… and unless these same people have achieved high-level jobs in education and related fields.

Cindy Holguin, CEO of a New Mexico charter school, seems more than amply to fit the bill:

Holguin is … fighting back against allegations regarding her qualifications to lead the school as CEO.

[D]egrees held by Holguin from Belford University, … a proven diploma scam, [are] invalid and did not meet standards set by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Holguin told the Current-Argus the only degree she used in applying for her position was an associate’s degree obtained from the Carlsbad campus of New Mexico State University in 1995.

The university was unable to find a record of that degree when requested by the Current-Argus.

In addition, Holguin said she has an MBA from New York State University Online from 2007.

Holguin said she would not cite her degrees from Belford University, saying those were not degrees she was “proud of.”

The I didn’t cite them or We didn’t use them in assessing her qualifications for the job are classic diploma mill-revelation moves… Yes, yes, she got two PhDs from East Ipswich Institute of Holistic Theology… But those are totally irrelevant to her work as superintendent of schools, so they don’t count… I got those degrees when I was a single mother subsisting on dog food and I was desperate…

But Holguin, if these reports are accurate, goes way beyond that. According to my count, she’s got at least four degrees, and it’s possible that none of them exists. I’ve never heard of New York State University Online. New Mexico State University has never heard of Cindy Holguin. And for all we know, there are several other degrees she’s not proud of and doesn’t list for certain jobs…

This is one of the most impressive diploma mill hauls UD has seen, and she’s seen a lot. She has speculated on this blog before about how this happens – how you accumulate not one or two but four or five bogus degrees. Her theory is that once you enter the twilight zone, the outer limits, of university degrees, you are in danger of being lured even deeper into the universe. Why stop at Calaspia when you can take your spaceship to Deltora and then Eternia?

For whatever reason (no really big stories? you’ve seen one you’ve seen ’em all?), University Diaries doesn’t do much of that anymore. But the business of buying degrees online, or just saving money and making them up out of thin air, continues to thrive. Local blowhard politicians – like this guy in California – remain a rich source.

Accepted to Cornell at age 16. A Ph.D. by age 21. A degree from UCLA Law School and membership to the state bar.

I sat down with him at his restaurant and presented evidence that he’d never attended those schools or passed the bar. He brushed my findings aside, stuck to his claims and a couple weeks later even posted online what appeared to be his Ph.D. from Cornell. … [T]he signatures of the dean and president weren’t those of anybody who’d ever been dean or president at Cornell.

Taxpayers subsidize a school in Chapel Hill that embodies the athletic dreams of their great state, and it has always been the responsibility of its board of trustees (The trustee page includes nicknames for each of the trustees. Haywood Cochrane is “Haywood,” Peter Grauer is “Peter,” Kelly Hopkins is “Kelly.”) to retain faculty who understand the foundational values of the institution.

A one-paragraph final paper for a recent course at the mill – a paragraph plagiarized from the first page of a reader designed for third graders – has gone viral and why not. Why the hell not. Its grade was A minus.

People – especially the people footing the bill, which is to say the citizens of North Carolina – have every right to know why they paid for that minus, what the fuck that itty bitty tail is doing trailing that A like some pointless right offensive guard just standing there along the side of things taking up room on the field. Whenever you give a revenue athlete a grade, you’re sending one of two messages: We love you, and ever since we debased ourselves beyond belief to recruit you, our love has only grown; or We take it upon ourselves to judge you. To actually judge you and give you a minus.

Which one will it be, Tar Heels???

… everything’s topsy-turvy. The spokesperson for a Los Angeles school board candidate who boasts a degree from “America World University” says the city’s “children deserve better.” He doesn’t mean they deserve better than a bogus PhD holder in charge of their education. He means they deserve better than to live in a district where people have the gall to point out that someone who wants to be in charge of their education has a bogus PhD.

And not just a bogus PhD. On her cv, the candidate renders America World University American University. Classic diploma mill holder move. Mess with the name a little and everything comes out all right.

… would definitely be weird and embarrassing, but this is America, where anything is possible.

On the other hand, this is also the land of evil elites who might try to deny bogus degree-holders the right to represent legitimate universities in state politics…

Carol Ammons is running in Illinois to be the Democratic nominee for the House of Representatives in the 103rd District, home of the University of Illinois. Ammons is quite sure all this talk about her Walsingham University degree being bogus amounts to “the elites” smearing her for being a woman of the people, but so far, try as he might, Erik Jakobsson has not been able to find any evidence that Walsingham is anything other than a scam.

“When I thought about the relationship between what she had done and the possibility that she would represent the district that has Parkland College and the University of Illinois in it, that seemed to me to transcend politics as usual,” he said.

… “One of the reasons I feel so strongly about this is because I’ve spent my whole career at the university, and diploma mills totally undercut and undermine and devalue what real institutions of higher education do, like Parkland and the University of Illinois. We just can’t have someone in Springfield who doesn’t value that.”

… in this article about a fake PhD who gets paid handsomely — on the basis of his pretend degree — to fuck up people’s lives in South Dakota.

… returns to haunt the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Communications in Trinidad.

… and who can be surprised that they crop up in Michele Bachmann’s business?

[Marcus Bachmann’s] Ph.D. comes from the Union Institute, a Cincinnati-based correspondence school; in 2002, it was cited by the Ohio Board of Regents, which said, “Expectations for student scholarship at the doctoral level were not as rigorous as is common for doctoral work.”

As Politico has reported, he’s not licensed with any of the boards that certify mental-health professionals in Minnesota, one of the few states that allows unlicensed people to practice mental-health care. [Another therapist on staff has an M.A. that] comes from Argosy University, a for-profit diploma mill.

Answer: Hyuk! It don’t! It’s Tennessee!

A Jacksonville reporter asks:

I wonder if any of the audience at the River Club who heard Lt. Gov.-elect Jennifer Carroll speak about education reform remembers the disclosure a few years back that Carroll had paid good money while in the Navy to get a master’s degree from an unaccredited diploma mill?

They went into it together, like the buddies they are, all of them getting their pretend degrees so that they could get raises.

Then the shit hit the fan.

And now they’re suing together for “extreme emotional distress.”

Good luck, lads.

She’s going to blame the fools on his church’s hiring committee.

Monseigneur Pastor His Holiness Rafer Byrdsong did everything humanly possible to reveal his comprehensive fraudulence to the Third Baptist Church of Suffield, Connecticut. He provided reams of obviously bogus educational and other background documentation. A local news channel reports:

… He claimed he was a Navy chaplain. When the I-Team received his service records, it was discovered he was in the Navy, but as a cook.

The Chaplain Corps said they never heard of him.

No records exist for many of Byrdsong’s former parishes, and officials in Florida and California said there were no records that the colleges and universities he claimed to attend ever existed either.

When the I-Team looked in to the school that supposedly gave Byrdsong a doctorate, it was discovered there was a school with a similar name that would give anyone a PH.D. to anyone who pays for it, with no classes required.

Upon closer inspections, all of the documents given by Byrdsong to the church when he applied to be pastor were full of misspellings.

The certificate for the doctorate even had the word diploma misspelled.

… While digging into Byrdsong’s past, his ex-wife was found. She said she divorced him and brought bigamy charges against him when she found out he was married to five other women. She said hearing what Channel 3 found made her sad, but it wasn’t a surprise.

Pamela Mann said, “Can he preach? Yes. Can he teach? Yes. Does he have the persona that would bring people to him, yes, as any good con artist would.”…

I don’t care how small your church is. If you can’t even be bothered to check one of the claims a candidate for pastor makes, it’s your fault when you end up with Elmer Gantry.

For those who need reminding, this is how it typically goes.

The city’s top policeman [Diploma mill stories are almost always about police forces, fire departments, and the armed services. More often than you’d think, they’re also about schools – public schools. Any organization that forks over cash to people who show it a piece of paper that looks more or less like a college degree is asking for diploma milling. Unless these organizations learn how to screen bogus degrees, they should stop with the whole college degree incentive pay deal.] will face a Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission panel next month, stemming from a bogus college-degree scandal.

Fruitland Park [Florida] Police Chief Mark Isom had received about $775 in incentive pay for what was supposed to be his attendance at an accredited college, which turned out to be a degree mill.

… A criminal investigation dove into the college education of Isom earlier this year after the city of Fruitland Park learned [that the school listed was] a non-accredited and bogus institution, Youngsfield University, which is registered as a corporation in Delaware.

Isom had contended he took the courses from 2003 to 2009. A state statue allowed the city to pay Isom an extra $36 each pay period as an incentive for his having accredited college degrees.

But Isom reportedly paid a one-time electronic payment of $1,110 to the school on March 17, 2009 for online bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminology, diplomas that were then mailed to him, according to the FDLE. [People often ask UD — well, Mr UD once asked UD — why people continue to pay so much money to these places when they could probably, with sufficient technological skill, produce these pieces of paper for themselves, for free. It’s a good question. The idiots on the other end of this, after all, never notice the thing is bogus; or they do notice, but they don’t care. It almost always takes outsiders to blow the whistle in these cases, as in Isom’s bitter complaint that some “disgruntled citizen” fingered him… So why buy the thing? Why part with a thousand bucks? Because most of the diploma mills, for that money, hire some person to sit at a phone and answer it in the unlikely event anyone actually calls to verify credentials. “Good afternoon, Youngsfield University, registrar’s office!… Hm, just a moment… Yes, Mr. Isom was a student here… Would you like me to mail you his transcripts?”]

An FDLE investigation report that was turned over to the State Attorney Office for review stated the college was as a bogus institution and degree mill. And investigators said Isom couldn’t provide the name of a “single” textbook, reference book, instructor or course after allegedly completing 63 separate and distinct bachelors and masters level courses from the school in the six years. [As with the just-tenured professor of justice studies at Northeastern Illinois University who one-clicked his PhD, diploma mill grads won’t show you their thesis or their transcripts, and they can’t remember what they read or who they worked with.]

The report added that Isom had refused to meet with investigators…

The real question is: Given how similar all diploma mill stories are, and how obvious the institutional structure sustaining the mills, why are diploma mills still a billion dollar or so industry?

And the answer is: No one gives a shit.

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

She doesn’t even have a job to go to. But Dr. Marilyn French Hubbard (she has no right to the Dr. title, having picked it up at a diploma mill, The American Institute of Holistic Theology) can’t seem to be there for Central Michigan University trustee meetings — and she’s vice-chair of the trustees.

And that’s just the beginning. Student editors at CMU’s paper want to know about another trustee, Gail Torreano:

Thursday’s Board of Trustees meeting was the second of the last four that Trustee Gail Torreano has not attended.

Such a record is detrimental to improving Central Michigan University, especially in a time of vital transition and economic uncertainty.

As such, Torreano should respectfully consider resigning from her position on the Board.

… How can the public take Torreano seriously if she is incapable of showing up to meetings that are planned months in advance?

… With the exception of 2009, members of the board only have to attend five meetings a year, all of which are scheduled far in advance.

If she cannot come to the majority of meetings, she should not be part of the important decision-making the Trustees are responsible for.

… Aside from Torreano, the attendance at Thursday’s board meeting was fair, at best.

Trustee Marilyn French Hubbard was available via conference call.

She spoke only to give her consent when votes were taken and did not contribute at all to discussion.

Even Trustee John Hurd left a few minutes early, so only four members were physically there until the end.

And this, only days before a new president comes on board.

Why was attendance this weak for a Trustees meeting?

This is supposed to be CMU’s governing body, the people who have the last say on any major decision at the fourth largest institution of higher education in the state.

Family emergencies and other similarly important matters are excusable, but not much else.

CMU doesn’t need trustees who are absent when they are called upon. Students are expected to be responsible for themselves. The Board of Trustees should do the same.

Really, even by board of trustees standards (UD has learned, in the writing of this blog, just how low these can be), CMU’s lot is disgraceful.