Diploma mill

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[edit] Definition

A diploma mill is a person or organization that sells fraudulent academic degrees or other credentials. More charitably, it is an educational institution operating without the supervision of any appropriate agencies that provides degrees that are, if not outright fraudulent, then worthless because of the lack of appropriate supervision and failure to meet the correct standards.

[edit] Discussion

Many people receive advertisements for "colleges" offering the opportunity to earn college degrees (usually for personal advancement) with little or no work. These degrees, of course, typically not do represent a substantial learning opportunity and do not give the "students" the knowledge and skills represented by a traditional degree.

In the United States, "real" educational institutions are accredited, meaning that their curriculum and standards have been examined and approved by an appropriate board of experts; the Secretary of Education maintains a list of recognized accreditation agencies whose decisions are accepted as legitimate. However, it is easy for a school to operate without accreditation and thus almost entirely without oversight. There are also a number of unrecognized accreditation agencies who offer worthless "accreditation" to schools.

Unfortunately, this is fraud at several levels.

The schools are offering fraudulent credentials by misrepresenting the value of the "degrees" awarded. But at the same time, many of the students are also aware of the negligible value of the credentials, and nevertheless use them to misrepresent their knowledge and skills to employers, licencing boards, clients, customers, and students.

It is not always the case that unaccredited schools are diploma mills. There are a few legitimate reasons for a school to be unaccredited. For example, the accreditation process takes time and a new school may not have completed the process. The state of California has an official two-tiered system of education where the Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE) supervises and establishes standards for otherwise unaccredited schools.