4 Tips to Avoid Being Scammed by Diploma Mills

Online education has been introduced for decodes and it is now receiving increased respect from top employers. Students who are interested to earn their degree online generally do not need to worry about the acceptance of their online degree as long as they earn their degree from a legitimate online college. However, diploma mills who offer valueless degree limit the prestige of a legitimate online degree. You as an online student need to ensure the degree you pursue online is from $a properly accredited college, else you will have problem to use the degree to start your career later. Here are a few tips to avoid being scammed by diploma mills.

Tip #1: Understand the college's past performance

The college past performance is useful to identify legitimate online colleges. Online colleges that won yearly award or participating themselves to be reviewed for ranking position such as The Best College of Year 2009 should be cleared enough to identify as legitimate online colleges.

Tip #2: Find out which accrediting agency that performs accreditation

Accreditation is an important indicator for quality assurance of the online degree programs offered by any college. However, it is not enough to know that your selected online college is accredited, but you need to know which organization is accrediting the college and whether that accrediting agency is a body recognized by the Department of Education of your country. The reason is diploma mills do claim accreditation, which they are accredited by a "fake" accrediting agency. Hence, you should find out which accrediting agency that performs the accreditation process of your selected online college and ensure the accrediting agency is in the list of CHEA.org, an official online database that keeps information about accreditation.

Tip #3: Join the forums that discuss about online colleges

What other people talk about the online college that you are interested to may give some hints about how good the college is and whether the college is a diploma mill that cheats money without providing legitimate degrees. In the forums, people will talk about the good things and the bad things about the colleges and their degree programs. You should be able to get a lot of information about the online colleges that offer the degree program you are interested in. Avoid those online colleges that have bad comments and suspicious to be diploma mills.

Tip #4: Avoid online colleges that offer deals that look too good

When you see something is too good to be true, then it better trigger your alert sensor on any potential scam activities by diploma mill. When you see that the requirements to earn a degree is too easy until you don't need to put in any effort, then the degree you are going to earn is most probably be a fake degree then a legitimate one. Hence, keep in mind that earning a degree online has no different than the campus-based degree except there are some advantages that will benefit you. Other than that, you still need to put in efforts for coursework, attending online classes and complete the total credits required for graduation. Avoid totally any offer from online colleges that look to good to be true.

Summary

Don't let yourself have chances to be scammed by diploma mills. Use the above 4 tips to distinguish a legitimate online college before you sign up any of it online degree program.

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