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Think Your Candidate has an Accredited International Degree? Better Think Again.

I realize when recruiters and Human Resources Managers are trying to staff up their work forces it is essential to get new employees on board as soon as possible.  With the increased frequency of foreign born and foreign educated job candidates conducting international criminal records and international education  verification can be costly and time consuming.  But then when you discover the hard way that your shining new candidate didn’t have his college degree after all, then the expense and the time seem insignificant when matched up against the possible consequences.  If you are in the sort of industrial sector where it is essential your work staff have verifiable degrees or else you lose a contract, suddenly the few bucks and the few days don’t seem luck much at all.

Here is an article from the New York Times that demonstrates one of any number of diploma mills and scam operations that will verify degrees for a price.  Of course, the whole thing is bogus, the degrees are fake, and so are the vouching professors.  When you consider the fact that when people lie about their resume they lie mostly about having their degrees when they were there for enrollment only.  Or they didn’t go at all.

According to the article…”

Seen from the Internet, it is a vast education empire: hundreds of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses.

Their websites, glossy and assured, offer online degrees in dozens of disciplines, like nursing and civil engineering. There are glowing endorsements on the CNN iReport website, enthusiastic video testimonials, and State Department authentication certificates bearing the signature of Secretary of State John Kerry.

“We host one of the most renowned faculty in the world,” boasts a woman introduced in one promotional video as the head of a law school. “Come be a part of Newford University to soar the sky of excellence.”

Yet on closer examination, this picture shimmers like a mirage. The news reports are fabricated. The professors are paid actors. The university campuses exist only as stock photos on computer servers. The degrees have no true accreditation.In fact, very little in this virtual academic realm, appearing to span at least 370 websites, is real — except for the tens of millions of dollars in estimated revenue it gleans each year from many thousands of people around the world, all paid to a secretive Pakistani software company.