Degree Mills: The Billion Dollar Industry That Has Sold over a Million Fake Diplomas

Abstract

Degree Mills: The Billion Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas BY ALLEN EZELL AND JOHN BEAR, PROMETHEUS BOOKS, AMHERST, NY. (2005). PAPERBACK: 318 PP. While academia focuses on the great problems of the world and prepares students to address them, Alien Ezell and John Bear argue passionately, if not convincingly that the integrity of these noble efforts is being seriously undermined by a scourge they refer to as They contend that over the past decade the sale of fake degrees has become a billion dollar industry. With an average cost of $1,000 each, a million individuals could be falsely touting their educational credentials. These estimates should not be viewed as mere hyperbole; the authors speak from knowledge and experience. Alien Ezell is a retired FBI agent who specialized in degree fraud for a great part of his law enforcement career and continues to provide consulting services on this issue. John Bear is a well known educational consultant and author of books on higher education. He has also been an expert witness in degree fraud litigation. In fact, Ezell and Bear suggest they might be understating the breadth of the problem because of the conservative approach they take in defining what they consider degree mills. They clearly and repeatedly acknowledge that evaluating educational programs is fraught with difficulties and complexities and they ultimately leave it to the reader's discretion to determine whether a school is a degree mill, an innovative educational institution, or something in between. However, even without the existence of any universally accepted definition for a degree mill, they do not shy away from offering their opinion in this respect. They describe a degree mill as an entity in which: * Degree granting authority does not come from a generally accepted government agency; * Procedures for granting credit for prior learning, and for determining the amount and quality of work done to earn a degree, do not meet generally accepted standards; and * Those who make the decisions on credit and on the quantity and quality of work do not have the credentials, experience, or training typically associated with people performing these tasks. It is within these parameters that Ezell and Bear provide a comprehensive and often disturbing discussion of the availability and use of fake degrees. They trace the history of degree mills from 700 A.D. to present, with emphasis on the relatively short period from about 1980 to 1991. It was during that time that Ezell, then an FBI Special Agent, headed an investigative effort aptly named DipScam. As a result, Ezell is able to provide rich details about an array of characters who have been involved in peddling fake degrees. Most impressively, he was responsible for dismantling 40 degree mills and convicting 21 individuals for selling worthless degrees (many of whom, nevertheless, reaped huge sums of money before being caught). The authors also credit the joint work of two Congressional committees during this period for highlighting the fake degree problem. Committee investigators were able to procure a fraudulent Ph.D. in psychology for one of the committee chairs, the late Claude When the degree was presented to him at a Congressional hearing, he became Dr. Pepper. (Note: At the time, the author of this article was a U.S. Postal Inspector and was temporarily assigned to Pepper's staff as an investigator. He was instrumental in making the undercover purchase of the degree. Subsequently, in his capacity as a U.S. Postal Inspector, he had occasional professional contacts -with Alien Ezell.) Aside from whatever distaste arises from hucksters financially benefiting from selling worthless degrees, Bear and Ezell provide compelling evidence of an even larger problem, i.e., the manner in which these degrees are being used by the purchasers. In an appendix appropriately tided Time Bombs, the authors provide a thirteen page list of real-life scenarios in which individuals possessing unequivocally fraudulent degrees (per Ezell and Bear), have occupied or are currently in responsible professional positions that normally require bona fide academic credentials. …

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