What John Bear really said!!

[Really?]

Its like this, these guys cry wolf everytime an unaccredited school comes along. Pretty soon they loose their credibility.

I agree with that. All new schools start off as unaccredited. And look at the ones who had to operate unaccredited for a long time until times changed. CCU and Walden come to mind immediately, as does the University of Sarasota (now Argosy). Those schools simply couldn't get accredited in the early years, but times changed and they made it.

California was filled with good unaccredited schools (Columbia Pacific University, California Pacific University, California American University, University for Humanistic Studies, the California Institute for Asian Studies, International College and many others). And it was filled with diploma mills (University of Central California, California University Los Angeles, California Pacifica University, and many others). But with so many avenues to recognized accreditation, it's hard to justify staying unaccredited, with some really small schools as exceptions.

The subject of unaccredited colleges, including outright diploma mills is an interest of mine. I do know that some nations have rather liberal educational laws. Switzerland allows each canton autonomy in legislating institutions in higher learning and a number of questionable institutions. So has Singapore and Cayman Islands. Even in France there is one unaccredited school which actually has the endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy.

In general, many schools will base their operations in one country but not market there and as long as they keep it that way the local authorities don't care that much. Kind of like the expression, don't shit where you eat I guess.

Agreed on all counts.

My own personal opinion, being a dye in the wool libertarian is that it should be the employer's responsibility to determine which applicant is qualified for a position. And for any government institution to say that a person cannot use their credentials on a resume or application is overstepping their boundries. I had seen all kinds of outrageous things on people's resumes, raging from fake employers, membership in non-existant professional organizations and certifications (fake certifications are actually a bigger problem than so called diploma mills in my opinion) and so on.

We depart here, but it's probably due to differing philosophies about the role of government. I'm sympathetic to the libertarian cause, but I feel it's a sliding scale. Consumer protection is one of those hot-button items in this area, but I feel the government can serve us in this area some of the time. So....

I wish employers would check, but they don't. That's been demonstrated empirically. That's why we need some baseline assurances on the supply end. And the other consumers--students--need assurances of a baseline of quality, too. (We can quibble over whether or not the federal and/or states do this well, or if the accreditors do, but students need to know and be protected.)

So should employers carry the risk? Well, without a means of knowing what is and is not legitimate, what is there to check? Employers certainly could not evaluate individually more than 4,000 degree-granting institutions (in the U.S.). Either the state (in other countries) or accreditors (in the U.S.) need to make those identifications so employers can use them (to the extent they will).

So, should the government prosecute the mill selling vanity degrees? If there is a public interest--protection--then perhaps. That's why we see the most aggressive actions taken against people in licensed professions who try to pull this stuff off. But what about a particular case? The Randocks.

Should the government have prosecuted them for their fake school? We might say "where was the harm?" and we may be right. After all, a diligent public (employers and students) would render a mill moot, right? But on the other hand, anyone who's lost out on a job to someone with a fake degree--or even an unrecognized one--has suffered an unjust loss. So where's the line? In the Randocks' case, it was the fraud--ripping off people--that mattered, not the illegal degree mill.

If an employer is too lazy to check an application then they get what they deserve.

Of course the real test is whether a person has the skills to do a job. I do not care how many degrees you have, if you cannot do a job right you will soon be on the street.

Degrees are proxies: they're meant to speak on behalf of the holders' skills and abilities. They don't tell the whole story, of course, but whatever story they do tell should be grounded. That means the beholder (employer) should have an assured take on what the degree represents. Finding out it represents little or nothing AFTER the hiring decision is a recipe for mediocre results--or worse.