs no longer need feel obliged to address her as Dr.

People are always warning you against these things, but here’s one diploma mill grad who’s really going places!

… One by one, Gov. Crist has summoned the contestants on his not-so-short list of finalists to replace Mel Martinez. After private interviews, he’s trotted them out to stand before the cameras and publicly declare their admiration for Crist and to tout their assets.

… [Among the nine finalists for Senator is] State Rep. Jennifer Carroll of the Jacksonville-area. A conservative African-American Navy veteran, Carroll would surely earn Crist a huge burst of glowing national attention for looking like a new breed of Republican. But Carroll is no stand-out in the Legislature (and she once claimed an MBA from a diploma mill called Kensington University that was later ordered closed). She could be a risky, unpredictable choice.

Aw c’mon. It’s the last frontier! And after that, who knows? President?

… hasn’t had the “renovating the Hamburg mansion” problem? What I’m saying is, judge not the German professor who last year sold sixty doctorates from Hannover University, lest ye be judged for your own mansion renovation needs.

He’s in jail now, this guy, but at his trial he explained that he worked with a local diploma mill, collecting hundreds of thousands of euros in bribes in exchange for arranging bogus degrees, because “he needed the money to renovate his Hamburg mansion.”

Turned out the Hannover guy was the tip of a need iceberg. Police began investigating the diploma mill, and today they announced that “100 professors across the country [are suspected of having taken] bribes to help students get their doctoral degrees.”

… [S]tudents paid between euro4,000 to euro20,000 ($5,700 to $28,500) to the company, which promised to help them get their doctorate degrees through its extensive contacts within university faculties.

The Neue Westfaelische newspaper reported that “hundreds” of students were involved, and that the company paid professors between euro2,000 to euro5,000 when their clients had successfully received their Ph.D.’s. …

A class action lawsuit has begun against a now-defunct private Canadian university which

… advertised programs illegally, provided misleading information to the government, exposed students to financial risk, offered inadequate services and kept sloppy student files, including transcripts printed on the back of recycled e-mails.

Doesn’t that last thing, though, make it a Green Campus?