Diploma Mills Are a Growing Liability for Employers

It makes no difference to you as an employer whether a student willingly accepts a diploma or degree from a diploma mill or genuinely believes their degree is real. Either circumstance has the same repercussions for your organization — liability. 

Discovering that an employee you hired is a fraud is very disheartening — especially when you learn that they intentionally deceived you. Fraudulent credentials mean improper education and training, which poses a risk to your organization, customers, and the general public.

Consider unfathomable scenarios where an engineer designs a bridge, and it collapses. Or an accountant creates tax liabilities. During the ensuing investigations, you learn that their credentials are bogus, and you, as the employer, are held accountable — the importance of credential verification becomes very clear.

It’s common for employers to reward educational achievements with higher salaries, but what price do you pay when the achievement comes from a diploma mill? Properly vetting your candidates with education verification is crucial to avoiding this trap. Here are some potential red flags on application forms, resumes, and CVs:

• Ensure their degrees are in practical order with all the right pieces. For example, you can’t have a master’s degree without a bachelor’s degree first.
• Education takes time. If you add up their degrees and the timeline seems short, probe further.
• If you’re unfamiliar with any listed colleges or universities, verify them. And look carefully. Some diploma mills use spin-offs of real educational institutions.
• Verify that the applicant lived where they claim to have gone to school. Confirm all online or distance-learning institutions and verify the degrees or diplomas through accreditation verification processes. 

Use these tips when doing credential verification to ensure your screening processes are solid and have merit: 

• Use a legitimate accrediting agency when confirming a school’s accreditation.
• Don’t trust the phone number for the listed education institutions; Google it yourself.  Diploma mills typically have someone answering their phones when a call comes in for education verification.
• Do a cross-reference check with known diploma mills. These lists constantly change, so ensure you’re cross-referencing a current one.
• Requesting a copy of a diploma from an applicant is no longer good enough — contact the school directly for the most reliable information or use a service like Hire Performance’s Education Verification to do it for you. 
• When cross-referencing, always document your data: first and last name of who you spoke with, their title, and their contact information. You should also ask them to email you while you’re on the line with them; their willingness to go above and beyond helps to verify their integrity. 

How to Identify Diploma Mills

As online and distance-learning universities play a significant role in education, you must minimize the impact on your business by understanding how to identify them and keep them out of your organization.

But with hundreds of diploma mills and thousands of credible higher learning institutions across the globe, how can you tell who’s legit and who’s not? Besides well-known institutions like Harvard, Duke, and Penn State, others may sound recognizable, but the spelling is usually off. For example, the accredited La Salle University name reads LaSalle University through a diploma mill. Most employers don’t look at this closely and can easily miss it without a thorough investigation. 

Determine if an applicant has a degree from a diploma mill using reliable sources for education verification and looking for telltale signs. 

No Accreditation



A list of recognized higher education institutions in Canada is available on the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials website. Some diploma mills create their own accreditation bodies to look legitimate or may indicate that they’re a licensed education service, but that isn’t the same as being accredited.

Tuition is Per Degree

Rather than charging tuition by the course like accredited schools, diploma mills charge by the diploma or degree with lump-sum fees ranging from $50 for a high school diploma to $5,000 or more for a doctorate or Ph.D.

Degrees Earned Too Quickly

Diploma mills typically hand out degrees without their students taking classes, practicum, or exams. The candidate signs up, pays a fee, and receives a diploma or degree in days or weeks rather than months or years.

School Acceptance Not Based on Academics 

Accredited schools require candidates to submit documents detailing their academic abilities, such as high school transcripts, letters of reference, and standardized test scores. Diploma mills keep up their ruse by basing acceptance on resumes and transferring work and life experience into a degree. Sometimes, there’s no coursework involved, and other times, they may require a short essay or exam that’s impossible for the applicant to fail. 

Suspicious Address

A diploma mill won’t have a campus or a street address. They usually operate from a P.O. box or an email address. Some say they’re abroad, making them exempt from Canadian and US standards and claiming to have international accreditation. 

No Staff or Faculty

Diploma mills will entice applicants with impressive websites, but they’ll lack a list of instructors, their qualifications, experience, and areas of expertise. 

Confirmed and Identified as a Diploma Mill 

When in doubt, hundreds of fraudulent diploma mills have been identified and reported to GetEducated’s independent Diploma Mill Police list. 

Why Education Verification is Important

Education verification is a crucial part of the candidate screening process. Skipping it can result in hiring applicants who are untrustworthy and unqualified, risking other employees, customers, lawsuits, and other catastrophes. 

These days, many employers feel rushed to hire due to the labour shortage and lack of top talent. A professional screening company can complete a comprehensive educational background check that offers you peace of mind by confirming the following:

• Schools attended
• Dates of attendance
• Degrees earned
• Licenses and certificates
• And more

Expose Risky Diploma Mills With Education Verification From Hire Performance

Minimize the risk to your company, employees, and customers by partnering with a trusted education verification professional — Hire Performance. Whether you’re hiring hundreds, dozens, or just a few new candidates, it only takes one fraudulent applicant to put you and your business at risk. 

Hire Performance is a Canadian leader in background checks, including North America Criminal Record Checks (CPIC, PIP) and International Investigative Reference Reports, Criminal Record Checks, Employment Verifications, Driver Abstracts, Education Verifications, and other pre-employment screening services. 

Ask about our seamless process with eScreener, allowing quick turn-around times with enriched reports accessible on the go and around the world.