BY: IAN SCHRAUTH
Staff Writer
I have been taking classes at St. Louis Community College on and off since 2015, and I have one semester left. Throughout the past 10 years, I have also attended other universities for one reason or another. For example: I attended Southern New Hampshire University and Rio Salado Community College when I was a Personal Shopper at WalMart, and I briefly attended Full Sail University for their Mobile Development Bachelors. While I was researching what Colleges I wanted to attend after STLCC, I came across a term that I was familiar with but didn’t know much about: Diploma Mills.
A Diploma Mill is essentially a business that not only lacks accreditation by an accrediting agency, but also “sells” you a degree. These businesses, who are often more focused on making a quick buck for themselves rather than making a lasting education for their students, leaves students with the burden of debt, below-average credentials, and limited career prospects. I believe that the United States Government, specifically the Department of Education, should introduce stronger regulation for not only these businesses that take advantage of college students, but for all colleges and universities.
The first step towards ripping up diploma mills is enforcing stricter accreditation standards and making it a crime for businesses to offer degrees that aren’t accredited. Accreditation should go beyond a rubber-stamp process and instead be a meaningful assessment of the institution’s academic quality and ethical practices. In addition, colleges and universities should go through mandatory, periodic reviews to make sure they maintain high standards over time. Institutions that fail to meet these requirements should lose their accreditation and access to public funding.
Another step is to keep all colleges and universities accountable by providing clear and detailed information to prospective students. Colleges and universities should disclose data on graduation rates, job placement rates, average student debt, and confirmed earnings of graduated students. I know this is not 100% possible in today’s job market, so they should only be required to report this data for each degree type so the student can take into account if they want to go into their chosen degree field. To make this equal on both sides of the coin, students should be required to report this to the college only when they first graduate, and when they get a job or start a business in the field they graduated in. By making this information publicly available through either government or independent tracking websites, students can make an informed decision about their education. This transparency will also encourage colleges and universities to prioritize student success over financial gain.
A more progressive step that I believe in implementing in general that also applies is to cap tuition fees and rates and/or to require colleges to charge students in one of two ways: per credit hour or per exam. Tuition rates from ALL colleges and universities have forced vulnerable students to fall into life-long and spiraling debt. To prevent this, we should both cap tuition rates so it is different depending on the degree and the field of study, as well as giving colleges and universities a choice between two different ways to charge students: per credit hour and per exam. If the university charges a student per credit hour, the college or university should not charge an application fee and be able to receive their federal funding depending on the cost per credit hour. If they charge per exam, they would have the option to charge an application fee, as well as receive all of their federal funding, as long as the fees do not exceed a certain amount.
There are many other ways that we could regulate institutions from becoming diploma mills, including having stronger oversight and frequent auditing for for-profit colleges and universities, protecting students from misleading college advertisements, and tying federal aid to graduation rate and percentage of students who get into their chosen field after school, but there are also many ways one can spot a diploma mill so students don’t regret their decision later in life.
The first way to spot a diploma mill is to look at the college’s accreditation. If they are not recognized by either the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and/or the US Department of education, then you should maybe consider another school to apply to.
Another way to spot a diploma mill is if you are offered a college degree based on a “review” of your work experience and resumes. A lot of diploma mills offer what is called an “Experience Degree”, which is a degree earned for your work experience. This is kind of a good idea in theory, but only if it is used for college credit for a degree, and only for specific fields.
Another way to spot diploma mills is if your admissions counselor for that college or university tells you that international online universities cannot be accredited in the United States by CHEA-recognized agencies. This is a lie that they will tell you. Legitimate online degree programs are accredited by agencies recognized by The Department of Education or the CHEA.
The last way you can avoid a diploma mill is to take a look at the lawsuit history brought against the college or university. If the Department of Education has sued a for-profit university for misleading advertisements, misuse of financial aid funds, or because the school is misleading students to take out a specific type of loan so the school can get a kickback, then there’s a high chance that the school is a diploma mill.
Overall, Colleges and universities hold the responsibility of shaping the minds and futures of their students. Allowing institutions to operate as diploma mills undermines this mission and damages the credibility of higher education as a whole. By implementing stricter accreditation standards, increasing transparency, regulating tuition, and enforcing stronger oversight, we can preserve the value of college degrees and protect students from exploitation. It is time to take action and ensure that higher education lives up to its promise of opportunity and advancement for all.
