7 Tips for Spotting Fake College Degrees and Unaccredited Colleges

Verifying a college or program's accreditation status is a key part of the school research process. Why? Accreditation ensures that the school meets certain standards of academic quality. It's also important should you transfer to another college or apply for a graduate program.

Whereas institutional accreditation ensures an entire school has met a particular standard of quality, programmatic accreditation ensures a specific program has met that standard.

Why Should You Avoid Unaccredited Colleges?

There are several reasons you should avoid attending unaccredited colleges, often dubbed "diploma mills." Attending a school that lacks accreditation comes with a lot of negative ramifications:

• You'll be ineligible to receive federal financial aid. You must attend an accredited institution to qualify for financial aid. In other words, you won't be eligible for federal grants, work-study, or low-interest federal loans.
• Colleges and universities equate a lack of accreditation with poor educational quality. Transferring institutions and graduate programs may not recognize your coursework or degree if you attended an unaccredited college.
• You may not qualify for professional licensure. Some jobs, like nursing, require you to get a license upon completing an accredited program. Without licensure, you'll be unable to legally work in your field of study.
• Employers may not want to hire you. A "fake" college degree earned from an unaccredited school may cause potential employers to doubt your ability to perform at the level your job requires.

How to Spot Unaccredited Colleges: 7 Essential Tips

There are several ways you can determine whether a school is unaccredited. Here are a few quick tips to help you spot a college scam.

A legitimate college or university website will look professional. Consider any of the following a red flag:

• The school's website URL doesn't end in .edu. (Note that ending in .edu doesn't always guarantee legitimacy, though.)
• The website contains obvious typos and grammatical errors.
• There is limited contact information, including no physical address for the school.
• There are no faculty members with credentials from known accredited institutions.

Legitimate colleges include their accreditation information on their website. Usually, you can find this information by using the site's search feature or by visiting the school's "About Us" page.

The University of Texas at Austin and New York University are great examples of what to look for on an accreditation page. Each page includes the name of the accrediting agency and its physical address, contact phone number, and email.

Once you've located the name of a college's accreditor, the next step is to verify that the agency is legitimate.

All legitimate accrediting agencies will be recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and/or the U.S. Department of Education.

The following are some bogus accreditation agencies:

Some degree mills attempt to convince you of their accreditation by listing a bogus accreditor whose name is very similar to that of a legitimate accrediting agency.

For example, a school may list the International Higher Learning Commission, a fake accreditor, in the hopes that you'll confuse it with the legitimate (and similar-sounding) agency, Higher Learning Commission.

Schools must maintain their accreditation. If a school receives a rejection from an accrediting body, it means they haven't upheld the required standards. This is significant because a lack of accreditation translates to a school's inability to offer students federal financial aid.

To check whether a school is still accredited, go to the accrediting agency's official website and look for a list or directory of member schools — your college should be on it.

Like entire schools, individual programs can lose accreditation, which can impact your ability to apply for licensure and get a job.

Earning a degree from a program that's been denied accreditation recertification can also negatively affect your ability to attend graduate school. For example, to get an MBA at a reputable graduate school, you must have earned your bachelor's from an accredited institution.

Not all programs will have programmatic accreditation, but if yours claims to, you must confirm that the accreditation is legitimate and active.

You can check program accreditation the same way you would institutional accreditation: Go to the accrediting agency's site and look for a list of accredited programs to see whether your program is on it.

Degrees earned in a very limited amount of time can be a red flag to valid accreditation. Bachelor's degrees typically take 3-4 years, while master's degrees take 1-2 years, depending on the program.

Make sure the school isn't making unbelievable promises, like earning a bachelor's in six months or getting a doctorate in two years.

Accreditation agencies ensure that the degree you earn has value in the marketplace. Walking away with a degree from one of these fast-track schools might mean you've spent thousands of dollars on a worthless piece of paper — don't let that be you!

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