Comments on: Saudis to Investigate Fake Degrees

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:34:18 +0000

chucho: Thanks for pointing that out.

By: chucho

chucho — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:49:24 +0000

And the list has nearly 10,000 people, not 180. (There are three links to separate data extrapolations, but the total list is huge.)

By: Umm Tom

Umm Tom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:57:02 +0000

No worries, John. I live in DC (well, NoVa) as well.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:06:41 +0000

Thanks for clearing that up.

My apologizes for being a bit too DC-centric. There is, of course, the State of Washington. (My youngest brother, in fact, happens to live there!)

By: Umm Tom

Umm Tom — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:38:29 +0000

The “newspaper in Washington” that published the list was the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_breakingnews_pf.asp?ID=15898

Here is the list of purchasers: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/data/diploma-mill/

The company that sold the fake degrees was based in Spokane.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:59:04 +0000

I suspect that in the case of the US federal employees, some of these were post-employment degrees. Promotions can be influenced by, if not entirely dependent upon, holding advanced degrees. The level of checking that goes on within individual HR offices varies widely.

This is not to say, though, that some job applicants haven’t managed to game the system with fake degrees. No one wants to spend an inordinate amount of time in selecting someone for a clerical position, for instance. But some people in those positions are ambitious: they will try to get into more substantive jobs as quickly as they can. What was overlooked as unimportant in certain contexts can become much more important when the context changes.

This, in fact, is what I suspect most of the federal employee problems represent.

By: AbuSinan

AbuSinan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:26:08 +0000

I need to state that the applicants were required to submit their qualifications through a accreditation service (list supplied by us) for foreign schools and supply us the report, not the other way around as I initially indicated.

By: AbuSinan

AbuSinan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:23:26 +0000

Interesting. I was involved in the hiring of over 1,000 federal employees and we were required to verify all educational claims.

The schools had to be accredited through the normal track, and through ABET as well. An official copy, unopened, of the transcripts was required.

If the school’s name was not well known we’d have to follow up, make sure they were accredited normally and with ABET. If there were questions we’d call the school itself and enquire.

In the case of applicants with foreign education, we had to submit them to a small list of companies who would then investigate the school and send up a report telling us whether the school in question was at least equal in academics to American schools.

This was very important as we hired a lot of scientists and engineers from outside the USA.

I wonder if the US federal employees got the degrees AFTER they were hired? It would be amazing if they got the jobs using the fake degrees. Things have really tightened up since 9/11 and I would be surprised of hearing that happen.