Alabama, long known as a friendly haven for diploma mills, is pulling up the welcome mat for the fraudulent institutions.

Bradley Byrne, the reform-minded chancellor in charge of the state’s Department of Postsecondary Education, announced new rules today that he said he hoped would end Alabama’s reputation as a home for the diploma-mill industry, the Associated Press reported.

Alan Contreras, an authority on the industry, singled out Alabama’s lax regulation of unaccredited, for-profit, degree-granting institutions in an article this past spring in The Chronicle Review. And just last year, an entity known as “Preston University” fled a diploma-mill crackdown in Wyoming by saying it would move some operations to Alabama.

According to the AP, Mr. Byrne’s new regulations, which will take effect on October 1, will toughen licensing requirements for private, for-profit colleges; scrutinize their finances more closely; bar people with criminal records from running the colleges; and allow them to be shut down for offering poor courses. The department also will issue annual reports on both public and private colleges in the state. —Andrew Mytelka