How Useless Are Diploma Mills? This Cat Got One
If you're looking for a cheap and fast way to get a diploma, try Jefferson High School Online, where for $200 you can be taken as seriously as Oreo the cat. Oreo the cat with a GED, we mean.
Oreo lives in Macon, Georgia, and belongs to a Better Business Bureau employee who intentionally tried to get his cat a GED to expose the uselessness of online diploma mills like Jefferson High School Online.
Collins took the test for her, but found out it doesn't take a genius to pass.
"I realized if you miss a question, it's going to come back and give you a hint that tells you exactly what the answer is," he said.
With the extra help, Oreo got mostly A's. Some of her credits came from a life experience essay where Collins wrote about Oreo's adoption into the family.
[...]
Janet Kelly with Middle Georgia Technical College in Warner Robins says true GED programs don't give clues to the test answers and don't give credits for life experience.
Here are some warning signs that you're dealing with a diploma mill instead of a real school, according to Collins:
- credit for "life experience";
- a promise you'll get a degree within a few days to weeks;
- and addresses that include P.O. boxes or suite numbers.
"Georgia cat gets GED" [10Connects Tampa Bay] (Thanks to Allison!)
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Comments:
Is that "online high school" registered as a school and inspected by the state its business offices are located in?
And now Oreo the Cat has the tough choice between University of Phoenix online MBA program or a technical degree (diesel mechanics? HVAC?) from DeVry College...
Spending money for a diploma from an online diploma mill is ridiculous.
Everyone knows it a lot more economical to just print up your own.
Well, really how much does a H.S. diploma say about a person? You spend a few years being babysat and you get a piece of paper, intelligence not required. Congraduation Oreo.
Good for Oreo. Movin on up in the world.
Now if only my lazy-ass cats would get out there and get a job. It's time to start earnin yer keep, boys!
I wonder what Oreo puts down on the section of the app on his background....
Well it's better than all the carousing about the neighborhood Oreo could be doing, making little Oreos.
Ben Goldacre managed to get his dead cat a diploma from the same place as "Doctor Gillian McKeith, PhD" a couple years ago
So where's Captain Duvel Moneycat's GED from?
Actually a diploma mill can be useful for the person applying to the small-mid size company that stupidly thinks a diploma is all it takes to prove someone can do the job*.
In the larger company, while you haven't lied, they know who the diploma mills are and they'll either ignore that part of your resume, or they'll score it lower.
* - Unless, of course, the job involves the completion of homework assignments, going to class daily, and the ability to fill in the correct scantron pattern.
@Haggie1: I saw Judah Friedlander, and after his show he sold "DeVry Med School" t-shirts. I was so tempted to buy one
I speak feline. Rrrrrowr.
@G00MAN: I hope your smarter than you sound since "Congraduation" is not a word. Now "Congratulation" is a word. Most of have gotten your degree from a mill, huh? Remember to spell before you slam.
No surprise here, and completely justified.
Now if a DOG were to "earn" a diploma...
@TCama: He strikes me as a Humanities man, Ivy league. Northern, because of his fondness for Colonial fare. Perhaps Yale if a legacy, but probably Princeton because of their shared, carousing reputation and the fact that he'd be an asset in drawing more minor celebrities to the Princeton yard.
Jefferson High School Online's website is a treasure.
For instance, they have prominent links to a page on accreditation. When you get there, you read copious paeans of praise about the virtues of accreditation, listings of numerous international accreditation organizations, details on how the whole school accreditation process works, etc. etc. etc.
Then if you manage to get past the fulsome verbiage to the end, and if you ignore the blather about their internal standards and plans to someday offer financial aid, it pretty much is...
"Um, well, we're not accredited. By anybody."
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!: Googling "print your own diploma" gets you a site, for example, that will print a fake one for you for $250, for "novelty" purposes. That kind of price is neither novelty nor economical.
You'd think there would be better competition than that.
Thanks to his diploma, Oreo now realizes "I can has cheezburger" is both ungrammatical and misspelled.
I dunno, most places I've seen that hire people out of high school never really check the diploma. I know a drop out who has never been declined for a job because of high school diploma he always just says he graduated. Nobody ever checks at his level of employment.
Now at the upper end where college is required every place I apply too has a background check thing I have to fill out.
My friend has a BA in accounting and 120 credits from a university, and has sat and passed the CPA exam. But he needs 30 credits to become licensed, for what the American Institute of CPAs claims "makes for a more rounded accountant".
He can take credits in any subject, including basketweaving, as long as they are college level and on a transcript and from an "accredited" school (I know U of Phoenix is on the list). Does anybody have any recommendations for cheap/easy/quick college credits?
@EinhornIsAMan!: DeVry does own a medical school - Ross University in Dominica. It is a legitimate medical school though with approval in all 50 states and federal education loans available.
@ohnoes: Ross was around before DeVry bought it though; I don't know when they bought it but it's been around since the 70s or 80s.
From their site..
"In an effort to keep program cost down and the current motivational based format of JHSO, JHSO has not sought nor been approved by the US DOE, CHEA or DETC organizations and does not represent itself to be an "Accredited" program of any of these organizations."
Come on guys. They are just trying to keep costs down. :(
Also...
"JHSO provides a stringent internal review process for its overall program and particularly for its interactive learning platform and completion program."
Online Diplomas. Serious Business.
@☠Grяrяrяrяrя sings the doom song now!:
I was on a jury in a case where the defendant made up a school, from which he got his "engineering degree." He used it to get hired as a county hydrology engineer.
He went so far as to make a website for it. During the trial in trying to deny that he made the school up he mentioned that "individuals can't register .edus." I looked it up (after the trial) and found no site, and all registry information that matched the details given was for a .org.
The school's street address was the house of a friend of his, where he'd parked his motorhome for a while. (That's all he said when asked why the school's address was a residence, at least)
He said his daughter had a degree from that school, too.
Anyhow, no one would have ever found out if he hadn't brought a criminal investigation down upon himself over a completely unrelated matter.
@jdsmn: Community college coursework would suffice, right? If so, I'd go that route - and there are also a few CCs that offer online courses at a VERY cheap cost even to out-of-state students.
Now Oreo just needs a resume and a LinkedIn profile and she's all set.
I bet that cat is still smarter than 20% of public high school graduates.
How is this more of a scam than paying tens of thousands of dollars, living in substandard housing, eating food worse than in a hospital cafeteria, being forced to buy overpriced books, and wasting years of time to get a piece of paper?
@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig:
vermin exterminator?
clay absorbency tester?
corn based dry food quality control?
artistic carpet stainer?
loose textile [hair] production?
South Harmon Institute of Technology FTW
@jdsmn:
I never understood the AICPA's requirement for 150 credits but not requiring accounting or business to be the extra 30.
How is having taken an extra ten classes in biology or chemistry going to make you a better accountant? If you are going to require an additional 30 credits, make people get a grad degree in accounting or business. Simply requiring them to spend more money isn't helping society.
@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig: "other" or "prefer not to say"
it's not like they can use those against oreo in the hiring process
Outrageous! Oreo should be hauled before the disciplinary committee. He had *someone else* take all his tests for him!
@jdsmn: Well, you said U of Phoenix, I don't know what's easier than that. If he wants brick-and-mortar, he could take seminars and summer classes, at least the classes would be half as long and the professors would expect far, far less.
He should take something he's passingly interested in. Education is an opportunity. Ykno, poetry, yoga, astronomy, something he'd always wanted to know more about.
Because people will hire you based on the expensive piece of paper, while you can burn this piece to keep warm after employers laugh at your face.
Good looks, night vision, a GED and fluent in feline? Oreo is a quadruple threat!