Diploma mill
A diploma mill or degree mill is a business that sells illegitimate diplomas or academic degrees. The term diploma mill is also used pejoratively to describe any educational institution with low standards for admission and graduation, low career placement rate, or low average starting salaries of its graduates.
The degrees can be fabricated, falsified, or misrepresented. These businesses may claim to give credit for relevant life experience but without actual prior learning assessment programs. They may also claim to evaluate work history or require submission of a thesis or dissertation for evaluation to give an appearance of authenticity. Diploma mills are frequently supported by accreditation mills set up for the purpose of providing an appearance of authenticity. Diploma mills are considered a global threat to academic integrity.
Terminology
The term "diploma mill" originally denotes an institution providing diplomas on an intensive and profit-making basis, like a factory. More broadly, it describes any institution that offers qualifications which are not accredited nor based on proper academic assessment. While the terms "degree mill" and "diploma mill" are commonly used interchangeably, within the academic community a distinction is sometimes drawn. A "degree mill" issues diplomas from unaccredited institutions which may be legal in some states but are generally illegitimate, while a "diploma mill" issues counterfeit diplomas bearing the names of real universities.Academic diplomas may be legitimately awarded without any study as a recognition of authority or experience. When given extraordinarily, such degrees are called honorary degrees or honoris causa degrees. Also, in some universities, holders of a lower degree may be routinely awarded honorary higher degrees without study.
The term "diploma mill" may also be used pejoratively to describe a legitimate institution with low academic admission standards and a low job placement rate, such as some for-profit schools.
Characteristics
Diploma mills share a number of features that differentiate them from respected institutions, although some legitimate institutions may exhibit some of the same characteristics.Accreditation and authenticity
The most notable feature of diploma mills is that they lack accreditation by a nationally recognized accrediting agency. Diploma mills therefore employ various tactics in an attempt to appear more legitimate to potential students.Some diploma mills claim accreditation by an accreditation mill while referring to themselves as being "fully accredited". Accreditation mills based in the United States may model their websites after real accrediting agencies overseen by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Another typical ploy is for mills to claim to be internationally recognized by organizations such as UNESCO. UNESCO has no authority to recognize or accredit higher education institutions or agencies, and has published warnings against education organizations that claim UNESCO recognition or affiliation.
Some diploma and degree mills have played a role in creating unrecognized accrediting bodies as well. These diploma and degree mills may further confuse matters by claiming to consider work history, professional education, and previous learning, and may even require the submission of a dissertation or thesis in order to give an added appearance of legitimacy.
As diploma mills are typically licensed to do business, it is common practice within the industry to misrepresent their business license as indicating government approval of the institution. Promotional materials may use words denoting a legal status such as "licensed", "state authorized", or "state-approved" to suggest an equivalence to accreditation.
Some advertise other indicators of authenticity that are not relevant to academic credentials. For example, the University of Northern Washington advertises that its degrees are "attested and sealed for authenticity by a government appointed notary". In reality notarization only certifies that the document was signed by the person named.
Diploma mills are frequently named to sound confusingly similar to those of prestigious accredited academic institutions. Despite the fact that trademark law is intended to prevent this situation, diploma mills continue to employ various methods to avoid legal recourse. Several diploma mills have adopted British-sounding names, similar but not identical to the names of legitimate universities, apparently to take advantage of the United Kingdom's reputation for educational quality in other parts of the world. Some examples of British-sounding names used by diploma mills are "Shaftesbury University", "University of Dunham", "Redding University", and "Suffield University".
The school's website may well not have an.edu domain, or other country-specific equivalent, since registration of such names is typically restricted. However, enforcement has sometimes been less restrictive, and an.edu domain cannot be taken as verification of school quality or reputation. Some diploma mills use an.ac top-level domain name, which resembles genuine second-level academic domain names like ac.uk but is in fact the ccTLD for Ascension Island. To prevent misuse of their names in this way, some legitimate academic institutions have registered.ac domains.
Teaching
Compared to legitimate institutions, diploma mills tend to have drastically lowered academic requirements, if any at all. Depending on the institution, students may be required to purchase textbooks, take tests, and submit homework, but degrees are commonly conferred after little or no study.Instead of "hard sciences", where competence is easier to verify, the subjects offered by a diploma mill are often esoteric and may be based on a pseudoscience like astrology or naturopathy. Such subjects are only vaguely defined, making external verification of educational standards difficult.
Degree mills typically offer little or no interaction with professors. Even if comments and corrections to coursework are given, they may have no bearing on the degree which is awarded. In other cases professors may serve only to write compliments to the student that can be given as references.
Facilities
Since diploma mills provide little in the way of teaching, there is usually no need for teaching facilities. The school tends to have no library, publications or research, and no more personnel than necessary for operating the mill. Little that is tangible can be found about the institution. If teaching is offered, the professors may themselves hold advanced degrees from the diploma mill itself or from other unaccredited institutions. They may also sport legitimate qualifications that are unrelated to the subject they teach.Doctoral theses and dissertations from the institution will not be available from University Microfilms International, a national repository, or even the institution's own library, if it has one. The address given by a diploma mill is often a postal box, mail forwarding service or suite number. There are legitimate distance learning institutions with limited facilities, however, but legitimate universities make their authority clear. For academics, publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals are important for establishing scientific credentials. However, in diploma mills, the research is either absent, fake or purely self-published without any external review. This may be hard to spot, since fake journals also exist. Faculty pages with bios and research may even be stolen from legitimate universities.
Promotion and fees
Buyers often use the diplomas to claim academic credentials for use in securing employment. For example, a schoolteacher might buy a degree from a diploma mill in order to advance to superintendent. Degrees from a diploma mill can be obtained within a few days, weeks or months from the time of enrollment, and back-dating is possible. Academic credit may be offered for "life experience," a point often featured heavily in the selling points of the institution. This should not be confused with legitimate programs offering recognition of prior learning, which allow students to gain academic credit based on past training, experience or independent study. This will usually require a test that the student can fail; in most cases, a diploma mill will grant the degree regardless of results.Tuition and fees are charged on a per-degree basis rather than by term or by course. Diploma mills are often advertised using e-mail spam or other questionable methods. Legitimate institutions use traditional advertising and high school recruitment. Prospective students are encouraged to "enroll now" before tuition or fees are increased. They may be told that they qualify for a fellowship, scholarship or grant, or offered deals to sign up for multiple degrees at the same time. Promotional literature might contain grammatical and spelling errors, words in Latin, extravagant or pretentious language, and sample diplomas. Some schools' websites may look amateurish or unprofessional, although other diploma mills use appealing websites.
Legal considerations
Degrees and diplomas issued by diploma mills have been used to obtain employment, raises, or clients. Even if issuing or receiving a diploma mill qualification is legal, passing it off as an accredited one for personal gain is a crime in many jurisdictions. In some cases the diploma mill may itself be guilty of an offense, if it knew or ought to have known that the qualifications it issues are used for fraudulent purposes. Diploma mills could also be guilty of fraud if they mislead customers into believing that the qualifications they issue are accredited or recognized, or make false claims that they will lead to career advancement, and accept money on the basis of these claims.Similar to tax havens, diploma mills frequently employ jurisdiction shopping, operating in another country or legal jurisdiction where running diploma mills is legal, standards are lax or prosecution is unlikely. Splitting the business across jurisdictions can be a way to avoid authorities. A school might operate in one jurisdiction but use a mailing address in a different jurisdiction, for example.
Author John Bear, a distance learning and diploma mills expert, has written that fake degrees are risky for buyers and consumers: