Pittsburg High students show it’s not hard to unmask fake degrees

When Amy Robertson was hired as the principal of Pittsburg High School, student journalists began work on what they thought would be a welcoming puff piece. When they discovered problems with her credentials, including diplomas from a known degree mill, the story they wrote ultimately resulted in her resignation.

The students have been rightly celebrated for their reporting. The real question is why it was necessary.

Every year in the United States, universities award 45,000 legitimate doctorates, while an estimated 50,000 people buy themselves fake PhDs. This isn’t new information, but every year, it seems to catch by surprise those responsible for hiring people.

Fake degrees are held by doctors, lawyers, therapists, teachers and others we count on to be well-trained. A few years ago, the senior assistant secretary of defense, head of human resources for 2 million people, was found to have a fake master’s degree.

It’s estimated that 100,000 federal employees have credentials from a degree mill.

Part of the problem is that people simply accept stated credentials, even though checking credentials isn’t hard. One merely has to do the work.

As the Kansas high school reporters found, the website of the university holds clues. For example, check the school’s advertised address using Google Maps. If you see a UPS Store, or a Holiday Inn, it probably isn’t a top-notch university.

Ask about the school’s accreditation status. If it claims to be accredited, is it with an agency approved by the Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation? If not, why?

Bringing some detective skills to work with us would help so many Americans, especially during this time of year, when identity theft tax return frauds are so prevalent.

As it turns out, most Americans hit by scams don’t double-check what they’re told. Most phishing scams would fold like a cheap accordion with even the most cursory online verification.

Every year, police departments are forced to tell tens of thousands of people who fell for some kind of online scam the bad news: investigating these cyber-enabled crimes after the fact is logarithmically harder than it would have been for the victim to investigate the claims before it became a crime.

The Federal Trade Commission says that the fastest-growing scam is impostor fraud: when someone pretends to be someone they’re not, such as an IRS tax official, police officer, service provider or other person of authority. Like a school principal.

Quite a bit of subterfuge can be cleared up with a simple phone call. Robertson said she received in 1991 a bachelor of fine arts degree in theater arts from the University of Tulsa. The student reporters called Tulsa and were told by the registrar that the institution has never offered a bachelor of fine arts degree.

As the intrepid student reporters discovered, sometimes a little leg work is all that stands between your kids and an impostor.

This story was originally published April 13, 2017 at 5:01 AM with the headline "Pittsburg High students show it’s not hard to unmask fake degrees."