Welcome to the University of life, can I take your order? Investigating Life Experience Degree Offerings in Diploma mills

Abstract

In this study, we posit a new category of products provided by diploma mills, which we term Life Experience Degree Offerings (LEDOs). LEDOs uniquely capitalise on the misuse of the principle of Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL) by granting higher education qualifications based on a resume or CV alone. Through a comparative analysis with contract cheating websites, we highlight the key features and persuasive strategies employed by 10 diploma mill websites which provide LEDOs to attract and convince potential clients. We then use corpus linguistics methods by analysing a large corpus of text quantitatively to explore the keywords these websites use to describe their products using a pre-packaged corpus analysis tool (Sketch Engine). Our findings indicate that on providers’ websites, the LEDOs are framed as a tool to achieve greater socioeconomic opportunities, and the quality and appearance of the physical diploma and accompanying documents play a key role in the LEDOs’ value proposition, while references to the acquisition of knowledge and process of learning are absent. Furthermore, LEDOs are typified by the promise of accreditation and verification services, which are the two most common keywords used in the description of LEDOs on diploma mills’ websites. Future research directions are suggested, including examining this phenomenon in non-Western cultural contexts, understanding the users and operators of LEDO websites, and assessing the prevalence of fraudulent credentials obtained from these sites.