Phony online college
Last week, I was teaching in China and a student showed me an acceptance letter from an On-line university in the U.S and asked me whether he could study software engineering but still living in his country. When I told him that it looked like a Scam, many students seemed surprised and told me “But it is a U.S school and we receive U.S degrees”. The unfortunate is most of these fake on-line universities are aiming at foreign students, mostly from Asia and operate as they were in the U.S but they are not. In the “virtual world”, no one know where they are located. Many carry names such as “California university” or “Texas northern university” so it seemed that they are from the U.S. I have written several articles about online schools and illegitimate colleges. According to an U.S education study, there are only few on-line schools that are legitimate but many are scams which take your money and teach you nothing. There are many newspaper articles about people who attended these on-line schools but could not find job because companies do not accept online degrees, especially from non-accredited schools. If you ask “Google” or “Bing” about “On-line degree scams”, or “Fake diploma”, you will find a lot about these Scams. (Please noted that these schools do advertise in Google or Bing too. Anyone can advertise if they pay). There are many newspapers and articles about these schools where students admitted that they did not learn anything, only send in easy homeworks which no matter how bad they were but they always received good grades. Many online schools accept any students, regardless how they did in high schools or check whether they graduate from high schools or not. Even if you get reject to two-year or four-year colleges or not passing entry exam, these schools will accept you anyway. Basically they just want your money, and give you worthless degrees. These schools advertise all over the places, in newspapers, magazines, websites etc. and promised any type of degree possible, including medical, pharmacy, information technology, and advertised that their students all have good jobs. (Imagine go to a hospital for surgery by an on-line degree doctor). It is easy to recognize them. Following are some guidelines that you can use to identify them:
1. You do not have to take any SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) or other college entrance examinations to enroll.
2. You do not have to take the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) to enroll in graduate level study.
3. They will take life experiences as college credit. For example, if you work as a salesman for 5 years, they will give you 20 credits in business.
4. They accept people with bad English grammar and writing skills. (No TOEFL score required or low score is OK)
5. They promise to train you and teach you soft-skills like how professionals do it in the real world and all you receive is a book and maybe a worthless course.
6. Classes are very easy that last only in few weeks. All you need is to write some papers where many students copy articles from the internet and send in but still pass since they do not check.
7. Classes are taught by “facilitators”, not qualified instructors or professors (A majority of their professors do not have degree or have phony degrees). There is no information about the school faculty. No one knows who they are or what they study. Basically, you learn from faculty with “phony degrees” as they offer you “Phony degrees”.
8. Some professors do not answer your emails or telephone calls or help you at all. They are busy counting your money. No one fail the class and no one has to repeat any class.
9. The school will help you to get bank loan to pay for them. Once you get your degree, you are on your own to pay back the bank whether you have job or not.
10. There is no information about its graduates. The school advertised that they will help you to find jobs just to get you enroll but they do not tell you that you will receive a "worthless" degree that no company will accept. There are many cases that when the companies found out that their workers have “Phony degree” they got fired for “Cheating”.
11. Most companies do not accept resumes or applications with On-line University.
12. In the past few years, there were hundreds of articles regarding cheating and plagiarism in On-line universities. According to a study, about 78% of online students cheat on their homeworks and teamworks as well as plagiarize on their writing assignments. Most on-line universities delete all online classroom paper works after classes are completed so that this information cannot be investigated by the U.S Department of Education.
Basically, these schools will do anything to get your money. Every years, the FBI have to close few phony universities and illegitimated colleges but they continue to operate, mostly in the virtual world as on-line universities but you have no idea where they are. According to a study many websites are located in Mexico or Africa where U.S government cannot arrest them.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
