DegreeGo Blog

Diploma mills are the banality that put a kink in the distance learning movement. Online education’s still frowned upon by the employers of the new decade thanks to “colleges” and “universities” offering printable diplomas for a single exam and/or a fee. These fraudulent schools stick out for their easy or nonexistent education programs, for the ability to “upgrade” to a master’s degree for $100, and for lacking the accreditation applied to campus and online schools alike.

One of the ways that professionals are unveiling the diploma mills sprinkled across the Internet is by enrolling their cats. That’s right; Fluffy with an M.B.A.! The stories of cats with fraudulent diplomas reveals the dangers of diploma mills to Wikipedia readers and raises the question on the integrity of online education. It makes two strong points to the learning public:

• It’s rather easy to pick up a fake degree from “online school XYZ”
• It doesn’t take much effort to determine the validity of a school if you can get your cat enrolled

There is where accreditation agencies step in. Accreditation is the prevailing force that stops prospective students from attending school with kitties like these and assures employers that the education the distance learner received is valuable. Accredited universities and colleges are held to the same standard of learning regardless of if learning is distance or traditional, ensuring that the distance learner is getting as much out of the college degree they received as they would if they had attended a campus-based university from the same accrediting institution.

Of course, there are fake accreditation agencies that, in turn, accredit fake schools; that’s why it is important to familiarize yourself with the accreditation process and avoid the situation where cats with fraudulent diplomas are holding a degree just like the one you pursued. One of the owners of these graduate-level cats even talks about how this supposedly prestigious degree hangs above the litter box. Real accreditation agencies, which in turn validate real schools, are fairly easy to identify versus their scamming counterparts, just like how diploma mills are easy to unearth for what they really are.

So when you’re searching for your online school of choice, check their accreditation; check they haven’t graduated a cat with an M.B.A. in healthcare! And if you doubt the accreditation agency, check up on that too.