February 19, 2020
Technical Staff
We were not surprised by the higher education news published in the Guardian newspaper on February 19, 2020. The phenomenon of the Diploma Mills is not new. It goes back many many years. Google defines diploma mills as “an institution or organization that grants large numbers of educational degrees based on inadequate or inferior education and assessment of the recipients.”
An investigative report published by the Canadian CBC TV in 2017, mentioned that there were more than 800 Canadians who obtained their higher educational certificates from fake universities mentioned in the report. (watch the video below)
Due Diligence
It does not take time if one wants to find out the extent of the problem. See what we found when we tried to dig deeper.
The U.S. Department of Education
An accredited university in the U.S. shall appear in the accredited universities of the Federal U.S. Department of Education database. You may search for your university on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. (Click here for the Colledge Navigator). If you did not find your U.S. university, then you should pause and ask yourself: is my school a fake university or college? Am I a victim of a diploma mill provide?
A Word for Employers (Public and Private) and Academic Institutions
We highly recommend you carry out background checks on your employees, management, and the board members to make sure that your entity is not contaminated by one or more of the diploma mills, especially in countries where corruption prevails, nepotism flourishes, and the rule of law is the exception.
