How to combat diploma mills
Congratulations to The Council for Higher Education and Accreditation (CHEA) for its joint statement with UNESCO about how to combat diploma mills. While reported to be short on details, this type of work is important for higher education in America and around the world.
I have posted in the past about Capella’s involvement with Transparency by Design, an effort to create a trust-worthy, non-marketing site for adults trying to find a college to attend. This initiative involves a number of regionally accredited institutions that specialize in serving adults at a distance. Because many of the universities involved are not household names, the adult seeking a place to attend college can wonder about their legitimacy. The accreditation process is one means to assure that an institution is viable and has been objectively reviewed by knowledgeable educators.
However, the adult seeking a college can be bombarded with options and some of those options are not always legitimate. It is a harm to the consumer and to the higher education sector to have diploma mills out there. Worse yet, there are also accreditation mills. We all need to work to identify these mills and eliminate their ability to prey on the unsuspecting, or to accomodate those who seek to simply add a degree to their resume without doing any work to earn it.
CHEA has done good work to support legitimate accreditation and create resources for those who want to verify the validity of an accreditation agency. All 50 states need to prohibit the use of bogus degrees. This would be a good step toward undercutting the business of running a diploma or accreditation mill.
Please feel free to share your comments.
Mike
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Paul Says:
Thanks for posting this. As a current graduate student I am glad to see that actions are being taken to reduce shoddy higher education outlets. There are several places local to me that strain the boundaries as far as possible to call themselves “colleges”, or the other favorite label, “institutes”. Pretty much all such bodies I’ve seen focus on undergraduate programs, so it’s especially important to get the word out to high school juniors and seniors about what is considered quality education and what could be a very detrimental life and career choice.
As with most things, you get what you pay for.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:48 pm