About Online School

What are Diploma Mills?

The internet has made getting a good education from an online school very easy. However, there are also many online school scams that claim to over-simplify the process of getting a degree. These so-called schools will charge you a certain fee in exchange for sending you a degree without you having to study for it. And it sounds tempting–an online school education, without the hard work, or even attending the online school! But these types of universities are diploma mills–institutes that specialize in selling you useless online school degrees.

Four characterstics of diploma mills are:

1. They offer degrees based on life experience. There is a world of difference between diploma mills and life experience degrees; however, the majority of internet users don’t know much about these.
2. An online school with fake accreditation. They will either have some kind of fake accreditation, or they will claim that these degrees are accepted everywhere you go. The thing that people need to really look at is that this type of false online school is useless, and you are buying nothing but a piece of paper from them which is worthless. You probably might be able to land a job with a fake online school degree but later on when your employer cross-checks it, you might not only loose your job but also your credibility.
3. They don’t offer classes. Some might even say that they award the degree first and give you classes later; others might claim that classes are not required. There are various excuses that diploma mill has for not issuing classes. Many diploma mills are run from outside of the United States, which makes it vary hard for the authorities to track down. So if you find yourself in trouble, there is no way you are going to sue these people. If anything, they will continue running their online school business.
4. Fast Graduation. A diploma mill may promise you unrealistic or too-good-to-be-true graduation periods, like 30 days or less. There are no short-cuts to hard work! Keep your eyes open, and if you see something that looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Some Diploma Mills Posing as Online Schools

Here is a list of five recognized institutes which should help you steer yourself in the right direction:

1. Belford University Online
2. Ashwood University
3. Academy of Religious & Spiritual Studies
4. Adam Smith University
5. Addison State University

The diploma mills in the list above are all recognized by the state department to be pseudo online schools that offer a degree without a test, exam, or classes. The above diploma mills are a fraud and should be avoided at all costs. The names have all been chosen to sound like real universities, but they are not, so caution needs to be exercised when seeking a degree in an online school to avoid getting scammed.

You can also try GetEducated.com’s Diploma Mill Police service, which maintains a list of 300+ diploma mills in the U.S., before you enroll.