6Jul

10 Signs your Online University is a Diploma Mill

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by Melissa Rubin

Diploma mills are no laughing matter. They have caused hundreds of Americans thousands of dollars, fines, and abashed dreams of turning an online university education into a promising career. How can you make sure you aren’t one of the many whose been conned?

The following is a checklist of items you want to make sure your online university does not have. Remember, anything worth having is earned – and earned by hard work and perseverance.

Make sure the online university you’re looking at does not meet the following, and your online education s on the right path.

  1. They often have names similar to well-known colleges or universities, but fail to mention an accrediting agency or name a fake accrediting agency.
  2. The organization frequently changes addresses, sometimes moving from state to state.
  3. Written materials typically include numerous spelling and grammatical errors, sometimes on the diploma itself.
  4. Overemphasis on the speed and brevity with which someone can receive a degree (e.g. “Call now and have your degree shipped to you overnight!”).
  5. Degrees can be earned in far less time than normal (e.g. 27 days) or the diploma is printed with a specific backdate.
  6. There is no selectivity in admissions, or any questions about previous test scores or detailed academic history.
  7. No interaction with professors or faculty (e.g. only two emails are received from a professor).
  8. Degree requirements are vague or unspecified, lacking class descriptions and without any mention of how many credit hours are required to complete a program.
  9. Tuition and fees are typically on a per-degree basis.
  10. Grade point average (GPA) and academic honors (e.g. Summa Cum Laude) can be specified at the time of purchase.
Source: universityfacts
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29Jun

The Basics of Education Verifications

Categories: Background Check & Due Diligence
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Educational credentials can be an important part of an employer’s decision making process in hiring. Educational achievement tells an employer a great deal about an applicant’s ability, qualifications, and motivation. Many employers feel that educational qualifications are a critical factor in predicting success on the job. For many positions, education is a prerequisite in terms of subject matter knowledge or for obtaining the appropriate license for the position.

Surveys suggest that as many as 30% of all job applicants falsify information about their educational backgrounds. The falsifications can include outright fabrications such as making up degrees from legitimate schools the applicant never attended or valueless degrees from diploma mills.

An applicant can also falsify his or her educational achievements based upon some semblance of fact, such as claiming degrees from schools the applicant actually attended but did not obtain the degree claimed. Typically a candidate turns their months or weeks of attendance into an AA degree, or claims a BA or an advanced degree even if they did not complete the course work or fulfill all graduation requirements.

 

Colleges and universities also have a vested interest in confirming educational accomplishments. Confirming an applicant received a degree from their school helps their graduates and promotes the reputation of their school. Conversely, uncovering the fraudulent use of the school’s good name helps to preserve and protect the school’s reputation.

Background firms verify education in the U.S. in two ways. One way is to contact the school, usually through the registar’s office. Before doing that, however, a competent background firm will first run the name of the school against various databases to ensure that the school is legitimate and accredited, and not a phony degree mill. A number of schools will require a written release or a fee, which can delay the verification. Delays can also occur because schools operate on an academic schedule, which can mean the administrative offices are closed during holidays and the summer months.

The other options available to screening firms and employers are online services that have contracts with schools to gather degree information from schools, thus acting as the schools’ agents.

For some job applicants, getting a college diploma apparently no longer requires years of hard work, taking tests, paying tuition or even reading a book. Why bother going through the formalities when all a person needs is a credit card and a web browser in order to buy an authentic looking diploma that mimics real colleges, universities and even high schools across the U.S.? Go to any search engine and run keywords such as “Fake Diploma” and anyone can instantly “graduate” from nearly any school in America with a very handsome and authentic looking diploma suitable for hanging.

One such website advertises that it creates “very realistic diplomas/transcripts. These diplomas/ transcripts are extremely high quality printed on official parchment quality paper. You can show your employer and they will never doubt that you indeed attended college. You will not find better quality anywhere!!!”

Some of these sites “officially” caution that the diplomas and transcripts are intended for “Novelty and Entertainment Use Only.” However, the fake documents you receive do not have a disclaimer written any place on them. When presented with a physical diploma or transcripts, employers should fax a copy to the school to confirm its authenticity. Most background firms can tell stories of faxing copies of degrees, supplied by the applicant, to high schools and colleges only to be told the degree is a fake.

Verifying high school education can present particular problems, due to the fact that there are so many high schools, and the fact they operate on an academic schedule. The most difficult degree to verify is typically a GED, since it requires additional time and effort to track down the office that has the information.

Adding to the challenge is that some degree mills and fake online schools have even created fake accreditation agencies to falsely vouch for the fake schools. In the U.S. schools are generally accredited by private organizations, that are recognized as legitimate accreditors by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) found at www.chea.org. The U.S. government, in response to these issues, has created a web site where employers can look up a school to determine if and how it is accredited. The web site is at: www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/search.aspx which provides searches of schools by accreditation agency.

ESR goes through an extensive procedure to verify that a school is legitimate.  First, ESR compares the schools to schools that are known to be legitimate.  If the school does not pass that test, ESR examines numerous “diploma mill” lists. However, those lists are a moving target since new diploma mills can be easily created.  If a school is not on either list, ESR then carefully reviews the schools web site and in particular, looks to see what “accreditation” the school claims.

The problems with degree mills, however, should not be confused with legitimate vocational or trade schools. Each state has an agency in charge of certifying state-approved educational programs. If there are questions about the legitimacy of a vocational or trade school, then an employer should contact the appropriate authority in their state. There are numerous distance learning programs available on the internet as well. An employer should evaluate the program to determine if it has relevance to the job.

The bottom-line is that employers should not take educational accomplishments at face value without ensuring that the applicant actually has obtained the degree, and that the degree is from a legitimate educational institution.

 

Source: esrcheck

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24Jun

College diploma mills, degree scams increase slightly during recession

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College diploma mills, degree scams increase slightly during recession

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As the unemployed struggle to find jobs in a difficult economy, they might look for ways to improve their chances of landing that elusive job offer.

“It’s easy to see that people are looking for ways to make themselves more marketable, given the state of the economy,” said Sandra Chalmers, state Division of Trade and Consumer Protection administrator. “One way of doing that is going back to school.”

Those people can be vulnerable to scams, Chalmers said. Diploma mills offer degrees without requiring the time or effort of the student. The offers, usually coming from pop-up windows on the Internet or unwanted emails, sound too good to be true. As with most scams, that’s a warning that it probably isn’t true, Chalmers said.

 

Statewide, there were 78 complaints of diploma scams in 2008 and 83 in 2009, the most recent year in which statistics are available, Chalmers said. While the number of complaints has remained fairly steady, there has been an increase in the number of diploma mills nationally and internationally, she said.

A lot of people are buying degrees without doing the work, said Dan Kellogg, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point registrar. The diploma mills provide fake transcripts, along with the degrees.

“It’s just like counterfeit money,” Kellogg said.

Official records from known schools have watermarks and other security protection to keep them from being copied, Kellogg said. Employers need to be careful to check out applicants’ degrees and ask specific questions about school start and graduation dates.

There are numerous legitimate schools that offer good online programs, Kellogg said. However, it should take four or more years to get a bachelor’s degree, even if the degree is through an online program.

Potential students looking for an online program from a known college should call the school to verify the website, Kellogg said.

Wood County Investigator-Sgt. Dean Berres said he hasn’t had any complaints from diploma mill victims. However, he cautions people against clicking on the pop-up ads that advertise schools.

“In most cases, those pop-ups will also contain either spyware or malware,” Berres said. “You click on them and it’s going to install software monitoring activity (programs). Anything like that could do some bad stuff.”

People can take steps to determine whether a school is legitimate, Chalmers said.

The Wisconsin Educational Approval Board regulates post-secondary schools, and people can find information at www.eab.state.wi.us. The U.S. Department of Education also has a database of accredited schools at www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation. While not all legitimate schools get accreditation, it’s a good place to start, Chalmers said.

People should remember that trying to take a shortcut to getting a diploma or degree to get a job can have bad results, she said. If an employer learns a degree isn’t legitimate, the employee could be fired and find it difficult to get hired again.

 

Source: wisconsinrapidstribune
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23Jun

The Importance of Education Verification in Employee Background Checks

Categories: Background Check & Due Diligence
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Education verification is an important part of your general employee background check. If you believe that this has lesser importance than a criminal background check, consider the case of Laura Callahan who resigned as Director of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004.

It was established that Laura Callahan’s doctorate was obtained from Hamilton University, a known ‘diploma mill’. That is a so-called educational establishment that offers diplomas and doctorates to students after little or no study. Subsequent investigation discovered that a minimum of 28 other senior employees had obtained their qualifications from diploma mills. In other words, they were not suitably qualified for the jobs they were holding.

 

Diploma mills are commonplace, and Columbia State University, for example was shut down in 1998 after an advertising campaign offering degrees within 27 days! That was another diploma mill, and that is one of the reasons for education verification being so important.

The requirement for qualification has become very widespread, and it is little wonder that so many job applicants are tempted to at least overstate their qualifications if not downright lie. Most company positions now require an education qualification of some form or another, and if you search for ‘fake degrees’ on Google you will find several pages offering them. It’s a problem.

The temptation to provide false educational credentials is overwhelming since the rewards for success in fooling your potential employer can be high. The General Accounting Office reported in 2004 that up to 200,000 federal employees had falsified their resumes. These are the ones that were detected. How many more are there that were not detected, and how many in all occupations are involved, not just federal employees? So do not think that you are immune to this; you probably already have employees on your payroll that have falsified their resumes.

This is a serious problem, and a breach of faith on the part of the employees who do this, especially where the knowledge provided in studying for a degree is necessary in the job, and its absence could affect all of the other employees in the company. It is also a serious error on the part of the employers who offer them employment without carrying out suitable education verification.

As more and more qualifications, diplomas and degrees are requested for more and more jobs where previously they were not required, education verification becomes increasingly important. Candidates are highly motivated to provide degrees, obtained by whatever means they can, and up to 20% of employers in the USA now require verification of diplomas and degrees from the college or university that awarded them.

Some universities offer an online verification service that involves providing the student with a password that they can pass on to a prospective employer. This provides the employer with a portal into the student’s records that confirm the qualification awarded. Although this does not address the problem of diploma mills, it at least provides some security. A list of accredited educational facilities would help reduce the need for full education verification and the issue of not knowing what is and is not a diploma mill.

Diploma mills may be breaking the law if they offer these diplomas to students in the knowledge that are being used for job applications, and the applicant is committing a criminal offense in many jurisdictions by presenting them. A federal law is required on this issue, and that would possibly help employers with this problem.

In the meantime, employers must not overlook education verification when carrying out employment background checks. It is easy to omit this essential factor of employee screening, but the employment of an unqualified nurse or doctor can be just as damaging as that of a shop floor employee with a record of violence. The cost to the employer could ultimately be considerably higher.

It should not be assumed that any qualification is genuine, and if a specific diploma or degree is required for a job, it should be verified that the candidate does indeed possess that, and that it has been awarded from a recognized educational or training establishment.

Education verification should be included in the employee screening that all companies should carry out, preferably by hiring a professional investigator to carry it out. It is too important and skilled a job to try yourself unless you have employees trained in how to carry out background checks, and the penalties for failure can be very high.

Source: andreaweckerlecopywriting
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20Jun

Online Degree Scams: Proper Education Background Checks Can Save Life of a Recruitment Professional

Categories: Background Check & Due Diligence
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by Muhammad Saad Khan

When we talk about quality employment and best employee, then the first thing which came up in any employer’s mind is that their incumbent would be highly qualified and his qualification is legitimate.

Legitimacy of education is becoming a very intense issue these days as there are many people trying to get their credentials faked out to get their desired job. As the recession hit all around the globe and the job market is so scarce, and the qualified employee needs are so high, so many people are using bad means to get their education.

There are number of diploma mills and degree mills, offline and online which are providing the best criminal services to the people and making money like never before. They are actually selling fake degrees, diplomas and certifications. Which have no worth as now every single employer is running a comprehensive education background check to vet their education authenticity.

Verifying the education credentials of a potential candidate can be an important part in identifying if they have the suitable skills set for the position. Educational success reveals a great deal about an applicant’s credentials and motivations; and through education background checks, an employer can get an accurate depiction of their qualifications.

Many employers view particular educational qualifications as a key factor in seeking new employees. Moreover, education is a prerequisite for many positions because it ensures applicable knowledge of a subject matter, or more importantly, a required license for the position.

Studies show that approximately 30% of all applicants puff up information about their educational background, ranging from made‐up degrees from legitimate schools to insignificant degrees from diploma mills.

In 2004, the general Accounting Office revealed that nearly 200,000 federal employees had at the very least exaggerated education credentials on their resume.

SHRM(Society for Human Resource Management): More than 53% of job applicants falsify information on their resumes; one in four candidates misrepresents his educational attainment.

ADP Hiring Index: 49% of employment, education and or credential reference checks reveal discrepancies in the applicant’s information.

Association of Certified Fraud Examiners: 41% of applicants lie about their education.

The above trend indicates an increase in the likelihood that employer’s who don’t verify education will hire unqualified personnel. Hiring unqualified personnel, in turn, leads to higher employee turnover, forcing the organization to incur expensive recruiting and replacement costs.

Online Degree Scams: Diploma Mills and Fake Degrees

It has also become exceedingly easy to access an authentic looking, knock‐off diploma from any school in America; all you need is a credit card and a computer. Diploma mills and degree mills as well as various websites, advertise very realistic, physical diplomas and transcripts, which have been found to deceive many employers.

Therefore, with the striking statistics of resume fraud, employers should think twice about using physical diplomas as proper evidence of a degree. Because the requirement for education qualification has become so demanding, education fraud is becoming more prevalent, as are the establishments of diploma mills.

Consequently, in order to combat education fraud, laws have recently been passed in which companies who manufacture fake degrees and diplomas are considered to have committed a Misdemeanor, unless the degree explicitly states, “for novelty purposes only.”

Current Systems of Education Background Checks and Degree/ Diploma Verification and Why They Are Not Enough!

  • At present, human resource departments in companies directly contact the concerned educational institution and undertake verification. This is no longer a viable solution, considering the increase in the number of recruitments, and the time taken for verification. This is also not a fool proof method.
  • A second method, often adopted by many of the larger corporations, is to outsource their employment verifications to background screening companies, who maintain large personnel databases.
  • The third system which has developed recently in education background checks is the system of online degree and diploma verification. There is a database of fake colleges and universities and as well as the misdemeanors who faked their documents in past. It is now the best free online resource for the employers as well as for the students, who can check their institutions as well.

The biggest issue with targeting these diploma mills is that they frequently move around. Many diploma mills are constantly changing their names while others are sprouting up sporadically. There are currently hundreds of diploma mills on the internet that offer fake degrees and diplomas.

When posing as legitimate institutions, diploma mills will use catchy phrases to attract potential buyers:

• Here is an opportunity to get ahead

• University diplomas

• Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power, and the admiration of all

• Diplomas from a prestigious university

• Based upon your present knowledge and life experience

• No required tests, classes, books or interview

• Bachelors, masters, MBA, and doctorate (PhD) diplomas available in your field of choice

• No one is turned down

• Confidentiality assured. Call now to receive your diploma within days

• Furthermore, these “schools” have no faculty, no classes, and no course catalog and only have one address or email in which they can be contacted.

Concluding Remarks:

  • Falsified education credentials have become a serious issue in the workforce; it breaches the faith on employees who are involved, especially when it can directly affect other employees and the company as a whole. It is also a serious blunder on the part of the employer who should have done proper education background checks; a mistake that could essentially hinder their current position.
  • Now that up to 20% of employers in America require a diploma or degree from a college or university that awarded it to them, education background checks have become exceptionally crucial.
  • Although a federal law has been implemented to target diploma mills that give out phony diplomas, the problem still exists and is far from being corrected. In the meantime, employers should remain steadfast about conducting pre‐employment background checks that include verifying academic credentials.
  • The online diploma/degree mill checking systems are significant source of help to the employers looking for easy and free of cost education background check.
  • Education background checks should be included in every pre‐employment screening process.

 

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