Instant degree racket in U.S.

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 11

Instant degree racket in U.S.

(By

EDGAR FIELD)

LONDON.

It was America which began the silly idea of instant “status symbols” stretching through life — from diamond nappypins to decorated bronze funeral caskets.

More sophisticated Europeans don’t need these symbols. We judge status by a person’s personality and position, which is why you see an earl pottering about in grubby old gardening clothes, or eating his breakfast marmalade straight from the manufacturers’ jar.

But the Americans are hooked on status symbols. Many of them are a pathetic commentary on the rat-race —and none more so than the craze for proclaiming instant learning. It’s not brains or knowledge you need to have a lot of letters after your name—just some money. One Englishman in New York recently paid £l6 and thereby collected a “ministership” in two churches and a doctor’s “degree” in Asian literature. If he can find 50 others interested in investing in “ministerships,” he can become a ranking archbishop among the “Missionaries of the New Truth” in Illinois. His doctor’s “degree” from the University of Eastern Florida took 18 minutes of study and cost £l2. He was then a “recognised expert” on the Orient

America, in fact, is full of self-styled “colleges” and “universities,” which send the socially and intellectually ambitiuos elaborate scrolls and titles involving no study. In return the colleges get “tuition” fees, ranging from about £lO to over £lOO.

People in Britain, too, are sometimes taken in by—or imagine they are shrewd in making use of —the American degree racket. Some years ago, an amateur author who made much play with the style DSc and PhD was asked by a London newspaper which university had conferred these distinctions on him. He replied: “I think it was . . .”, naming an institution unknown to the American Embassy in London. The odd thing is that anyone can style himself master of arts, doctor of divinity and so forth—as long as he does not claim any known university or use the letters for purposes of fraud. Then how is it that America, which has some of the world’s greatest universities with an immense reputation for careful scholarship, allows the peddling of fake degrees from bogus colleges?

The answer is that these institutions are not bogus in a strictly legal sense. In the early days of the United States, when everything was being formed, charters were freely granted to set up uniiversities. Many went on to flourish as large institutions, but in other cases charters fell into disuse, though they remained legally valid. More recently unscrupulous degreemongers revived them. They became mail order offices to sell degrees.

No effective law Investigators at a Satte legislative inquiry in Los Angeles a few years ago found that there were virtually no effective statutes to stop degree-mongers practising—and increasing. In the Los Angeles area alone, there were some 60 diploma-granting establishments. Many of them were genuine, but some were rackets. One such racket was the

case of an aircraft worker who had established a thriving “School of Hypnotism.” It turned out to be the living room of his rented house. There, students qualified for the “degree” of doctor of para-psychology and hypnotism. Presumably the possessors of "DPH” after their names thought that they might be taken for PhD’s (doctors of philosophy). A great many of these bogus degrees deliberately use rather similar lettering to that of genuine degrees.

Carefully chosen What sort of people are the “doctors” who are prepared to pay fat fees for the magic letters-after-the-name? They are often people—carefully chosen from a shrewd marketing appraisal—who think they are particularly honoured by being chosen to receive an “honorary" degree from one of the giltedged diploma factories. Significantly, it is the wealthier who may fall for this; but the payments are anything but “honorary.” But whether or not you go through the motions of a correspondence course, you can usually pay by instalments.

There seems nothing to stop the degree racketeers from practising—and it is a market which grows richer every year. The estimated turnover .of the United States instant “degree factories” is estimated to be £35 million a year. Of course, some “degrees” are straight jokes. One firm in Chicago sells thousands of two-dollar parchment diplomas which confer on the buyer the title of “doctor of physiotherapy of the university of nowheresville.” But for the rest, plenty of Americans remain doggedly sold on the status and business value of an impressive bunch of letters after their names.