In the right hands these could be dangerous. At least to my way of thinking.
The movie “The Great Imposter” comes to my mind. Not the new one the old one with Tony Curtis. People, and especially institutions are easily fooled sometimes.
One of the few to be personally welcomed to this board by Ed Zotti.
Is that good old “Pacific Coast University” or something like that? I think 60 Minutes checked these guys out a few years back and found a ratty little second floor office. I don’t think it’s illegal, it’s a novelty item. Supposedly you provide information on your life experience and are issued an appropriate degree. As long as they stay away from medicine or engineering and issue arts or business degrees they are pretty harmless.
A few years ago in British Columbia, Canada, the provincial Finance Minister resigned when it was discovered that his long list of accounting and financial professional accreditations had been acquired on a foundation of one of these mail order degrees.
I think this mail order degree business’s bread and butter originally was Americans who wanted to work overseas in countries like Saudi Arabia that require foreign professionals to have a university degree to qualify for a work visa.
I hope the world is becoming a little more sophisticated. Can you imagine putting one of these degrees on your resume and trying to deceive a potential employer? A pretty desperate act.
In fact, you are going STRAIGHT TO HELL, just for reading it.
Have a hap-hap-happy day!
“There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.”
Countess Olivia to Malvolio; William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5.
I think it represents mail fraud because it says prestigious non-accredited universities. There is no such animal. Accredidation is a requirement of prestige.
It isn’t illegal. They say in their advertising that the school is non-accredited, which means that quite simply, they are selling you a piece of paper. If you don’t know what a degree from a non-accredited institution is worth, that’s your fault, especially if you applied for the Phd. in economics. When you get a job that requires a degree from an accredited institution, the employer has to verify your education, they just don’t look at the paper you show them and say “Looks okay to me”.
This is much like a couple other types of businesses such as:
The place that will “register” a star in your name, for a small fee. You get a piece of paper, saying it’s named after you. I hope it’s nice paper.
There’s at least one place that makes novelty license plate kits for cars: you buy a blank plate for your state and lettering to put whatever you want on it. They don’t say it’s a substitute for a legitimate registered plate, because even if it bears the same letters and numbers as the real plate, it ain’t.
And also kinda like the places where you can “adopt” a wild animal for a fee. Of course, with these places, you assume that they are actually helping the animals somehow, and not just living large on your quarter. They put my bullshit detector on yellow alert: my hunch for human nature tells me that they’d rather not have you know. - MC
I had a friend who paid seventeen dollars for one of these in computer science. The scary thing is that he probably knows quite abit about computers. He got a $40 an hour job working for a local firm to make a C++ app that simulated the movement of light. All of the science and equations were already there, he just had to plug it in and make it user friendly for optomotrists, all it would do was spit out instructions for grinding lenses for stigmatisms, etc.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
I recently took a high profile position with a large publicly traded company and I am pretty sure nobody even read my resume, nor checked out my university work (all quite legitimately reported and done at reputable institutions).
If you show up with a B.S. in Information Technology from Columbia Pacific Northwest (which, as far as I can tell, is the made-up name I meant for it to be) with some work history and referrals, etc., you might fly on one of these tissue paper degrees. If you do well there may never be an occasion that calls for anybody to investigate the degree.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,…do you want to live with having your career evaporate when your 11 years into it?
And the whole subject causes me to think of the new age folk who show up around town with an alphabet train of thoroughly unrecognized “degrees” trailing their name.
In the UK a diploma is usually a full time course taken over two years.
The work is to degree standard but there are fewer components.The the emphasis on research is normally much reduced and they usually relate to professions such as engineering , nursing etc.
A diploma can be upgraded to degree status, by carrying out the extra units, normally this would take at least another year.
In the UK degree lengths depend on the course, institution and teaching methods. Generally, most degrees at English universities are 3 years (to get a BA/BSc), unless they’re sandwich courses with work placements. Medical and veterinary courses are not surprisingly longer; I had a friend who was on a 7-year vet course.
In Scotland the system is different. I spent 4 years at Edinburgh, because Scottish secondary education is one year shorter than in England, so they do an extra year at university. I also managed to come out with an MA (Honours), which was never explained; my friends came out with BSc degrees in marketing and I got an MA in politics. Looks purty on a CV, though.
Mailorder degrees aren’t legal for much. Especially if someone calls. Easier to get a copy of someone’s Harvard Degree paper & put your own name on it. fun.
