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Is that \"online high school\" registered as a school and inspected by the state its business offices are located in?
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Is that \"online high school\" registered as a school and inspected by the state its business offices are located in?
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And now Oreo the Cat has the tough choice between University of Phoenix online MBA program or a technical degree (diesel mechanics? HVAC?) from DeVry College...
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@Haggie1: Actually, Oreo could make even more money from working at home. He could make thousands of dollars a week and pay off all his debts in, like, a month.
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@Haggie1:
The Univ of Phoenix has several physical campuses, including in Phoenix and Tucson. They also have a law school. I have friends who've gone to school there, even though I went to a traditional college.
It's a shame that people who know nothing about a school get on a website and trash it. That reminds me of a recent post in which someone stated that ASU graduates are illiterate. Even though I went to their rival school, that comment made me uncomfortable.
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@tbax929: I think the job postings on sites like monster and careerbuilder that mention \"DeVry and University of Phoenix graduates need not apply\" speak for themselves.
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@tbax929: They even have a football team, the Arizona Cardinals. Got their name on the stadium and everything.
@HurtsSoGood: Actually the stadium is named after University of Phoenix, but the team itself is pro and as far as I know, unaffiliated with the school.
University of Phoenix is not necessarily a bad education, from what I know of it. I worked with one of their instructors on another teaching gig, and I would put him on par with most college level instructors.
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@tbax929: Oh, don't take it too personally. Here in Texas we get a lot of jokes about how Aggies are functionally retarded hillbillies and Texas Tech alumni are, well, functionally retarded hillbillies. No one with any sense believes that either stereotype is true (although both schools have their share of alumni that fit the bill, as do most schools).
@SybilDisobedience: Our last President was a functionally retarded hillbilly, and he's got an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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@Haggie1: I saw Judah Friedlander, and after his show he sold \"DeVry Med School\" t-shirts. I was so tempted to buy one
@EinhornIsAMan!: DeVry does own a medical school - Ross University in Dominica. It is a legitimate medical school though with approval in all 50 states and federal education loans available.
@ohnoes: Ross was around before DeVry bought it though; I don't know when they bought it but it's been around since the 70s or 80s.
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Spending money for a diploma from an online diploma mill is ridiculous.
Everyone knows it a lot more economical to just print up your own.
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@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!:
I was on a jury in a case where the defendant made up a school, from which he got his \"engineering degree.\" He used it to get hired as a county hydrology engineer.
He went so far as to make a website for it. During the trial in trying to deny that he made the school up he mentioned that \"individuals can't register .edus.\" I looked it up (after the trial) and found no site, and all registry information that matched the details given was for a .org.
The school's street address was the house of a friend of his, where he'd parked his motorhome for a while. (That's all he said when asked why the school's address was a residence, at least)
He said his daughter had a degree from that school, too.
Anyhow, no one would have ever found out if he hadn't brought a criminal investigation down upon himself over a completely unrelated matter.
@TechnoDestructo: My current employer contacted my university and got copies of my degrees when they hired me. The recruiter told me that it has happened a couple of times where the company had made an offer to someone, only to find out that they didn't have the degree they claimed to or, in one instance, that the school didn't even exist.
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@TechnoDestructo: Wow. He didn't just lie about getting a degree, he made up an entire institution? That's oddly enterprising.
@TechnoDestructo: I'm not at all surprised. I'm thinking it would be quite easy to get a job with a fake degree if you're convincing enough. I've heard of many cases of people faking their credentials and it only comes up because they're involved in some kind of investigation or vetting process.
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@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!: It's kinda of funny... but my uncle got his Bachelor's Degree from a fake college. Who was his employer? The United Nations.
So, yeah, it must be pretty easy.
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@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!: Googling \"print your own diploma\" gets you a site, for example, that will print a fake one for you for $250, for \"novelty\" purposes. That kind of price is neither novelty nor economical.
You'd think there would be better competition than that.
@nytmare: Yeah, I mean, how much could it cost to print up a fake diploma? I wouldn't pay over $20 (okay, maybe $30 if it had a decent frame).
Well, really how much does a H.S. diploma say about a person? You spend a few years being babysat and you get a piece of paper, intelligence not required. Congraduation Oreo.
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@G00MAN: I hope your smarter than you sound since \"Congraduation\" is not a word. Now \"Congratulation\" is a word. Most of have gotten your degree from a mill, huh? Remember to spell before you slam.
@bigd7387: \"Congraduation\": It is a nonsense word I have used for years. For the grammer/spelling nazis (and the other anal types): It is a combination of \"Congratulations\" and \"Graduation.\" Yes, I am patronizing you, I'm pretty sure Oreo got the joke.
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Good for Oreo. Movin on up in the world.
Now if only my lazy-ass cats would get out there and get a job. It's time to start earnin yer keep, boys!
I wonder what Oreo puts down on the section of the app on his background....
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@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig:
vermin exterminator?
clay absorbency tester?
corn based dry food quality control?
artistic carpet stainer?
loose textile [hair] production?
@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig: If he's a a domestic housecat, \"mixed race\" is probably most appropriate (speaking as the owner of two proud mutts).
@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig: \"other\" or \"prefer not to say\"
it's not like they can use those against oreo in the hiring process
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Well it's better than all the carousing about the neighborhood Oreo could be doing, making little Oreos.
Ben Goldacre managed to get his dead cat a diploma from the same place as \"Doctor Gillian McKeith, PhD\" a couple years ago
So where's Captain Duvel Moneycat's GED from?
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@TCama: He strikes me as a Humanities man, Ivy league. Northern, because of his fondness for Colonial fare. Perhaps Yale if a legacy, but probably Princeton because of their shared, carousing reputation and the fact that he'd be an asset in drawing more minor celebrities to the Princeton yard.
Actually a diploma mill can be useful for the person applying to the small-mid size company that stupidly thinks a diploma is all it takes to prove someone can do the job*.
In the larger company, while you haven't lied, they know who the diploma mills are and they'll either ignore that part of your resume, or they'll score it lower.
* - Unless, of course, the job involves the completion of homework assignments, going to class daily, and the ability to fill in the correct scantron pattern.
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@shepd: You do know jobs usually DO involve completion of assignments, daily attendance, and the ability to fill in forms correctly, right?
I get a little sick of people who complain about school churning out cogs, when the ability to function within systems is actually a really important skill to have.
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@shepd: But do you really want to work for that company? Now you have 2 strikes against you: no education and dead-end crap job.
I speak feline. Rrrrrowr.
No surprise here, and completely justified.
Now if a DOG were to \"earn\" a diploma...
@Trai_Dep: Yeah, I'm pretty sure one of my cats could beat my SAT scores if she tried. (The other one, though...let's just say we'd get him into some \"special programs\" where he could learn some \"life skills\" and call it a day.)
Jefferson High School Online's website is a treasure.
For instance, they have prominent links to a page on accreditation. When you get there, you read copious paeans of praise about the virtues of accreditation, listings of numerous international accreditation organizations, details on how the whole school accreditation process works, etc. etc. etc.
Then if you manage to get past the fulsome verbiage to the end, and if you ignore the blather about their internal standards and plans to someday offer financial aid, it pretty much is...
\"Um, well, we're not accredited. By anybody.\"
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@bobert:
Here's a link to the official US government agency which sets accreditation for colleges and universities:
The real danger is not diploma mills; anyone who signs up with one knows what he or she is getting into. Expecting a four year degree with four weeks of paperwork should be a sign to anyone seeking a legitimate degree. If people pay for fake paper and get caught and publicly shamed, they deserve it. Remember Laura Callahan, George Bu**sh**'s Labor Department and Department of Homeland Security Czar, and how she lost her job?
The real danger is unaccredited universities which operate like real ones:
- their degrees are not recognized
- graduation is difficult because some of these \"institutions\" resort to unethical behaviors such as changing terms or credits needed for graduation
- credits earned are not transferrable to accredited colleges
- such \"institutions\" may have overly restrictive and dictatorial terms for student behavior including dating, clothing, living conditions
Such unaccredited \"institutions\" will charge as much for tuition and books as will reputable institutions, and their degrees are worthless in most cases. At least a diploma mill is, in most cases, a waste of $200, not $20,000.
The only example I could find of a legitimate but unaccredited university is Morris Brown College, which lost its accreditation in a financial scandal but is trying to regain it.
[www.morrisbrown.edu]
@P_Smith: Some unaccredited graduate programs might be legitimate, if they're attached to a legitimate college or university. It can take a couple of years to get the actual accreditation, but when they are granted they are retroactive for a certain number of years.
St. Kate's in the Twin Cities did this when they started a library sciences program. Unfortunately they completely botched the roll out of the program so some of their students' degrees will be completely worthless. But if they had set the program up correctly the lack of accreditation for the first couple of years wouldn't have been an issue.
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Thanks to his diploma, Oreo now realizes \"I can has cheezburger\" is both ungrammatical and misspelled.
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I dunno, most places I've seen that hire people out of high school never really check the diploma. I know a drop out who has never been declined for a job because of high school diploma he always just says he graduated. Nobody ever checks at his level of employment.
Now at the upper end where college is required every place I apply too has a background check thing I have to fill out.
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@sonneillon: It always cracks me up when I fill out a job app and it asks me where I went to GRAMMAR school. Jeez, who cares!?
@HogwartsAlum: Alot of seemingly innocent questions like that are there to help verify your id and or see if you tell the truth .
Or a securtiy clearance for a spy or something .
@u1itn0w2day: Security clearance is a whole different animal than most places. I know a place that denys people their security clearance and then fires them for getting a DUI.
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My friend has a BA in accounting and 120 credits from a university, and has sat and passed the CPA exam. But he needs 30 credits to become licensed, for what the American Institute of CPAs claims \"makes for a more rounded accountant\".
He can take credits in any subject, including basketweaving, as long as they are college level and on a transcript and from an \"accredited\" school (I know U of Phoenix is on the list). Does anybody have any recommendations for cheap/easy/quick college credits?
@jdsmn:
If you check out degreeinfo.com (totally noncommercial site and oldest distance/online learning community on the web), you'll find a large message archive that will give you specific information on how to do this easily and quickly.
Offhand, I would suspect that credit-by-exam through DTTS and CLEP would be the fastest and least expensive option, but there are a number of schools that give in-state tuition rates to distance learning students who are out of state, and that can be a good deal too.
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@jdsmn: Is he already good at a sport? Most schools offer classes in swimming, tennis, and in my case, golf. The summer we were married, ISU required that one of us be in a class to move into \"married student housing\", so I took Intro to Golf (which, having played on my HS team, was not exactly a stretch for me).
@jdsmn: Well, you said U of Phoenix, I don't know what's easier than that. If he wants brick-and-mortar, he could take seminars and summer classes, at least the classes would be half as long and the professors would expect far, far less.
He should take something he's passingly interested in. Education is an opportunity. Ykno, poetry, yoga, astronomy, something he'd always wanted to know more about.
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@BytheSea: \"...at least the classes would be half as long and the professors would expect far, far less.\"
Wha? I just took a 4-week summer course of A&P II and now I'm barely alive. It's going to take me several days to recover.
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@BytheSea: ROFL! The idea that summer classes are easier because the professors expect far less. Bullshit! You have never been to college, have you? Or maybe you went but never attended summer classes.
I am getting a Masters in Physics (on the way to my PhD) and I just sat through two 5 week summer math classes that almost fucking killed me. The professors made it clear that this was 16 weeks of work in 5 so get ready for the ride. Granted it was still easier than what I do over the semester but look what degree I am getting. And I happen to be very strong in math.
The U of Phoenix is on the list because they are accrediated. I have friends who study online education and they say not all of it is bad and a scam. You do have to be careful though. Those types of schools tend to cater to those already in the workforce who don't have time to attend a class at x time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
@thelushie: I have a BA and an MA. I took summer classes three out of four years. You've never talked to a human with your mouth closed, have you.
@BytheSea: You came off as sounding like someone who has never taken a summer class in their life. Did you do your general education stuff or was your major really easy? I have never taken an easy summer class.
@BytheSea: Please. If you went to a college where professors teaching summer classes expected less of you, than you went to a shitty college.
Summer classes and j terms are great for things like art, where hours a day in the studio is actually helpful, or certain lab sciences where you would already be spending tons of time in the lab.
I took a literature course over the summer, and it was murder. Yes, I can technically read 6 Victorian era novels in 4 weeks, but it's pretty hard to absorb any of them enough to then write critical essays. I had the opportunity to take a history class I needed to graduate (pre-thesis course, essentially) during the summer or the fall - definitely picked the fall. I couldn't even get the books I would need to write the research paper in the time alloted.
@jdsmn:
I never understood the AICPA's requirement for 150 credits but not requiring accounting or business to be the extra 30.
How is having taken an extra ten classes in biology or chemistry going to make you a better accountant? If you are going to require an additional 30 credits, make people get a grad degree in accounting or business. Simply requiring them to spend more money isn't helping society.
@wrjohnston19283: Studying information systems (computer programming, et al), the law or being knowledgeable in some other field is a good thing.
Try explaining to a bean counter why your company keeps buying from a more expensive supplier (i.e. reputation, quality of product) when said bean counter is trying to cut costs. Having someone who understands the facts of an issue will allow him to make better decisions.
@wrjohnston19283: Actually most biology and chemistry classes (with lab) are 4 to 5 hours. So it would be 6 classes tops. Are you sure it has to be undergrad work? I would take graduate classes if I had to do 30 hours of extra work.
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@thelushie: It may depend up on the state, but I know some New York schools offer a graduate program to fill up the needed hours for the CPA test with worthwhile courses. I've seen two options available: a 30 credit track for someone that already has a background in accounting, and a 60 credit track for what appears to be someone that has a different undergrad degree.
@Aesteval: I am going to have to send an email to a friend who is studying accounting but hasn't gotten that far into it yet to let them know about this.
@thelushie: This is the specific program that I saw information on. [www.albany.edu] I don't have experience in any accounting industry so I can't compare that to any other program, but I would be surprised if other schools weren't doing it as well.
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@jdsmn: Community college coursework would suffice, right? If so, I'd go that route - and there are also a few CCs that offer online courses at a VERY cheap cost even to out-of-state students.
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From their site..
\"In an effort to keep program cost down and the current motivational based format of JHSO, JHSO has not sought nor been approved by the US DOE, CHEA or DETC organizations and does not represent itself to be an \"Accredited\" program of any of these organizations.\"
Come on guys. They are just trying to keep costs down. :(
The costs? The first thing I noticed was \"the current motivational based format of JHSO.\" Nothing says motivated like being unwilling to leave your house in order to get a real GED!
Also...
\"JHSO provides a stringent internal review process for its overall program and particularly for its interactive learning platform and completion program.\"
Online Diplomas. Serious Business.
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Now Oreo just needs a resume and a LinkedIn profile and she's all set.
I bet that cat is still smarter than 20% of public high school graduates.
@cmdrsass:
Wow, that's an asshole comment if I've ever read one. I graduated from a public high school then went on to graduate magna cum laude from a four-year university, handily beating out many of my private-school-educated classmates. I guess I'm just an outlier, right?
Those of us who weren't born into privilege have to take what we can get. How dare you minimize our experience just because you may have been born into better circumstances. Asshole.
@cmdrsass:
And I'll bet that cat is less arrogant than 80% of PRIVATE high school graduates. Was that intentional? If so, you meant \"government\" schools, not public, right?
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How is this more of a scam than paying tens of thousands of dollars, living in substandard housing, eating food worse than in a hospital cafeteria, being forced to buy overpriced books, and wasting years of time to get a piece of paper?
Well, it all depends. Honestly, I'm going for an engineering degree and I'm learning insane amounts of stuff every year. If you want to get into any sort of engineering, science, or high-end field, you'll need that \"expensive piece of paper\" and the education that comes along with it. To be a secretary or something like that, or a technical vocation like mechanic, you should just go with a vocational school that'll teach you what you need for the job.
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@I Love New Jersey: Damn good point. Especially if you find that the piece of paper only allows you the privilege of paying even more money for another piece of paper.
Because people will hire you based on the expensive piece of paper, while you can burn this piece to keep warm after employers laugh at your face.
South Harmon Institute of Technology FTW
Outrageous! Oreo should be hauled before the disciplinary committee. He had *someone else* take all his tests for him!
My dog is smarter than your cat because my dog was able to purchase a phd (aka my poop is piled high and deep).
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I'll be turning in Oreo for cheating.
It would be a better story if there were NO tests involved. Those are the real diploma mills. The ones where you write a check and get a diploma for \"life experience\". I've actually searched our resume database and found degrees from Columbia State University, which was exposed on \"Sixty Minutes\" years ago.
@RandomHookup: Didn't 60 Minutes do a thing where a doctor was administering intravenous peroxide treaments for cancer ? Was that the doctor's ' universtiy ' ?
Hmmm. We have 4 cats - long story - so with college degrees and civil service jobs, I could retire.
Oh wait! - they probably would be rejected for being overqualified!
( and if you are a civil servant and read this, well - you can read, so I do not mean YOU. and you should know personally some of the folks I am talking about too!)
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Wait, what happens to people who actually went to a real high school called Jefferson High School? There was one in the city where I grew up. Bound to be lots more.
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Had an ex brother-in-law who had a fake college degree. Unfortunately in the career he got himself into, he needed a masters in order to move up. The company kept trying to get him to go after a masters but he would always find a reason why he couldn't. Some 8 years later he got laid off. Sad, but he was actually good at what he did, was respected, but because he took a shortcut he royally screwed himself in the long run.
I hate to see students exploited or students exploiting these diplome mills for their own gains . I can't believe the traditional 4 year college degree is the only way to go . I think that's part of the reason these places exist . The traditional 4 year college path is too expensive,time consuming and sometimes totally irrelevant in the real world .
College or post secondary education will become like health care / health insurance -too darn expensive with the public screaming for help .
I blame corporate America for doing very little training basically treating all their new employees & promotees like contractors . The only difference is that instead of a trade license they want A degree .
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@u1itn0w2day: Here is why shutting down diploma mills matter:
This lady was getting over $100k for a gov't job that she was not qualified for.
And a big thank you to people willing to blow the whistle on her:
[www.reason.com]
@econobiker: That's flat out fraud with that lady and ' university ' -back dating degrees ? wtf . That's criminal fraud .
But while there is criminal fraud or schools whose's sole purpose is to get the student into a loan in order to pay them but there are still legitamite non traditionl 4 year college schools out there .
What that lady did was fraud pure and simple . What's really scarey is how did the background investigation miss that even if for a security clearance and not the job ?
Did this lady even have to turn in a term paper or take a final ?
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Diploma mill? Sounds like Virginia Tech!
This cat did not receive a G.E.D. It received a diploma from an unaccredited Georgia High School. A G.E.D. is only received by an individual after passing a five part national exam administered in secure conditions and only to those able to provide proper ID. Irresponsible reporting like this attaches a stigma that is undeserved to those who either have or are looking to get a G.E.D. Please correct this article as soon as possible. I believe an apology is owed to the G.E.D. program and those who have received a G.E.D.
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Good looks, night vision, a GED and fluent in feline? Oreo is a quadruple threat!
@Belabras: But how is my cat, Mittens, supposed to compete in the workplace? Since she got fired from McDonald's for eating on company time, She doesn't have the $200 needed for a diploma from a GED mill. She tried applying for financial aid, but was denied as being too great a credit risk.
Should Mittens sue for discrimination, apply for welfare benefits, and/or for disability?
@Belabras: Oreo does seem to have a lot going for her.
But, I have an old college buddy named Chip Ahoy, and HR departments never seem to return his calls. He can't figure out why.
@Belabras: Is he available as a stud? Think of the kittens we could get!