Seebach: For sale: College degrees; integrity sold separately
By Linda Seebach, Rocky Mountain News, July 17, 2004

Millions of students go to college and work for years to earn their degrees. An unknown number of people save themselves the time and trouble of being students, and just buy degrees.

It's big business. In its June 25 issue, The Chronicle of Higher Education examines this shady academic universe and concludes, "Diploma mills are more profitable, more sophisticated, and more intertwined with legitimate higher education than ever before."

Some diploma mills simply award degrees for cash. Others issue credit for "life experience" or require some minimal effort, such as a term paper. One institution - if that's the word - described by The Chronicle is called the International University for Graduate Students, which says it is accredited by Saint Kitts and Nevis, an island nation in the Caribbean. "The university offers Ph.D.s for $10,500, with a required five-day residency at the Marriott resort on the island," according to The Chronicle description.

Sounds like more fun than five months preparing for Ph.D. orals or five years writing a dissertation.

What The Chronicle means by "intertwined" is illustrated by the fact that the founder and chancellor of this five-day wonder is Benjamin Weisman, who in his regular job is a professor of business at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Though it ought to be embarrassed by having had its indirect connection with a diploma mill exposed, Mercy is a legitimate and respectable institution.

No doubt most of the people who buy degrees know it's a scam, though some probably believe they're entitled to get a degree for "life experience." But there are plenty of people who don't know much if anything about higher education, and perhaps willing to believe what they read in the ads. For instance, On the inside back cover of USA Today one day this week, to the right of the crossword puzzle, Lacrosse University offers "Undergraduate degrees" and claims it is accredited. It also snared the enviable Web address, distance.edu. Columbus University also offers credit "for Work/Life Exp." and claims accreditation by "WAUC."

WAUC stands for World Association of Universities and Colleges, an accrediting body not itself accredited, that is, not recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. It was started in 1993 by Maxine Asher. She also runs American World University, which has more than 7,000 students around the world. As she told The Chronicle, "we couldn't get (accreditation) from the regionals." The association now has more than 50 members and has granted accreditation to 27 of them.

Of course it is true that work experience may be as good a preparation for a job as a college degree, or even better. There is a lot of mindless credentialism around. I remember a joke from the Soviet era, where people who were paid in virtually worthless rubles said, "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work." One might say, "they pretend to need a college degree, and I pretend to have one."

But the one area where that argument, self-serving as it is, definitely does not apply is higher education itself. The Chronicle found "dozens of professors who hold degrees from unaccredited colleges," and named a few. One is a part-time professor of finance at Tulane University, who likes his diploma from Lacrosse because "the seal is very nice."

Another is an assistant professor of management at Valdosta State University, whose dean told The Chronicle that he knew the man's doctorate was a fake before he was hired. "Hell, we knew it was worthless," Dean Kenneth Stanley said. "Give us a break!"

Why should anybody give them a break? It's unfortunate but understandable that people with fake degrees defend their value, but incomprehensible that administrators who hire them would brush the matter off so cavalierly, let alone so publicly.

Hoping to find a local example, I spent some time searching the Web sites of Colorado colleges and universities for the names of some of the institutions highlighted in The Chronicle's articles. I didn't find any, but that is hardly conclusive. Someone with a degree from a real university is likely to include that fact on the curriculum vitae he or she puts up on the Web. Someone who bought a diploma online may well decide reticence is the more prudent course.

Besides, it would be an enormous task to check all the possibilities. The state of Michigan does not allow degrees from institutions that are not currently accredited by any agency of the American Council on Higher Education Accreditation to satisfy education requirements for state jobs. It has a 13-page, single-spaced list of such institutions.

Diploma mills don't merely issue diplomas. One huge operation, operating call centers in several countries, also offered fake transcripts, fake recommendation letters and a telephone number so that employers who actually bothered to check an applicant's record could call and verify the authenticity of the degree.

Just call it good customer service.


Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News. She can be reached by telephone at 303-892-2519 or by e-mail at