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Is Your Job Candidate’s Degree Fresh From The Diploma Mill?

From time to time Corra conducts education verifications and finds the employment candidate is a proud graduate from a school that doesn’t exist. It may exist on paper, his paper, or more specifically, his diploma. But nowhere else does that school exist.

There is no campus. There are no teachers. There are no football, basketball or even field hockey teams. There isn’t even a phone number for the administration office. The only scant proof reference to this university is an office somewhere cranking out degrees and selling them over the Internet, or via email.

These are the diploma mills. Wikipedia offers a pretty apt description of diploma mills. Basically, they are bogus in every way, except the provide a certification of graduation in exchange for some bucks. These school are not accredited; they offer no courses. They don’t exist. Except to take the money of the unsuspecting who want to pretend they have a degree.

For a certain amount you can get a Bachelor’s Degree, for a few bucks more, a Masters, and for a few bucks more, you can own your very own PHD. For what is termed in the industry as “life experience.”

Corra conducts education verification and international education verification to make sure your employment candidate actually went to the school he has listed on his resume. If it is a phony school that is part of the diploma mill circuit, Corra will let you know.

Check them out before you hire.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.