What are Diploma Mills and How did They Get Started?

Posted by David R. Wetzel Sep 13, 2008

Diploma mills are the scourge of the distance education world. People who want to paticipate in continuing education to improve their opportunities for advancement or change careers must be careful. There are scammers out there who happily take your money and give you a worthless degree.

What is a Diploma Mill?

A diploma mill is a business which makes a profit by disguising itself as a legitimate college, vocational technical school, or trade school. They make their money by providing legitimate looking diplomas, false references, and phony transcripts for a price.

How did Diploma Mills Get Started?

Distance education has become popular in the last few years and is growing more popular everyday.

Unfortunately the Internet is an ideal place for scams and conterfeit operations. They prey on people who are not Internet savvy and those who are searching for a degree in the shortest amount of time possible.

Diploma mills have legitimate looking websites and display impressive looking credentials on these sites. However a quick check in the right places exposes their scam.

Employers are wise to these diploma mills and will verify all degrees offered for employment or advancement today.

To learn more about diploma mills and how to avoid them, visit Avoiding Diploma Mills in Online Education.