How can such things happen? Many employers either don't check or don't care. LaSalle University in Louisiana, shortly before their founder went to prison for mail fraud, listed hundreds of companies that they said had accepted and paid for their degrees. Skeptically, I started calling these companies, fully expecting to find the "university" had lied. But they hadn't. About half the companies had confused them with the real LaSalle University in Philadelphia. And the rest believed their accreditation claim, because they didn't realize there was such a thing as fake accreditation.



Victim #3: The Public

Many well-meaning people suffer because the person they think is a trained teacher, business consultant, or engineer may not have the degree or even the knowledge. Consider the damage potential of the sex therapist in Syracuse with his fake Ph.D., for which he paid $100. The import-export lawyer in San Francisco who turned out to have bought his University of Michigan law degree from one of the insidious, no-questions-asked, "lost" diploma replacement services that advertise nationally. This spring, I'm scheduled to testify in California Superior Court, to help expose the phony doctorate claimed by the expert witness for the plaintiff. This man's Ph.D., his only degree, is from a well-known European "university." But for more than 20 years, this worthless credential has buttressed his scientific testimony in more than 300 court cases. If we are successful, it could lead to reopening all those other cases. And that's just one person from one "school." We are truly talking about the tiniest tip of a very large iceberg.



Victim #4: The Legitimate Schools

Just as the fake Rolex seller harms legitimate watch companies by taking money that should be theirs and by tarnishing their reputations, the fake schools take millions from the good schools' pockets, and, at least as significantly, foul the waters of nontraditional higher education.

Despite the huge surge of interest and investment in online and distance learning, everything is not rosy in the groves of virtual academe. Extremely well funded efforts such as California Virtual University just couldn't attract enough students and faded away. How many potential students were on the verge of sending for a catalog or writing a check to a good school when they saw one of the fake school exposÈs on 20/20, 60 Minutes, or Inside Edition, and decided not to take the risk of dealing with "one of those" schools.



What can legitimate schools do?

If there were an Olympic gold medal for hand-wringing, the foes of diploma mills would have won one years ago. But, with the lone exception of the FBI's decade-long effort, results have been sporadic, generally ineffective, and woefully short-lived. In 1982 the American Council on Education announced an impending, hard-hitting, and uncompromising book (I hoped) on fake schools. But by the time Diploma Mills: Degrees of Fraud finally emerged in 1988, the lawyers had marched in, and the book was, at best, soft-hitting and compromised. The authors apologized for lack of specificity (not a single currently operating fake was named) because of "the present litigious era."

Yes, schools do sue. When Lingua Franca, the sister publication of University Business, ran an article about Mellon University Press and Mellon University (which they judged to be a diploma mill), they were sued by the owner. They ultimately prevailed in court, but it was a long, expensive process. I've been sued eight times by schools, including once, for $500 million, by the University of North America. Only one ever got to court, and that was thrown out by the judge, as frivolous, in minutes. But there is a cost in both dollars and, my wife will confirm, despondency.


How to fight the bad guys

So shining the light of publicity on these schools can certainly do no harm, but I'm afraid that books and even articles like this may do little more than accelerate the hand-wringing.

Wouldn't it be fine if there were a consortium of legitimate universities and companies in the business of education that worked to eradicate the problem? They could do it through a combination of individual action, group action (especially media notification and advertising boycotts), and working for the passage of meaningful legislation and the enforcement of existing laws. Like the computer industry's software piracy efforts, organizations that might be fiercely competitive most of the time work together in this arena for their common good.

• Individual school action. I believe that the bigger and better schools can be a force for change-if only they would. A few years ago, a completely fake Stanford University began operating from Arkansas, even selling medical degrees by mail. I couldn't interest anyone at the real Stanford in this matter, and the fake carried on for more than a year. If the president of the real Stanford had telephoned the governor of Arkansas and the editor of USA Today and said, "Stop this!" might something have happened much sooner?

• Advertising boycotts (or threats thereof). Recently, on the same page in the Economist, there were large ads for Harvard University (quite real) and Monticello University (which the state of Kansas has accused of being fake). What if Harvard (or a group of major schools) got together and said they no longer wish to be on the same pages with the fakes?

• Build a fire under the FTC. In 1998 the Federal Trade Commission published a rule that would regulate the use of the word "accredited," limiting it to schools with recognized accreditation. The FTC has successfully dealt with the misuse of other words, from "organic" to "low-tar." Enforcing this rule would be a major blow to the fakes, who count on being able to call themselves accredited.

• The "graffiti" approach. Cities have begun winning the war on graffiti by taking immediate and decisive action: monitoring trouble spots, working with community organizations, and painting over it before the sun rises the next morning. It would not be impossibly labor-intensive to monitor ads in major publications, Web sites, and well-meaning lists compiled by people who have been fooled. The very moment a bad guy appears, instant action is taken. Action in the form of a phone call followed up with a professional and comprehensive information packet to the editor, publisher, or Internet site provider from a respectable consortium of schools would do it. Perhaps another warning letter or packet to the relevant federal, state, and local authorities as well.

• As it happens, the advance scouts are already out there beating the bushes searching for the bad guys, and they are doing it without pay, just for the satisfaction of the chase. Point your browser to an Internet newsgroup called alt.education.distance, and you'll find a hundred or more postings a day. There are at least 50 zealots, from Australia to Switzerland, whose antennae vibrate when some questionable institution arises. They (well, actually, we) collect information, visit nearby locations to see what's there, write reports and then, well, wring our hands a lot. Of course, the group does not speak with a common voice, but I know of no other place where there is so much useful information for someone (please) to take and run with.

• Educating the public. Legitimate schools could do this through articles, brochures, books, and public relations pieces. They could even devote a percentage of advertising, marketing, and PR budgets to this purpose, possibly through pooled efforts.

• Law enforcement. For my doctoral dissertation (in communication, earned at the legitimate Michigan State University) I studied complaining and how politicians and the media deal with complaints. I learned that the personal approach is the one that usually works, especially on an issue where the politician has little personally invested. A million letters won't change a vote on abortion or gun control, but one good letter, especially from a power-possessing individual, can get a traffic light installed, the almond import quota changed, or, quite possibly, the fake schools dealt with.

• The media can be significant here, too, especially in the process of getting legislators to act. In 1983 Arizona was the haven for many fake schools. Then the Arizona Republic did a splendid four-day, page-one series, the first article running with the headline Diploma Mills: a festering sore on Arizona Education. Within months the state got and enforced some tough laws, and one by one, every phony in the state moved on to Louisiana, Hawaii, South Dakota, and other places.
If the good guys turn the power of their own credibility, credentials, contacts, and connections on the fake degree sellers, and if they do it the very instant the bad guys' ads and their Web sites appear, there is a fighting chance to recapture all of the playing field.