Did you receive a non-accredited degree / degree mill degree? (Interview Opportunity)

[mitchell1857]

non-accredited colleges and universities (also known as diploma or degree mills)

Some non-accredited colleges and universities are diploma or degree mills, but it's unfair to categorize them all as diploma or degree mills. It may not be your personal classification as a doctoral student since you're just tasked with doing university research. However, it is best that accredited universities (i.e. Ohio State University) understand the nuances before publishing potential misinformation about non-accredited colleges and universities.

Hi there! Yes, I am aware that there are many non-accredited schools that don't seek accreditation for whatever reason (most commonly religious universities) but I appreciate you pointing that out. I don't mean to conflate all non-accredited schools here - I'm merely using both terms because I think a lot of folks will be more familiar with the term "degree mill" vs. non-accredited, especially if they feel that they were scammed by an institution that was dishonest about the accreditation of the institution. When we do calls for participants, we can't exactly include all the nuances in a simple poster, but you're correct!

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The OP should also keep in mind that some of the hoped-for audience who obtained a degree from a diploma or degree mill believe they obtained an accredited degree.

Diploma or degree mills often claim accreditation. Each claim is either false or worthless (because the accrediting body involved is an accreditation mill). But a client of the diploma or degree mill may believe the claim to be true.

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The non-overlap between "non-accredited college" and "diploma or degree mill" is so large that the OP should rewrite their interview requirements.

Yes, I'm aware of this and am very familiar with how degree mills market themselves -- one of the purposes of the study is to understand how degree mills can fool individuals into posing as accredited institutions particularly by using accreditation mills. 

Re: rewriting the interview requirements - It's very easy for me to look up the institution that a person earned a degree from and confirm that it is a "degree mill" rather than another type of non-accredited institution (e.g., a religious university that has deliberately not sought out accreditation). But degree mills are non-accredited institutions, by definition, and not everyone will be familiar with the term degree/diploma mill (even degree and diploma mills are not actually the same thing) in the same way that not everyone will know what "non-accredited" means. I'm merely using broad language to recruit, and there will be a filtering process to make sure participants and their experiences are relevant to the research.

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I am sure the OP is seeking response in more places than just this forum. I also don't think this forum is necessarily a bad place to ask. As someone said, people on this forum are highly aware of accreditation, but may not have always had that knowledge. In many cases, you can have a deficiency in some area, and then not only fix it, but turn it into a strength. An example is that I had credit problems as a young adult, and gave up on the idea of credit, using cash/debit card for everything for many years. Then I decided to come back and "do it right", and starting from nothing, built a great credit score with many positive accounts. I would still be someone who could answer questions about what it was like to have bad credit or use only a debit card, though, and a forum for discussion of credit would be a good place to find people like me in that regard.

The OP doesn't need everybody to respond, just one or two or three people, and it's realistic to think somebody here could respond to his request. Just my opinion.

That said, I think the more interesting topic is about innovative formats to reach people who are shut out by the traditional university system for one reason or another. I'm an example of this; I am 16 credits short of graduation from NC State, but it's virtually impossible for me to actually graduate from there unless I am willing to be in a classroom on campus two days a week for fall and spring semester (I need two specific upper level classes that are hardly offered anywhere else and only offered once a semester in person only on campus, during alternate semesters), and I really can't do that. So I am enrolled at UMPI because they offer a format that fits my needs. I think higher education in the United States at least needs a reboot to meet people where they are. Why can UMPI do it but NCSU can't? It's not about rigor, in my opinion. These classes are specific British Renaissance Literature and a World Literature class from a short list. They are not (how do I say this) that important, other than for future English professors, which does not describe me. How about, give me the list of books to read and a list of assignments and after I turn them in, I will drive to campus and take a test. But there's no option like that. The option is that I'm sitting in a classroom every Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30am to 12:30pm. I spent a month working with academic advisors there and searching the country for alternates I could transfer in and hitting dead end after dead end before giving up. "I found an online class that meets this requirement. Let me check how to sign up. Oh, it's not available this semester. Or next semester. And despite that college having online classes, this particular class is in person only." Stuff like that. There is no other degree option I can switch to that would ease the situation, either. No BLS or anything like that. I wish I had the time I put into investigating those options back. I could have knocked out a few more Study.com classes toward my UMPI degree if I hadn't spent weeks beating my head against the wall.

If I sound frustrated, I am, and what does any of this have to do with actually getting an education? They are focused on process aspects that will not matter for most students' lives, especially for most non-traditional adult students' lives, and that is what needs a reboot.

I think diploma mills are a symptom and I think what I am describing is the disease. At least, one of them (I guess some people will always try to cut corners, but there is a large group of people who would like to "do it right" but feel unproductively blocked from doing so). I suppose that would be an awkward dissertation to defend in an academic setting, though, since it shifts the blame from shady diploma mills to the core of academia.

Hi there! Unfortunately I don't have time to reply to all the comments in this thread, especially since most are kind of making assumptions about my research that assume I don't have any kind of nuanced understanding of accreditation and differences between institutions (sigh...) but I did really want to reply to this comment because what you're articulating here about frustrations with traditional higher education is kind of one of the things I'm trying to explore with this dissertation. I'm less interested in why people "cheat" the system by getting "fake" degrees, rather I'm more interested in how we've constructed a labor market that requires so many people to complete degrees (which may not be actually necessary for many jobs) while making traditional higher education so inaccessible (e.g., requiring classes that seem irrelevant to the degree, requiring people to attend in person classes, the cost, etc). I see degree mills and other forms of "nontraditional" accrediting (like certificate bootcamps and other short-term educational programs) to be responding to this broader problem that exists: according to employers, people need degrees, but most college programs are designed for 18 year olds with minimal responsibilities outside of school -- what are working adults to do? I completely empathize with your frustration, the system isn't built to accommodate nontraditional students. I think probably a lot of nontraditional students turn to non-accredited schools because of frustrations with the traditional college system. 

It's actually not awkward to critique academia in a dissertation, haha. I study sociology of education so we're often critiquing higher education as a mechanism that reproduces inequality.