Diploma Mills

One thing to worry about, at least in my eyes, is the legitimacy of the online masters degree program. I don't mean legitimacy as in Harvard Business vs. your local state college. That would pertain to reputation and quality and respectability in the educational world. What I mean by legitimacy is accreditation.

Recently, there was an issue of a superintendent at the Freehold school district in New Jersey in which the superintendent had paid a diploma mill for a doctorate degree. The way the NJ school system works is that teachers and administrators are given pay increases for the degrees they acquire. Although this incentive is in place for degrees only from accredited universities and colleges, this superintendent went to a non-accredited college where his only major requirement for obtaining a doctorate degree was writing a 12-page paper. He was then given a diploma. For us real students, we know a 12-page paper could be less than 25% of the course work from a real, accredited institution. These are called diploma mills, places that hand out degrees as fast as McDonald's hands out cheeseburgers, so long as you pay the school's fees.

What is important to note here is that the non-accredited school was an online school. While you can be assured that a school like Drexel, Harvard, or Rutgers are all accredited, you need to make sure to do research when deciding on the right online program for you. The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of money only to have your degree be seen as irrelevant because of the school's lack of accreditation.

Here is a link to legitimate, state-recognized accreditation agencies:
http://www.elearners.com/resources/agencies.asp

Here is a link to a news article with more information on the problem with NJ school superintendents using non-accredited degrees to get more money:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/09/05/03diploma.h28.html