Let's hope this legislation passes. This is fraud and should be treated as such. It is bad enough that there are online institutions out there that will give out half a degree for "life experience." Giving out a whole degree for a price deserves a federal crack down.

I better hurry up and get my dog his BS.

Well if the Supreme Court says it is okay to sell the American election process to the highest bidder why not college degrees. Long live democracy.

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Good review.

Having written two recent journal articles on the negative effects of diploma mills on higher education and distance learning, I am pleased that Reps. Bishop McCollum & Castle have taken this first step in the right direction. We need an official definition of diploma mills; however, part of the definition is problematic, as Rambo points out. There is no unviersal agreement between higher ed institutions (or even among departments within the same institution) as to what constitutes "little or no education or course work". Without this part of the definition, diploma mills will simply require a token amount of "work". By the way, Columbia Pacific University was shut down in California some years ago and renamed as "Columbia Commonwealth University," moved to Montana, was shut dowwn, then moved to Wyoming and was shut down.

As a California approved school that was unaccredited, exclusion of theses is unremarkable, as exclusion has been the policy. It's a cheap shot.

The story of Columbia Pacific is not so simple. It was one of the first institutions in the US to offer non-residential degrees from bachelors to PhD. Today we have a huge number of colleges offering such programs, some such as UoP making billionaires out of their founders. CPU had a target on its back as a pioneer when it was the only such game in town. There were conflicts betweem the founders that developed. Only one of them, Lester Carr, went on to print diplomas for a living. The early days of CPU were full of idealism, and it was John Bear's recommendation that brought me there to complete a BS. As the decades went by the school had fiscal problems, as many do.

There have been PhD theses from CPU that have been presented as part of a set of blinded theses with those from other institutions, and the panel could not differentiate them. As someone who got his PhD through a top "bricks and mortar" University, I find that unremarkable. There is some real schlock that passes for a thesis at the best institutions, most are mediocre, a rare few are really excellent. I know this from having read such. The theses from CPU could be collected and entered into the record if they were allowed to be. I imagine some of them would be rotten, most would be decent, and a rare few would be really excellent, about like anywhere else. I've seen listings xeroxed and shoved into a binder submitted and approved as theses at a big name campus.

The work students did at CPU was definitely not token, which is why they survived the 1986 audit. My finishing a bachelor's there took over 6 years starting with 1.5 years of completed classes (with honors) in the community college system. It and involved a lot of writing. Because of that I was ahead of my peers when I entered my PhD program, although I didn't appreciate that until later. I distinguished myself in my top bricks and mortar university program. (Although I am, of course, writing under a pseudonym here due to the academic habit of knifing others in the back.)

Yes, Columbia Pacific was shut down. But that story is considerably different than one is made to believe from the above.

As someone who has worked in adult/continuing/distance education for nearly three decades, I am delighted at this news. It will not stop all abuses (I once saw a transfer evaluation by a still-accredited institution that gave college credit for typing and penmanship), but it may make a huge difference. Unless it is gutted due to political pressure from well-funded "career school" lobbyists.

I am especially pleased to see that accreditation mills are also targeted. There ARE such things, and they are especially pernicious. Some 6-8 years ago there was a discussion thread on a distance ed listserv with the subject line "you may already be accredited." This was started by someone at a Big 10 school who discovered her institution was on a list of schools accredited by a bogus outfit none of us had ever heard of. Most members of the list found that their institutions had been "awarded" this bogus accreditation, including my own. Several institutions immediately contacted the "accreditor" and asked not to be listed henceforth, but some opted not to respond, which I feel is somewhat complicitous. It would be alarming, but I suspect that quite a few reputable institutions have among their faculty and staff individuals with at least one largely bogus degree. We tend to direct more of our outrage to others and do less investigation of the credentials WE accept.

Let us hope this legislation does not get buried or dismembered among the four sub-committees reviewing it. We should all find those sub-committees and see if our own representatives are members and let them know how important this is. Silence is complicitous too.

All concerned should send Member of Congres reference to the Diploma and Accreditation Integrity Protection Act (HR 4535) and as for them to sign on as co-sponsors of the Bill or at the very least support it through Committees and when it comes up for House vote.....then we work on our Senators. Get involved!

I turns out that UMI and other thesis/dissertation publication companies/agencies require yearly payment for maintenance of records. There were many of on file for Columbia Pacific University graduates until the university stopped paying the upkeep fee. This explains the lack of publicly available material, as 1997 was the dawn of the internet age. Had it died in 2004, I rather think the materials would be online.

I must confess to being highly cynical about the motives expressed here. Is it really education, intelligence and learning being discussed? Or is it credentialism in the context of a bricks and mortar system beset by rampant grade inflation?

Consider, for instance, University of Phoenix, that billionaire behemoth. UoP provides credit for work experience. It is called "Advanced Placement". Many universities do this today. In the modern world it makes sense. Quite frankly, having hired and fired at least 50 people in high-tech industry in my former career, including many PhDs, the "Saber-Tooth Curriculum" is as apropos today as it was around WWII. Students get out of college unable to do much.

What is the primary difference between CPU and UoP? The former didn't charge exorbitant amounts, didn't screw its students, didn't turn its founders into billionaires. Contrast this with UoP, which has netted the founding family over $3 billion. UoP has a 4% graduation rate in 1.5X the curriculum period. (See OECD) UoP is traded on the NASDAQ.

Meanwhile the old-school types insist that the "Saber Tooth Curriculum" is the only one that works. In graduate school (particularly in sciences) that system is not really for educational purposes and most PIs know it very well. It can be, but it has evolved into an indentured servant system that is really very abusive to many students. Einstein who observed that advances occur because the old professors die. The system is medeval and every professor knows this quite well. What does that have to do with learning? Hmm?

Those reading this really need to think hard about what makes a degree mill and what makes an innovative program. There are multiple measures based on outcome to be considered. Bluntly put, the "Saber Tooth Curriculum" is not standing up well to alternatives - when evaluated outside the walled city of conventional academia.

This question of the difference between university innovation and degree mill is the core of the CPU story. What I see in these posts is knee-jerk reflexivity and turf protection.