DPE chancellor cracks down on diploma mills

By Jim Cook

Published: July 14, 2008

Alabama Community College System Chancellor Bradley Byrne on Monday called for tighter regulation of Alabama’s private for-profit colleges, describing his initiative as a crack down on diploma mills.

Byrne’s plan will increase license fees and surety bonds, more closely monitor the schools and their proprietors and fine institutions that refuse to provide the state information about their operations.

“If postsecondary is going to be responsible for private school licensure, then we’re going to do it right,” Byrne said in a press release. “Legitimate private school operators have told me they support our new initiatives. I’m putting the illegitimate ones on notice: We’re going to run you out of our state.”

About 258 private for-profit colleges operate in Alabama. Eighteen of them have been recently investigated and closed by the Department of Postsecondary Education’s private school licensure division.

According to Margaret Gunter, an Alabama Commission on Higher Education spokesperson, Alabama has become a haven for diploma mills, schools that charge students for degrees that are worthless, because of weak regulation. ACHE has an oversight process for private for-profit colleges, but if ACHE rejects them, all the institutions have to do to legally operate is get a business license.

Gunter said while there are legitimate for-profit colleges in the state, there’s also a lot of shady operations that take students’ money and issue them diplomas that aren’t worth the paper on which they’re printed.

“They’re just offering bogus degrees,” she said.

Legislation to give ACHE more power to license private colleges failed in the Legislature this year, leaving responsibility for the colleges with the Department of Postsecondary Education.

State School Board member Betty Peters said she’s gotten local complaints about diploma mills and said she’s glad that Byrne’s acting to regulate them.

“I think anything we can do to help the public discern whether they’re making a good education investment is something we need to do,” she said.