By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
It usually takes four years for students to graduate from a university and get bachelor's degree, and at least two to three additional years for master's or doctoral degrees.
However, all of the degrees can be obtained in one week at unauthorized foreign colleges, often dubbed ``diploma mills.''
Many of Korea's high-profile figures who were found to have fabricated their academic records, obtained their degrees in the U.S., and most of those American schools are unaccredited by the U.S. educational authorities.
Rochville University is one of the 731 unaccredited colleges listed on Web sites of the educational offices in the U.S. as not being authorized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.
The online encyclopedia Wikipedia says that Rochville University is ``an unaccredited online university offering a `Life Experience Degree and Certificate Program.' It has been accused of being a diploma mill.''
According to Dong-A Ilbo, the university provides diplomas within a week if people pay by credit cards _ $499 for bachelor's degree and master's degree each, $599 for doctorate, and $1,038 for all of the three.
``You don't have to take lectures. We attach importance to `life experience.' We offer doctorates to those who have more than three years of work career,'' the school's enrollment advisor was quoted as saying.
Asked about how the school copes with companies' demand to verify its accreditation, the advisor said that Rochville issues diploma certificates and provides 24-hour telephone service to cover companies' such request about degrees.
The diploma mill business is booming despite the U.S. Government Accountability Office's crackdown in 2004. It is said a growing number of Asians who have difficulty in promotion or job change is seeking those colleges.
Such universities dish out diplomas to students without proper education. Usually providing online lectures, some of them have similar names to those of prestigious universities.
Some of the diploma mills include: Pacific Western University, Pacific Yale University, Cohen University, Belford University, and Columbia Pacific University. In 2005, the Korea Research Foundation said it would not recognize diplomas from Pacific Western University and Pacific Yale University.
Laurie Gerald, who received a guilty verdict for fraud by co-operating Columbia State University, a diploma mill with similar name of Columbia University, said in his statement at the court, ``Columbia State University had no faculty, qualified or otherwise, no curriculum, no classes, no courses, no tests, no one to grade tests, no educational facilities, no library, and no academic accreditation.''
``If a student wanted a master's degree, he would have to do the book summary and a six-page paper; a doctorate meant a book summary and a 12-page paper. There was nothing that could pass for `academic rigor' at Columbia State University,'' he said.