Degree Mills: A Silent Crisis

NUMBER 53, FALL 2008

Degree Mills: The Impact on Students and Society

Judith S. Eaton and Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic
Judith S. Eaton is President, Council for Higher Education Accreditation, Washington DC. USA. E-mail: eaton@chea.org and Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic is Chief, Section for Reform, Innovation and Quality Assurance, Division of Higher Education, UNESCO, Paris, France E-mail: s.uvalic-trumbic@unesco.org.

"Degree mills" are impeding the efforts to assure quality in higher education—a significant national issue for some time and now an international concern. In response, the US-based Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) recently joined with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to bring together an informal group of higher education and quality assurance/accreditation leaders to focus on degree mills.

The Traits of Degree Mills
Degree mills are spurious or even fraudulent providers of higher education and training, offering degrees and certificates that may be considered bogus. At first glance, a degree mill frequently looks like a typical college or university, with publications (either print or electronic) displaying attractive campus facilities, logos that appear steeped in tradition, and a list of impressively credentialed faculty. Closer attention, however, often reveals that the so-called "campus" is just a post office box, the logo has been borrowed (and cleverly modified) from a well-known institution, and the list of faculty contains individuals who "may" be teaching at some point but are not in fact permanent professionals affiliated with the operation.

Without a single, commonly accepted, definition, most mills share certain characteristics. Their degrees can be purchased. Little if any class attendance (onsite or online) is required. Few assignments are required of students, and graduation requirements are minimal. The decision to award a degree may involve disproportionate reliance on personal resumes or life experience, neither of which may be well documented. The degree mill may not have appropriate state licensure or authority to operate. The name of the operation may have been chosen to misleadingly resemble a well-known and highly regarded college or university. To reinforce their credibility, some mills misuse international organizations—such as UNESCO or the World Health Organization—falsely claiming accreditation by these bodies. Reliable evidence of quality, commonly through the achievement of accredited status from a recognized accreditor, may be lacking.

Older site- and mail-based delivery methods of degree mills once meant that such providers could operate only regionally or nationally. Now, however, degree mills aggressively use Web-based delivery, enabling them to function internationally with great ease. The export of degree mills tends to be dominated by developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia; and import is often dominated by unsuspecting and unwilling, mainly developing, countries.

How many degree mills are operating is hard to gauge, and all estimates of their numbers and scope of operation need to be treated with caution. The financial scope of the degree mill enterprise may range from at least one-half billion to billions of dollars annually.

The Perils of Degree Mills
The harms caused by degree mills are so socially significant that all actors involved in higher education have a stake in discouraging the existence of such questionable providers. The stakeholders include not only students but also employers and government, as well as colleges and universities.

Students, whether deliberating seeking an easy path to a degree or genuine victims of misleading degree mill advertising, are endangered because these often expensive credentials are fraudulent and in many cases useless. Students and parents in developing countries, attracted by the opportunity of a foreign and more portable degree, are a particularly vulnerable group. All too frequently, the credentials cannot be used for obtaining employment or upgrading employment status. Credits from a degree mill do not readily transfer to a legitimate institution. If a baccalaureate degree is proven to be fake, it cannot be used for entry to graduate school.

Employers are hurt when they unknowingly rely on make-believe degrees as evidence of the competence of the employees they hire. An employee with such a degree is, at the very least, an embarrassment. At the extreme, such a person is a danger to others, especially when the bogus credential purports to affirm expertise in areas such as nursing or engineering. Lives are at stake.

Government suffers when millions of taxpayer dollars are used for student grants and loans to pay the tuition costs of a degree mill or when the government-as-employer provides tuition assistance to its employees who "attend" degree mills. Government (i.e., the taxpayer) is also obligated to sustain the cost of enforcing regulations to fight degree mills—such as the fraud investigations conducted over the years in the United States by the Federal Trade Commission and the General Accountability Office.

Colleges and universities are harmed because their legitimate efforts to provide quality higher education are undermined. When degree mills capture and minimally transform the names of reliable higher education providers for their own questionable use, they cause confusion and doubt among prospective students and the public. Public suspicion of degree mills spills over on legitimate providers of higher education, compromising the efforts of reliable institutions to sustain public trust and serve the public interest.

National Policies
Since the 1990s, a number of countries have taken significant action to contain degree mills: publishing lists of legitimate institutions, promulgating laws to prevent the establishment of degree mills, shutting down mills that have managed to establish themselves, and sustaining ongoing public information and awareness campaigns. At the recent meeting, mentioned earlier, of higher education and quality assurance leaders concerning degree mills, individuals from Nigeria, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States all spoke of sustaining several of these practices.

Other efforts include China's publication of lists of recognized foreign institutions and its requirement that foreign institutions establish partnerships with Chinese institutions to operate. In the United Kingdom, a system of alerts is in place to inform the public about degree mills, coupled with advice about whether government criteria for UK degree-awarding powers and university title are met. In Nigeria, online degrees from unaccredited institutions are banned and employers are not supposed to accept fraudulent degrees. In Australia, the term "university" is protected.

International Action
The recent focus on degree mills accompanies work on academic quality as higher education is increasingly internationalized. In Study Abroad, UNESCO published the CHEA Fact Sheet on degree mills and accreditation mills developed in 2003 as part of its alerts to this phenomenon. UNESCO and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development issued Guidelines for Quality Provision of Cross-Border Higher Education in 2005. The Guidelines suggest tasks for the various stakeholders in higher education—to protect quality for cross-border higher education provision to safeguard against degree mills. UNESCO has also recently launched a pilot, Portal on Higher Education Institutions, that provides international access to reliable countrywide lists of legitimate higher education providers (http://www.unesco.org/education/portal/hed-institutions). This positive listing makes it clear that institutions that are not included may be suspect.

The international group brought together by CHEA and UNESCO is working on an international effective practices statement to address the problem of degree mills. The group is also exploring additional strategies such as whether a permanent international effort is needed to address rogue providers and the feasibility of an ongoing international campaign to raise public awareness.

This international effort is an ongoing need. Degree mills will continue to be a problem for students, employers, government, and higher education. They put a vital resource of our countries at risk—namely, our extensive, diverse, and highly effective higher education enterprise and the students who are served.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number53/p3_Eaton_Uvalic-Trumbic.htm