House of Eratosthenes

This kind of overlaps to the thing we were writing about earlier with Information Technology, where the word “skill” is being re-defined — away from the ability to do things, toward a big fistful of paper statements from third parties that someone was able to do something.

It’s led to the creation of a whole new industry.

Throw a few hundred dollars to the right P.O. Box and you too could have a medical license, engineering degree or credential of choice all without cracking a single book. And many unscrupulous students do.

“[The diploma mill industry] is so large that it’s hard to believe the numbers,” comments Dr. George Gollin, a physics professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign…”We think that U.S.-based diploma mills are selling as many as 200,000 [phony] degrees per year.”

What’s even more alarming than the size of the industry — estimated at more than $1 billion per year — is who’s funding it. Anecdotal data gathered from now-defunct institutions suggests that up to 5 percent of all diploma mill buyers are federal employees, 1 percent are purported medical doctors, and a frightening number are parading as Ph.D.s.

“The number of fake doctorates sold each year is in the range of 50,000 to 60,000,” states John Bear, author of “Bear’s Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning.” “The number of real Ph.D.s is around 40,000. In America right now, more than half of all the Ph.D.s are fake.”

Funny thing about these articles is — they never draw a distinction between the diplomas that are “fake” because they involve out-and-out undeniable fraud, and other diplomas that are “fake” because they come from “diploma mills” that are not quite as prestigious as they might appear to be. The phrase “all without cracking a single book” seems to indicate that everything under discussion under here, falls into the first of those two categories.

But to receive an application that boasts of a diploma or degree taken at XYZ, and to do the necessary research on it, learning only after digging that XYZ was one thing and you expected it to be something else — to call that a “fake degree” is kind of like referring to a sexual encounter as rape the morning after simply because you didn’t like it.

Not that I think any of this is defensible. In my mind it isn’t…not on the supply side…or on the demand side. But it’s simple economics. You say “we are not going to allow you to advance beyond this arbitrary point until you bring to us this arbitrary piece of paper, and as far as what you are supposed to have learned when you produce that paper not even we have a clear understanding of what that is” — to say that, is to produce a black market in manufacturing those pieces of paper. It is a practical guarantee.

You are saying, we don’t care what you really know, we don’t care what you are supposed to have learned. Or if we do care, we aren’t saying what it is, in fact we’re taking great pains to avoid saying what it is. Just bring in the piece of paper. Cover our butts. And so, disqualifying the instances in which an intent to defraud can be proven…what we really have here are examples of efficiency, not deceit. The diploma-mill customers arrived at a dirty game, and they played dirty hands.

And I’m just as inclined to question the qualifications of those who demand those pieces of paper, and are chagrined about the nature of those pieces of paper once they are delivered, as I am to question the qualifications of those who deliver them. Those who so demanded, are saying “when I asked to see such-and-such piece of paper, I had it in mind that he’d be going to classes…very much like the ones I took…even though that isn’t exactly what I said.” In most cases, I’m sure, those-who-supplied are unscrupulous. But also, in most cases, their “crime” is spending $500 instead of $50,000…and fulfilling the letter of the requirement, a requirement on which they were soured & cynical because they thought it a silly requirement from the get-go.

And if I’m to condemn them for that, well, I’m in no position to. I’m really not. I’ve met far too many people who have those pieces of paper, “proper” ones at that, who wouldn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.

The article you quoted sez…“The number of real Ph.D.s is around 40,000. In America right now, more than half of all the Ph.D.s are fake.” And you followed up with: I’ve met far too many people who have those pieces of paper, “proper” ones at that, who wouldn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.

I submit that well over half of ALL Ph.D.s are useless at best, dangerous at worst. I know more than a few as well, and only two or three actually contribute anything tangible to life as we know it. You might say this is “sour grapes” speaking, and you might be right. Still…it’s MY story and I’m stickin’ to it.
- Buck | 03/27/2008 @ 14:34
There’s this great Mac McAnally song….

The Ass and the Hole in the Ground. Google the lyrics.
Fun stuff.
- philmon | 03/27/2008 @ 14:56
It kind of gets into a Yin/Yang thing. The damage that is being done, is immediately visible once you accept the seemingly harmless notion that it’s okay to be Yin, and it’s also okay to be Yang.

The truth you have to accept at that point, is that there are people running around who really have no desire whatsoever to compile exhaustive repositories of information in their skulls about any given subject, particularly with understanding independently how to do things…and that is quite alright. But they have to have jobs. And now we are defining entire classifications of jobs where you have to have these certifikayshuns after those people have already started working there. Over time, those bits of paper are customized in many ways so that it is possible for large numbers of people to earn them.

Dumbing-down is one way…making the exercise process into more of a social event is another way…what you’re seeing here, is kind of a different way.

But this wouldn’t work, if those making the actual hiring decision had an internal idea of what core competencies they wanted the successful applicant to have. Because that criteria has been effectively outsourced to an external third-party which is the certifier, you have situations like this.

I find it interesting because of the challenge that’s involved in defining whether or not some shenanigans and hijinks actually took place. I was really working at defining that distinction in the post above — if it’s a completely counterfeit shop, like “give us your credit card, we’ll mail you a diploma,” that’s clearly wrong. The article is trying like the dickens to give the impression that all the surplus Ph.D.’s fall into that category. If you read the wording carefully, you see they don’t actually say that. I think most of the “fake” diplomas fall more into the category described by my dating & rape analogy. The letter of the requirements was satisfied, the spirit was not, because the hiring manager externalized too much of his responsibility and discretion and the externalization was abused. He has nobody to blame but himself.
- mkfreeberg | 03/27/2008 @ 15:18
Funny that you should quote George Gollin on the topic of “fake” diplomas and academic fraud. Gollin admits that his doctoral “dissertation” was not his own independent work, but rather the work of fifteen (15) co-authors. He signed off on this dissertation as the sole author, but now admits that in reality he just “collaborated” with 15 others. He is a fraud and a fake, certainly not the sort of person in a position to comment on other people’s education.
- MurrayK | 03/30/2009 @ 19:29
There is certainly some “skirmishing” on his Wikipedia page… (George Gollin talk page). Understandable since dealing with careers can be a contentious issue.

I’m not relying on Gollin, I’m picking apart an article that cites him as a source. I couldn’t tell you whether the man is semi-reliable, semi-charlatan, anywhere in between. But for the reasons stated above, redundantly, I find this flippant and casual tossing-around of loaded phrases like “genuine” and “phony” to be somewhat suspicious, to say the least. And I’m bothered by this tremendous vacuum of discussion about what these diploma-mill customers know…versus what they’re supposed to know. Isn’t that supposed to be the primary concern?

By the way, you’ll notice Wiki’s page appears to have been pockmarked with some critical thoughts about the professor, and since then scrubbed clean. A casual skimming over the article’s revision history reveals something of a back-and-forth that has strayed far beyond the bounds of civility.

There is much left unknown here. It would seem there is a tremendous effort to drive up the value, and therefore expense, of what is called “education”…while at the same time achieving a chilling effect on the exchange of real knowledge. I find that, at a minimum, suspicious as well.
- mkfreeberg | 03/30/2009 @ 20:10

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Faking the GradeThursday, March 27th, 2008

Faking the Grade
Thursday, March 27th, 2008