Federal employees have used government funds to purchase
bogus degrees from diploma mills, but agency records do not
reveal exactly how many and how often, the General
Accounting Office has said in testimony before the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee.
It said three of the four unaccredited schools it contacted
identified 463 students who are federal employees, and that
two of the schools released records showing over $150,000 in
payments from federal agencies.
The Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation
told GAO they paid $169,470.74 to the schools GAO contacted,
although both agency and school records likely understate the
extent of federal payments because agencies do not have a
system in place to properly verify academic degrees or to
detect fees for degrees that are masked as fees for training
courses, said GAO.
It said data from eight agencies indicated that 28 senior-level
employees have mill-degrees, and that managers are standing
by six of those employees, saying that other factors such as
experience were the deciding factors of their hiring or
promotion.
“There are no uniform verification practices throughout the
government whereby agencies can obtain information and conduct
effective queries on schools and their accreditation status,”
said GAO.