American Diploma Mills

“If you pay by credit card, we will send you a degree within five days. Both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees are $499 and a doctoral degree is $599. If you order all three degrees as a package, we will give you a discount. The actual cost is $1,597, but you only have to pay $1,038,” said the admission advisor of the Rochville University without hesitation.

When our reporter asked the advisor on Monday over the telephone, “It is hard to believe what the university’s website says,” he confidently replied. “Our programs are exactly the same as the homepage describes. You don’t have to take classes. We highly regard students’ life experiences. If you have more than three years of work experience, we give you a bachelor’s degree.”

The Rochville University is one of the 731 unaccredited universities, according to a report posted on the websites of most state education departments in the United States. Degrees from those universities are not recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and using those degrees are banned in a majority of states, such as Texas and Oregon.

Most of the Korean celebrities and dignitaries, who have caused a “fake-degree scandal,” have reportedly earned a degree in the U.S. A majority of the disputed universities are included in the unaccredited institution list.

Hundreds of or perhaps over a thousand of institutions have been issuing fake degrees or unaccredited degrees in the U.S.

Although the number of diploma mills temporarily decreased when the General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted investigations in 2004 and 2005, they have relentlessly been seducing people by the powerful means of spam mails. Some speculate that the annual sales of the industry have reached $500 million.

Diploma mills mainly target American workers who have faced difficulties in promoting or switching jobs for not having a degree. However, affluent Asians in countries such as Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are also a major target, according to officials of the Rochville University.

In fact, dozens of universities are listed on the Korean Business Yellow Pages published in Los Angeles. Besides language school-type institutions which issue documents for the I-20 student visa, there are many institutions selling American university degrees by using a name similar to an established university.

Laurier Jerald, a co-founder of the Columbia State University whose name is similar to that of the Columbia University, was convicted on charges on fraud in 2004. He said, “We do not have professors, textbooks, curriculums, or educational facilities. We gave bachelor`s degrees if people sent us a summary of a book. We also issued a master’s degree and a doctoral degree for those who submitted a six-page report and a 12-page report, respectively. We earned over $6 million each semester when the business was good.”