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Online learning becomes more accepted, that's why it is getting harder to identify, which online educational establishments require students to finish legitimate coursework, and, which are diploma mills. The situation gets more perplexing as many legitimate universities and colleges turn to distance learning; so many students make up their minds to take classes online and get their degrees remotely.

A degree is one of the most important and expensive money investments people will have to make in their lifetime. Without a degree career doors remain closed for the majority of potential applicants. Though, the academic choice is not about to dice, putting the future career promotion at stake.

However, up to the moment more and more people, who are looking for the better career choices, and are in search of the edge in the competitive job market fall into the trap of the online scams, who offer to reward any degree in a very short period of time, sometimes as less as in five days.

A fake degree is the worst thing ever; just because a person pays money not for the knowledge he can acquire and apply in his career, though for the pseudo-credentials to trick the employers.

There are more than 300 unaccredited universities now operating. More than thirty bogus universities sell online degrees in the United States alone. While a few are start-ups or online ventures, the great majority are so called diploma or degree mills, which are bogus universities and fake schools that confer any degree at prices from $3.000 to $5.000. Diploma mills crank out *paper diplomas rather than the educational experience*, which are genuinely worthless because student's work and operator's handling of the mill fall behind the standard educational bench-mark.

*In his classic 1959 study of diploma mills for the American Council on Education, Robert Reid described the typical diploma mill as having the following characteristics: "no classrooms," "faculties are often untrained or nonexistent," and "the officers are unethical self-seekers whose qualifications are no better than their offerings."*

Diploma mills are fraudulent institutions of higher education that issue thousands of diplomas and confer hundreds of degrees annually, earning the aggregate income of $200 million. Diploma mills have become more prosperous because modern technology is becoming increasingly available to general public. The Internet makes bogus degrees easier to get than ever before. A huge diploma mills wave is under way, which grows stronger and stronger with each upcoming year.

John Eaton, a U.S. commissioner of education, once called diploma mills *a disgrace of the American education.*

Diploma mills prey on people's lack of knowledge and confusion about their accreditation. It is very easy to become a victim of the online scams, who turn years of backbreaking college studying into five days* degrees rewarding. Indeed, it is really hard to determine whether a degree earned online is really legitimate. Moreover, bogus educational establishments adopt names that are very similar to bona fide universities.

There are some things to remember when making your academic choice.

One should remember is that accreditation, which is declared valid by the U.S. Department of Education, is the highest mark of educational quality. It is very important to verify accreditation, which is given to an institution of higher education, by an agency that is recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation.

Admission criteria that consist entirely of you possessing a credit card are evidently the tricks of the online scams. It is a well-known fact that valid universities require applicants to pass entrance examinations, taking into account their existing academic records.

Getting a distance-education degree from a foreign school is a great imprudence, unless you are absolutely certain that the school's degrees are genuine and valid in the U.S.

The main thing is to be genned up of the possible danger, to be forewarned and to double-check legitimacy of any institution of higher education you*re going to admit to. In this regard, not to look before you leap can be a costly and consequential mistake.