Sending Degrees to the Dogs

By Ellie McGrath

The FBI tries to throw the book at burgeoning diploma mills

Sassafras Herbert proudly displays her handsome diploma from the American Association of Nutrition and Dietary Consultants. The certificate entitles Herbert to a listing in the Official Directory of Nutrition and Dietary Consultants and special rates for malpractice insurance. The latter benefit is a good thing, because Sassafras is an eleven-year-old poodle. Her owner, Victor Herbert, a New York City physician, bought the diploma for $50 to prove a point. Says he: "Something that looks like a diploma doesn't mean that somebody has responsible training."

The business of selling bogus degrees to people seeking to boost their egos, or more likely their job prospects, is growing. The FBI estimates that there are at least 100 diploma mills in the U.S. selling 10,000 to 15,000 phony sheepskins a year. No cracking of books or taking of stiff exams is required. In fact, most of these counterfeit colleges demand little more than a fee for a degree (usually a few hundred dollars for a B.A. and up to $5,000 for a Ph.D.). They advertise their wares in the classified-ad sections of magazines with alluring lines like, "Get the degree you need without ever leaving home." In particular, the phony schools are flourishing in those Southern and Western states where college regulation is weak or not rigorously enforced. Thus, someone can open an office, call it a university, and without faculty or curriculum begin mailing out degrees for a price. Says FBI Agent Robert Pence: "Diploma mills debase our entire educational system."

Four years ago this multimillion-dollar business came under the eye of the FBI, the U.S. Post Office and the Internal Revenue Service. Since then, in an investigation dubbed Dipscam, more than 20 diploma mills have been closed down and three operators have been sent to jail. Last week John Blazer pleaded guilty to mail fraud for sending out degrees from his bogus universities of East Georgia and the Bahama Islands; he received a two-year prison term. And in Arkansas last year, George C. Lyon, 79, was given a year in prison and fined $2,000 after selling FBI Agent Allen Ezell five phony degrees. Says Ezell: "I complained to him because a diploma I'd gotten in the mail was damaged. He sat there and forged another one for me right on the spot."

There are problems with bringing charges, the FBI admits. While an investigation into mail or wire fraud can take up to two years, an alert diploma salesman can move on to a new location almost overnight. Charles Alfred Durham, 54, of Seneca, S.C., who has been charged with mail fraud in connection with three diploma mills, has a clever defense: that the diplomas, costing up to $940 for a doctorate, were only "expensive novelties." Says Durham's lawyer, Daniel Day: "People who bought these diplomas knew exactly what they were getting, and I don't think the FBI can show otherwise."

The FBI maintains that people who buy the diplomas are often partners in fraud. Over a decade, one diploma mill, Southeastern University in Greenville, S.C., graduated 620 students, including 171 county, state and federal employees.

Such "graduates" frequently mislead employers to get raises. But many buyers are simply naive, believing that a mail-order diploma can certify what has been learned on the job. A night security guard in Temple, Texas, says he bought a B.A. in law enforcement from Southwestern University in Tucson for $500 in 1982 because he "wanted something to hang on my wall and feel proud about." Ultimately, he became suspicious about his purchase: the transcript showed good grades for unrelated "courses," including an A in trigonometry. The Arizona house of representatives has passed legislation (awaiting state-senate passage this spring) that will outlaw the obvious diploma mills.

Such a law faces one major difficulty: there is a fine line in some states between schools that are experimental and those that are illegitimate. It is hard to define a diploma mill. In California, for instance, anyone can set up an "authorized" degree program by providing a list of faculty members and courses and $50,000 in assets (a home qualifies). Southland University in Pasadena, for example, meets all the state requirements. Yet last year the former registrar told the FBI that one student received a B.A. in engineering after submitting a short resume, and a real estate agent got a juris doctorate by taking a legal assistant's examination. Southland Founder James Kirk, who says he no longer runs the 700-student institution, freely admits, "I had no interest as an educator. It was a good way to make money."

--By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Leslie Cauley/ Atlanta and Laura Meyers/Los Angeles, with other bureaus

With reporting by Leslie Conley, Laura Meyers