A spoof of online universities by NBC’s Saturday Night Live pokes fun at a very serious problem facing employers and recruiters using educational verification during background checks in today’s tough job market – so-called “diploma mills” where, for the right price, jobseekers can purchase documents showing that they earned a diploma or degree from a college or university.

In a fake commercial for the fictitious “University of Westfield Online,” SNL performers Fred Armisen, Nasim Pedrad, Jenny Slate, and Kenan Thompson tell how the “Internet college” taught them skills such as not mentioning in a job interview that they attended an Internet college, along with valuable techniques on how to avoid responding to the question of where they went to school that include changing the subject, mumbling, and faking a heart attack. After just four months of school, the diploma mill emails graduating students a .pdf file of a diploma with an intentionally unreadable name of a school so students can supply their own preferred choice (like Yale).

All kidding aside, a “diploma mill” – or “degree mill” – is an organization that awards academic degrees and diplomas with little or no academic study and without recognition by official educational accrediting bodies. In a recent case reported by GetEducated.com – a consumer advocacy group that works to protect consumers from diploma mill fraud – a pug dog named Chester Ludlow was awarded a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) by a diploma mill posing as an online college that offered “distance learning degrees based on life and career experience.” For $499, the dog received an MBA diploma and two sets of college transcripts in a week from a P.O. box in Dubai. According to GetEducated, diploma mills represent a billion dollar industry worldwide.

To help uncover education credential fraud, employers need to perform thorough education verifications during pre-employment background checks to discover if applicants actually graduated from the educational institutions listed on their resumes. Pre-Employ.com, a nationally recognized pre-employment background check provider, offers education verification services for employers to help weed out diploma mill graduates. For more information about diploma mills and background checks, visit www.pre-employ.com, email info@pre-employ.com, or call 1-800-300-1821. Follow Pre-Employ.com on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PreEmploy.

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tahearn@pre-employ.com

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