"Big 3" education mills?

[cookderosa]

Essentially 2 kinds of diploma mills (1) is when you send someone some cash, and they forge a diploma and transcripts for you with the name of whatever school you want. Maybe you wanna go to Harvard? How about the University of Michigan? You want that back-dated to 2002? For $499 you can have the best diploma an inkjet can produce and pdf transcript. Lucky you. (2) An actual business or school that charges tuition and doesn't deliver any real education, but beyond not delivering a good education, they'll still hand out good grades, build a transcript, and award a degree/diploma. Schools in this category have sometimes shaky or pretend accreditation. Sometimes a company will create an accreditor as a technicality (The American Underwater Basketweaving Oversight Council) and then when they launch their school presenting: The CookDeRosa Basketweaving Academy, accredited by the AUBOC.... it's a phony credential.

So, to avoid being taken advantage of, you'll want to check that any college or university you consider is first accredited. There are fake accreditors, so don't just look on a college's website, check the US Department of Education database. https://ope.ed.gov/dapip/#/home

If it's in there, that is a good sign that it's at least meeting minimum requirements (enough that the Department of Education is allowing students to participate in Federal Financial Aid and use GI Bill - so it's a minimum check). From there, you'll want to see if it holds regional accreditation. While not every career demands a credential that comes from a regionally accredited college (many trades don't), it is the highest accreditation available - so if the college you're considering is in that category, all i's have been dotted and t's crossed. There is nothing higher.

Specific to your question, the Big 3 (Excelsior College, Charter Oak State College, and Thomas Edison State University) are all regionally accredited. You should also know that "big 3" is their pet name here, it's not something they call themselves- in fact, most of the students who attend those colleges aren't even using CLEP or other alternative credits, most are taking online classes and paying rack rate (ouch).