Buying our diplomas

Recently, the Indiana Attorney General's office shut down a Web site for producing and selling fake IU law degrees for $59.95. \nIn addition, the Web site, www.noveltyworksdegrees.com produced "authentic-looking" degrees from any university in 45 majors. \nIt is estimated the site sold as many as 300 degrees before it was reported to the attorney general's office and shut down -- though the owner is not facing criminal charges. \nMost reasonable people might wonder what kind of person would purchase a phony degree and, perhaps more importantly, what good could such a degree possibly be. \nThere are a variety of questionable fake degree and diploma venues accessible to anybody who can afford to pay. They range from the kind of cheap operation mentioned above -- literally printing out aesthetically convincing degrees -- to more sophisticated ventures involving university brochures, correspondence courses and credit hours awarded for "life experience." The latter kinds of programs are highly deceptive and run anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 in cost, according to Degree.net. \nThe people who participate in these schemes are either future con artists who know what they're buying or are conned themselves by the glossy brochure pictures of smiling alumni, genuinely believing that running a business counts credit hours toward a business degree.\nWhat's even more ridiculous is that the lack of insight of employers, the media and law enforcement allows these sorts of ventures to continue. \nThe government of Encinitas, California, hired a former marine at a salary of $97,000 a year to prepare the city's computer systems for Y2K in 1996. He had a fake bachelor's degree, a fake master's and two fake doctorates. This man was on the payroll for three years before the government realized he was a sham. \nThere was no media blitz when the FBI discovered several NASA scientists with fake doctorates, when former Sen. Joseph Biden published campaign literature boasting a degree he didn't have, or when Arizona's "teacher of the year" had a fake master's. \nThe media is also to blame for running advertisements claiming that one can earn a doctorate in 27 days. Surely only tabloids would publish such garbage, right? Try The Economist, Time, Newsweek, Forbes, Money, Business Week, Investors Business Daily and USA Today. \nLaw enforcement has a hard time prosecuting people who run these ventures because they often move from state to state, raising issues of jurisdiction. \nIndeed, this situation can seem humorous, as demonstrated by former Florida Rep. Claude Pepper, who bought a fake doctorate to show how easy it was and then dubbed himself "Dr. Pepper." \nIt's not funny when you realize there at least 300 of these diploma mills operating nationally, raking in more than $200 million a year. \nAn interesting side lesson learned from this issue is that your education truly is what you make of it. As the above-mentioned incidents demonstrate, you don't need a real degree to be a teacher, senator or NASA scientist.\nIt's easy to blow through IU with C-minuses the same way these imposters blow through their phony correspondence courses. But then who are you really cheating?