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His only problem will be trying not to meow in his job interviews. You see, Colby is not an eager young man with a golden future in business. He's a black house cat. In fact, Colby is the pet of a prosecutor in the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, who used Colby's name in a sting operation against Trinity Southern University.
Never heard of the school? No wonder. Officials say Texas-based Trinity Southern was one of hundreds of "diploma mills" -- so-called institutions of higher learning that have little or no legitimate coursework. Their only real requirement appears to be a valid credit card. Colby's degree, on thick paper embossed with a gold seal, cost him just $399. Another $99 bought a realistic transcript showing he'd earned A's and B's in classes that included accounting and finance.
Colby's sheepskin shows how anything goes in the crooked -- and wildly profitable -- world of diploma mills. Author John Bear, who has studied diploma mills for years, once scanned résumé posted on the job-search site Monster.com, looking for names of bogus schools. He stopped when he reached 5,000. "I'm not paranoid, but they're everywhere," says Allen Ezell, a former FBI agent who investigated diploma mills.
No doubt about it, it's a business on fire. While diploma mills have been around for decades, the Internet has made the industry bigger than ever. Now diploma-seekers can web-surf their way to a doctorate, and the "schools" can spam thousands of prospective applicants. Bear estimates the industry may have doubled over the past five years, now reaping revenues of as much as $500 million annually.
A simple web search can locate an online mill in minutes. My own search, using the phrase "need college diploma," quickly turned up a site advertising a degree within 30 days for $199, complete with a money-back guarantee. Another site lists degrees by price, menu-style. Some may require a token effort, like writing papers; others award diplomas simply based on life experience, which apparently means you qualify if you have a pulse. "You worked for this degree no less than someone who sat in a classroom" is one outfit's laughable claim. Many require nothing at all -- besides cash.
In the 1990s James Kirk operated a Louisiana school called LaSalle University, which had thousands of students but a staff of less than ten. Kirk owned luxury cars and a million-dollar home. In 1996, however, after an FBI bust, he pled guilty to a charge of conspiring to defraud his "students."
Soon after he landed in prison in Beaumont, Texas, a suspicious new diploma mill sprang up. It was Honolulu-based Edison University, offering literature that Bear says was nearly identical to that of LaSalle, and with an address at a mailbox service. Meanwhile, the school's mail was postmarked ... Beaumont, Texas.
For every James Kirk who gets caught, there are scores of others who have successfully disguised their business. One slick trick is to set up a verification hotline, whose operators will confirm that an applicant was a graduate of their school. Others concoct bogus educational accreditation organizations, for the sole purpose of vouching for their school's legitimacy. "The first thing you do when you start your fake school is to start your fake accrediting agency," says Bear. "It's another button on your phone."
There would be no booming diploma business, though, without clients ready to lie their way to the top. And some of those liars are people who hold positions of trust.
For example, in Georgia last year, six Gwinnett County public school teachers resigned after it was revealed that their advanced degrees -- which earned them pay raises of up to $7,000 -- came from Liberia-based St. Regis University. In 2002 a North Carolina jury convicted "doctor" Laurence Perry on charges of involuntary manslaughter and practicing medicine without a license after his treatment led to the death of an 8-year-old diabetic girl. Among Perry's bogus credentials was a degree from the unaccredited John F. Kennedy College of Nutrimedical Arts and Sciences in Gary, Indiana.
But government officials top the list of offenders. The Government Accountability Office found fake diploma holders at several agencies, including 257 at the Defense Department, a dozen at the Department of Homeland Security, and 13 at the Justice Department. Incredibly, the list also included three managers at the National Nuclear Security Administration who held the secret "Q level" security clearance. "It's scary," says Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, who has investigated diploma mills. "There are no systems of checks on this." According to Allen Ezell, "No one in federal law enforcement has this as a priority," especially since 9/11.
Fortunately, others are taking the lead. The Education Department has set up a database of legitimate schools in order to check for falsified résumés. A few states are taking tough action of their own, including Oregon, which has made it a crime for anyone seeking public or licensed professional employment to list a degree on their résumé from a school considered to be illegitimate. New Jersey, North Dakota and Illinois also have laws to restrict diploma mills.
The bottom line, though, is that government can't be in the business of policing every job application. It's up to employers to check credentials. Unless they don't mind taking a chance on hiring someone from a school that would graduate a cat.
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