diploma mill
2
6.6
- noun
- /dɪˈploʊmə mɪl/
- Offensive
:
fábrica de diplomas
- In his classic 1959 study of "diploma mills" for the American Council on Education, Robert Reid described the typical diploma mill as having the following characteristics: "no classrooms," "faculties are often untrained or nonexistent."
- digital diploma mill
Examples
-
Many physicians still practicing in the 1920s had graduated from "diploma mills" where the training was often perfunctory at best.
Academic text (2016) -
Online learning used to be synonymous with shady diploma mills that offered a questionable product.
Blog text (4) -
"I had no idea that school was a diploma mill; to my understanding, they legitimately used my life experience to award my degree."
Blog text (30) -
This would address the purported diploma-mill problem without preventing most free courses from being offered without registration.
Blog text (34) -
I am still baffled why anyone would give credence to a guy who bought his PhD from a diploma mill.
Blog text (7) -
The worst have been diploma mills—phantom operations whose degrees are literally not worth the paper on which they are photocopied.
Academic text (2003) -
On the other hand, if price is all and quality is of no concern, students can buy degrees from a diploma mill even more cheaply—or, easiest and cheapest, do without a degree.
Academic text (2001) -
University of Phoenix, a for-profit institution of higher learning (Apollo Group, Inc.), is just a diploma mill that solely relies on a large number of unqualified prospective students.
Blog text (10) -
Many students were misled into enrolling in a diploma mill that charges high fees for worthless degrees.
-
After extensive research, she realized that the online program she joined was actually a diploma mill.
Synonyms
1
9.5
An organization that gives degrees for little or no study and is not officially recognised
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun combines 'diploma' (document) and 'mill' (a place that produces things), so a learner can infer a place that produces diplomas. However, the pejorative sense—mass-producing low-quality or purchased degrees with little academic requirement—depends on knowing the metaphorical use of 'mill' for cheap/mass production, which may not be fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
The phrase diploma mill uses the image of a factory: a mill that mass-produces diplomas. People use this image for places that sell degrees for money with little study, so it means 'an organization that gives degrees with few academic requirements'.