Cut-rate diplomas: how doubts about the government's own "Dr. Laura" exposed a resume fraud scandal

The GAO report has prompted the OPM, which conducts background checks on new federal hires, to crack down on the resume cheats, who short-cut their way to the top and undermine those employees who work long and hard for legitimate degrees and who might get passed over for a raise or promotion. The agency is revising its hiring and background investigation forms to emphasize that degrees must be from accredited schools. It also has authorized more money for background checks so job applicants' academic credentials can be more thoroughly investigated. Down the road, U.S. senators are considering legislation to ban agencies from paying for courses from unaccredited schools. (Congress is not immune to the scam. In fact, an aide to the Senate committee that investigated the Callahan scandal had enrolled in an unaccredited school.)

It remains to be seen whether those reforms will help restore confidence in the federal work force. The American people need to know that the best-qualified workers are running the war on terrorism, not a bunch of hacks and cheats.

Diploma Mills

Schools the federal government says are not accredited, yet has paid for its workers to attend:

Chadwick University (Birmingham, Alabama)

Columbia Pacific University (Novato, California)

Kent College (Mandeville, Louisiana)

LaSalle University (Mandeville, Louisiana)

Barrington University (Mobile, Alabama)

Lacrosse University (Bay St. Louis, Mississippi)

Pacific Western University (Los Angeles, California)

Hamilton University (Evanston, Wyoming)

Kennedy-Western University (Thousand Oaks, California)

California Coast University (Santa Ana, California)

Source: Government Accountability Office

Unqualified Workers

Number of diploma mill students * employed by federal
agencies managing the war on terrorism:

Defense Department              257
Transportation Department        17
Justice Department               13
Homeland Security Department     12
Treasury Department               8

* Numbers represent information provided by just three unaccredited
schools: Kennedy-Western University, California Coast University,
and Pacific Western University

Source: Government Accountability Office

Paul Sperry (plogician@aol.com) is WorldNetDaily's Washington bureau chief. Formerly of Investor's Business Daily, he is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism (Thomas Nelson Publishers).

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